Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

[amc80]

I need an awesome recipe for spaghetti sauce (with meat). I *thought* mine was good (I found a great recipe that involved adding butter at the end, OMG), but last night DH said "I wish you could make spaghetti sauce the way my mom does."

I asked him what her recipe was- apparently it's a jar of Prego, a can of tomato soup, and ground beef. Seriously. I've never had her spaghetti, or anything else, for that matter. In the 4.5 years DH and I have been together, she hasn't cooked once. FIL will BBQ burgers but that's about it. Wait, I take that back- she has made side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner.

So, I'm hoping there are some folks on here with Italian blood who can share a time tested recipe with me. This way, when I make it and it's not up to his standards, I will know it's because of his tastes and not my cooking.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jaysonsmom]

I would just make it his mom's way, 'cos that is what he grew up with, and what he likes.

Mine is a variation of his mom's sauce.

I have diced garlic and onion (sautéed), add ground beef and brown. Add 1 jar Prego (flavoured with meat), 1 small can hunts tomato sauce, a dash of sugar, cream cheese! My family likes spaghetti sauce kinda orange and creamy.

 

[amc80]

I would just make it his mom's way, 'cos that is what he grew up with, and what he likes.

Mine is a variation of his mom's sauce.

I have diced garlic and onion (sautéed), add ground beef and brown. Add 1 jar Prego (flavoured with meat), 1 small can hunts tomato sauce, a dash of sugar, cream cheese! My family likes spaghetti sauce kinda orange and creamy.

Oh, I'm not trying to please him, I'm trying to prove to myself that my cooking is good Eventually I will make it his way, but I'd love to have an amazing recipe and have him say that he likes his mom better. It will make me feel better about my cooking skills.

But cream cheese? I'm intrigued. That sounds really good actually!

 

[monarch64]

Amc, his mom and my mom must have been reading the same magazines with the same sponsored recipes back in the day. My mom always made spaghetti sauce with a jar of Ragu, a can of V-8, and ground beef. I would never eat it, but my brother and father LOVED it. Really not sure why.

I like to watch Lidia's Italy on PBS. Here's a link to her sauce recipes: http://www.lidiasitaly.com/recipes/course/sauces?page=1 There are several red sauce/meat versions.

 

[Gypsy]

My husband and I make a killer sauce. But we don't cook with recipes. My husband is Italian.

Best advice:
1. Get a nice italian mild sausage that has fennel in it. If you can't find some with fennel, then you can buy it without then toast some fennel seeds and add it to the sauce. And some ground beef.

2. Good red wine to deglaze pan.

3. A mix of tomato puree and chopped tomatoes.

4. A small bit of oregano. A lot of basil. And some red chile flakes.

5. Onion chopped fine. And a ton of garlic chopped up.

6. Cook in a large frying pan or sautee pan. It makes a difference. Use olive oil. But be careful not to burn it.

Chop onion. Sautee till golden brown. Add sausage (out of the casing) and ground beef. Cook till golden brown edges start to appear consistently. Deglaze pan with wine and cook down the wine well. Add salt and pepper and red pepper. Add tomatoes. Add garlic. Add basil and oregano. Then cook it.

Play with it and adjust all the seasonings to taste.

That's pretty much what we do.
OOPS EDIT. My husband also adds peperoni to his. Either the whole stick, chopped up into chunks. Or the slices, chopped up. He adds it in with the sausage/meat at the start. It gives it a nice flavor. You don't have to have it. You can also add a nice pancetta if you like at that point instead.

That said:
1) if you husband wants some recipe of his moms, he is fully capable of asking her for the recipe and MAKING IT HIMSELF.

 

[canuk-gal]

HI:

Fresh organic tomato's. As many as you want--I usually use 10 or 12. Fresh garlic. I don't always add onion. Perhaps leek.

Place in pot. Add 1-2 cups of water depending on the quantity of tomato's. Boil til tomato's soft/break. Poke them open. Watch closely so pot doesn't boil dry.

Turn heat down very low. Add salt and ground pepper to taste. Dried oregano and basil to taste.

Depending on the quantity of tomato's--add up to a can of tomato paste. Stir. If you want a thicker sauce, then take the lid off while simmering.

I use ground sirloin if I want meat sauce. If I want meat balls, I use ground sirloin and lean ground pork. Sautee both before adding to sauce. I add crème and nutmeg if I want Bolognaise. Add sautéed mushrooms if you want. Fresh chopped basil is a nice finish.

cheers--Sharon

 

[Kaleigh]

My fave is fresh marinara sauce I buy local. And then add Cento Tomato paste, crushed tomatoes.
Cook the ground beef ,onions add garlic powder. Salt and pepper to taste. Maybe some onion powder. Let that cook , then drain.
Add to stock pot. Simmer. Let the flavors mesh. If too salty or acidic cut with chicken broth...

