2% final ABV of a sauce seems to be the sweet spot of amplified flavors, without any bitter notes from too much leftover ethanol.
If you add too much or just want to eyeball it — you can always just keep simmering (and thus cooking off the alcohol) until it tastes vibrant but not boozy.
Note: if you’re adding in the calculated amount, add the spirit at the end of the sauce cooking process, so it doesn't cook off too much.
Here are some guidelines to get you around the 2% mark assuming you are using standard 80-proof (40% abv) vodka.
| How much sauce you have before adding vodka | How much vodka you should add | Final ABV |
|---|---|---|
| 1200* g (ml)/ ~ 42 oz / ~ 5.25 cup | 60 g(ml) / 2 oz / 4 tbsp | 2% (.02) |
| 600 g (ml) / ~21 oz / ~2.75 cup | 30 g (ml) / 1 oz / 2 tbsp | 2% (.02) |
| 240 g (ml) / ~8 oz / ~ 1 cup | 12 g (ml) / ~1/2 oz / ~ 1 tbsp | 2% (.02) |
Don’t want to be this precise?
<aside> 💡 You’ll notice that for every cup of sauce, you’ll need roughly 1/2oz or 1 tbsp of vodka to be in that 2% sweet spot!
</aside>
*If you use 1 whole 28 oz can of tomatoes as your sauce base (~800 g) and use about half of that in creamy components (per the framework), you’ll end up with about 1200 g of sauce.
If you want to be very precise, in any situation, just calculate the amount of booze needed with some algebra: