(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — After successfully trying out his homemade tomato sauce at a Berwyn firehouse, Mario Manfredini has bottled his creation.
It started when the battalion chief saw a colleague making lasagna one day — with canned sauce.
“I’m like, ‘What are you doing? Let me make you a sauce,’” Manfredini tells WBBM Newsradio’s Jennifer Keiper.
“The guys enjoyed it and all of a sudden they started letting me cook more. I basically became a firehouse chef, on my shift,” he said.
Fans of his recipe told him he should try bottling and selling the sauce. But he didn’t have the time. Then he ran into a high school friend who is in the olive oil packing business.
He told his friend, “Let me try something for kicks.”
Thus was born “Mario’s Marinara – Recipes from the Firehouse.”
"I learned everything from my Mamma and Nonna," he wrote on his company website. "They both made sauces with all fresh ingredients chosen from our garden. When I was hired on the Fire Department, my colleagues were using pasta sauce from a can and it broke my heart ... The rest was history, as they say."
The sauce is available at a variety of local shops, even during the pandemic.