I Know Old Italians Are Probably Turning In Their Graves...
I'm not saying my pasta sauce is the best in the world, it's most likely highly bastardized, yet I have been asked for my recipe on a few occasions so I thought I'd share it with you. I have never made the same sauce twice, I just totally wing it, yet there is a method you can follow. The best part of course is now you won't have to eat sauce from the grocery store, with all of those preservatives and natural/artificial flavourings if you don't want to.
Tomatoes
The most important ingredient. These will turn into your sauce. You can use fresh, ripened tomatoes from the garden like I did today, or you can use diced tomatoes from the can.
Some diced tomato sauce that I had canned last month. It turned out today that my fresh tomatoes were enough, and I didn't have to use it.
Onion, Garlic And Whatever Vegetables I Have Around
This is where "just wing it" comes in. As long as you have your onion and garlic, you can be free to choose anything you have in your home that you think would be good. Mushrooms, bell peppers, hot peppers, squash, zucchini, celery, eggplant, spinach, kale. I always start my sauce by frying my vegetables first in my big pot.
Brown those onions up a bit and really get the flavours releasing and melding into each other.
Meat
We made a great trade the other day with our neighbours Amy and Josh. Eggs for some local ground beef and carrots! In my sauce today I used the beef. I've made plenty of vegetarian sauces as well, and I'll also use other meats, once again, just wing it. I've used chicken, sausage, ground pork, pork cutlet, they're all good. Use what you have, you cannot mess up this sauce.
Once your veggies have melded a bit add the meat.
Fry it well, but do not overcook it. Leave it a little underdone. This will leave your meat tender in your sauce because it will cook the rest of the way, but at a much lower heat.
Next Add The Diced Tomatoes
Cook at medium low for hours and hours. Obviously the longer it cooks the better it tastes. It won't be gross though if you only cook it for an hour, so if you're in a hurry you can still make it. If you are cooking it all day add some water when it starts getting too thick.
Spices
This is my own dried oregano. I use dried basil as well. Sugar (just a bit to help break down the tomatoes). Salt. Pepper. Sometimes I've put in red pepper flakes. Just taste as you go and if there is something it needs, you'll know! Dried herbs go in right away, yet if you are planning on using fresh herbs, make sure to add them at the very end before you are about to serve the sauce. Fresh herbs only need to be cooked for 5 minutes, that's how I was taught.
So there it is, you can see the tomatoes have broken down nicely, the sauce is decently thick. If you like a thicker, and redder sauce, add in a small can of tomato paste. Experiment with different things like cheese and cream. I've never made a bad sauce, except maybe that one time I forgot about it and burned it to a crisp lolol!!! Don't do that. It was filthy...
Still Plenty Of Tomatoes Left To Do This Again!
These big paper bags are full with layers of tomatoes with little paper bags in between the layers to help them ripen. We picked the last of the green tomatoes just recently. I went through the bags today and pulled out some ripe ones which went to their new home, the windowsill.
Quick Directions
- Fry onions, garlic, and 1 or more vegetables
- Add meat, cook until almost done
- Add tomatoes, 1 can diced or 6 cups fresh
- Add sugar and spices
- Leave it alone for a few hours on med-low stirring occasionally
- Add fresh herbs 5 minutes before serving
I hope you can make use of this recipe. Let me know how it goes, and hopefully you'll throw out the store bought stuff forever!