 

[AGBF]

My husband is Italian.

I don't remember your having posted that before and I am pretty sure that I would have if I had read it! Have you posted it before, Gyps? If so, I must have missed it! Having an Italian husband myself, I think I would have homed in on that! Is your Italian husband Italian-American or born in Italy? (By the way, my husband could never cook a lick.)

Deb

 

[purplesparklies]

Easy and popular here is Best Marinara Sauce Yet on allrecipes.com. We are Italian and make a few different sauces depending on mood but this one is a standby which guests always enjoy.

 

[Gypsy]

Deb, Italian American...nothing but Italian blood all the way back. His parents and grandparents all married Italians. I don't know if I've ever posted that.

My mother lived in Italy for years. So I learned how to cook Italian food from her and I spent a summer in Zurich right by the Italian border and learned quite a bit there. His mother has several dishes she makes very well, all the Italian American dishes. But she's not a great cook outside that wheelhouse.

My husband is a very good cook now.

He started out knowing the basics when we got together, and he had a good palate. But having been raised in an environment where the women were expected to do all the cooking, I refused to be the only one in a relationship to cook even though I've always been a good cook. So when we first started living together (15 years ago) he was my sous chef for several years. Then he got some confidence and branched out on his own a bit. And now... he's been a fantastic cook for several years and we share the cooking duties equally. I'm more creative and take more risks still, but he's more patient and has better technique than I do.

 

[Gypsy]

Easy and popular here is Best Marinara Sauce Yet on allrecipes.com. We are Italian and make a few different sauces depending on mood but this one is a standby which guests always enjoy.

Purple, the link isn't correct. Can you post the right one?

 

[mochiko42]

I need an awesome recipe for spaghetti sauce (with meat). I *thought* mine was good (I found a great recipe that involved adding butter at the end, OMG), but last night DH said "I wish you could make spaghetti sauce the way my mom does."

I asked him what her recipe was- apparently it's a jar of Prego, a can of tomato soup, and ground beef. Seriously. I've never had her spaghetti, or anything else, for that matter. In the 4.5 years DH and I have been together, she hasn't cooked once. FIL will BBQ burgers but that's about it. Wait, I take that back- she has made side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner.

So, I'm hoping there are some folks on here with Italian blood who can share a time tested recipe with me. This way, when I make it and it's not up to his standards, I will know it's because of his tastes and not my cooking.

Thanks in advance!

Are you using the Marcella Hazan tomato butter onion sauce recipe? I tried making it once but it was a little too oily for me..

If you're making a meat sauce / ragu-type sauce, then here's my secret ingredient: SOY SAUCE. Seriously, add a dash of Kikkoman or light soy sauce -- it gives the sauce a real umami boost (without you noticing a "soy sauce flavor" to it).

.........or if you can't bear to add soy sauce, a dab of anchovy paste works fine too. (and it doesn't make the sauce "fishy".)

 

[movie zombie]

seriously, there is a The Soprano's cookbook with a recipe for "gravy" which is what most of us call spaghetti sauce.
it looks divine!
but i'm incapable of following a recipe...I wing it.

 

[purplesparklies]

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Marinara-Sauce-Yet/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=best%20marinara%20yet&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page&soid=sr_results_p1i1

Was in a hurry earlier and didn't link. Sorry. We are both Italian American, among other things. We identify with our Italian heritage the most. Hubby is a fantastic cook and prefers a marinara recipe passed down in his family but it is quite thin. We find that most guests, and the kiddos, prefer a thicker sauce so we commonly do various versions of this one. I use crushed tomatoes and tomato paste to our liking. We make a big batch and use it to make a vodka sauce another night. Yum!

 

[Calliecake]

AMC80, Thank you for posting this thread.

Gypsy, Your sauce sounds delicious. I plan on making it this weekend! Thank you

 

[Gypsy]

Calliecake... a lot of it is just "add a bit of this" and "Add bit of that". It's never exactly the same every time we make it. Sometimes we have stronger wine or weaker. If it's weaker we add some extra at the end and cook it out for 5 minutes. Sometimes the pepperoni isn't flavorful, sometimes its really salty. Sometimes the sausage isn't great and I need to add more fennel. After everything is in there, we cook it for about 40 minutes, then we taste it and adjust whatever it needs.

