Mom's Best Spaghetti Sauce
Submitted by sn0w ch1ck00
Mom’s best spaghetti sauce with Italian sausage, ground beef, slow-browned onions and garlic, tomato sauce and paste, simmered for hours into a deeply seasoned Sunday gravy. Choose your meat or use both.
YIELD
10 servingsPREP
30 minCOOK
2 hrsREADY
3 hrsThis is the kind of recipe that gets handed down on a stained index card, vague on amounts and big on instructions like “don’t let it burn or the sauce will taste burned." The flexibility is the point. Use Italian sausage for sweet, fennel-laced richness; use ground beef for a leaner, more familiar flavor; or use both because you really want to.
The non-negotiable step is the slow brown on the onions and garlic. Two large onions diced fine (not minced, the size matters here) get cooked very, very slowly in a quarter cup of oil until deeply golden and sweet. Rush this and you get raw onion flavor in the sauce. Burn it and the bitterness sits with you all the way through bowl-mopping with bread.
Two cans of paste plus four cans of sauce builds a thick, concentrated base. Rinsing the cans into the pot stretches the sauce and pulls out every last bit of tomato.
A full 4-hour simmer is the goal but 2 hours is the floor. The flavors don’t really start to merge before then.
Pro Tips
- Brown sausages whole, then slice when serving for prettier presentation; or break them up if you want it integrated.
- Stir every 30 minutes during the simmer. Tomato sauce on the bottom of the pot scorches fast.
- Add a parmesan rind to the simmer for an extra umami hit. Fish it out before serving.
- Sauce freezes beautifully for up to 3 months. Make a double batch.
Variations
- Add a splash of red wine after browning the meat for deeper, more complex flavor.
- Swap ground beef for ground turkey for a lighter version (per the original note).
- Stir in 2 tablespoons of grated parmesan at the end for a creamier finish.
Ingredients
Directions
You may make this sauce with meat or with sausage or both if you really want to.
The way you do it depends on what you want to do with it or what you like.
For SAUSAGE start like this; In your pot, brown sausages very well and remove from pot.
Add ¼ cup of oil to pot, then the two large onions diced fine (not minced), and then add five to six cloves of minced garlic (or to your taste) to oil dripping and the onion.
Very, very slowly brown onions stirring often. Do not let it burn or the sauce will taste burned.
For MEAT start like this:
Add ¼ cup of oil to pot, then the two large onions diced fine (not minced), and then add five to six cloves of minced garlic (or to your taste) to oil dripping and the onion.
Very, very slowly brown onions stirring often. Do not let it burn or the sauce will taste burned.
Add your meat and brown, breaking up the meat into the size you want to eat.
Continue here; Then to your pot add the two cans of tomato paste, and the four cans of tomato sauce.
Fill paste can (just one paste can) with water and rinse out both paste cans.
Add to pot. Fill sauce can (just one sauce can) with water and rinse out all four sauce cans. Add to pot. STIR.
If you cooked the sausages replace them into the sauce now.
Add basil, Italian Seasoning and parsley.
STIR. Add black pepper and ½ to 1tsp of salt.
STIR and TASTE. Add more salt if you would like.
Bring to a boil (uncovered) then turn down the heat and simmer for about four (4) hours or until you can’t wait any longer.
It’s best to cook the sauce for at least two (2) hours to get the flavors to start to blend. STIR every 30 minutes or so.
Comments