Your tastebuds and a clean spoon are your friend.

Oh, and if you don't want to go with pork sausage. Trader Joes has a very nice raw (not cooked or smoked) chicken Italian sausage that has fennel in it, and I use that one sometimes. I use it for when we make pizzas too. Also you can throw a 1/2 a package (chopped up) of Trader Joes pepperoni in sauce. It works out well portion-wise for us.

I don't like Trade Joes tomatoes. The tomatoes I prefer: Progresso Puree if I am at my MIL's house (it's what she likes and its decent), at my house: http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/vegetables/images/group.jpg (whole foods has the best price on it), or SW crushed tomatoes http://static.caloriecount.about.com/images/medium/sw-crushed-rich-puree-4963.jpg..

The basil is always fresh. Garlic is always fresh, but sometimes all I have are the trader joes garlic cubes. If I use the cubes I have to add some at the end too, they aren't as strong. My husband uses a whole head of garlic in his sauces, they are very garlic heavy. So you adjust how you like that.

Oregano is always dried, and I'm not a huge fan, but don't like meat sauces unless it has some of it. SO I use it very sparingly.

If you husband likes sweetness in his sauces (and it sounds like he might) you can use two the SWEET onions (I use one medium yellow onion for one pot because hubby prefers spicy not sweet sauces) and brown them a little longer to get that sweetness out of them. And then... if you HAVE to add sugar (don't tell my husband I said that's okay, he'd divorce me) add just a TINY BIT of brown sugar. Or you can add shredded carrots, that's something I've seen others do, I've never done it though.

Salt conservatively, you can always add salt at the end.

 

[Gypsy]

This is almost exactly my Marinara recipe FYI: http://www.lidiasitaly.com/recipes/detail/589 And again, you have to make it in a sauteepan, or a frying pan. It makes a difference IMO. Doesn't have to be non-stick. Mine is. But MIL's isn't.

 

[AGBF]

My grandmother made a very "white bread" type of spaghetti sauce that was the only sauce my aunt, who lived with her for her entire life, would eat. My grandmother was a fabulous cook and baker who used to watch Julia Child on television and take cake decorating classes so that she could make beautiful birthday cakes with rosettes. Everything she made, even the simplest salad, was delicious. My husband still raves about what a fantastic cook she was. The only ethnic food she made, however, was Slovak. (I have come to realize that early exposure to her Slovak dishes is why I find it normal to combine mashed potatoes, noodles, and melted butter!) But I digress.

The spaghetti sauce she made was, actually, a kind of roux. She would melt some butter, about a stick of it, and gradually add flour to the butter. Once it was blended (on low heat) she would slowly add tomato juice from a bottle (not a can). Then she would let it simmer. Then serve it on top of pasta. It was a bland, buttery spaghetti sauce, suitable for non-Italians who are not really interested in garlic and onions and hot sausage!

Deb/AGBF

 

[movie zombie]

it was a mistake to read this thread last night just before going to bed......how I resisted eating is a miracle!

 

[amc80]

Wow, thanks all! I am going to look into each of these recipes. Thank you so much!

Are you using the Marcella Hazan tomato butter onion sauce recipe? I tried making it once but it was a little too oily for me..

If you're making a meat sauce / ragu-type sauce, then here's my secret ingredient: SOY SAUCE. Seriously, add a dash of Kikkoman or light soy sauce -- it gives the sauce a real umami boost (without you noticing a "soy sauce flavor" to it).

.........or if you can't bear to add soy sauce, a dab of anchovy paste works fine too. (and it doesn't make the sauce "fishy".)

I don't think that's the one I am using. Of course, I can't find it right now...

Soy sauce, interesting!

Gypsy- The recipe I was using does use half ground beef and half Italian sausage. I'm definitely going to try your recipe. Thank you so much for sharing!

 

[Calliecake]

Thank you Gypsy for posting more details. I can't wait to make this. My husbands going to think he died and went heaven when he sees me cooking! I used to cook all the time before I married. My husband is the pickiest eater and he travels alot so I almost never cook anymore. Thank you again.

 

[Gypsy]

I hope it works for you guys. I am nervous posting recipes because the way we cook most of the time is just from just my instinct/training/tasting.

My husband also makes fantastic (very flavorful, I actually like them without the cooking in the sauce) meatballs too.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I would just make it his mom's way, 'cos that is what he grew up with, and what he likes.

Mine is a variation of his mom's sauce.

I have diced garlic and onion (sautéed), add ground beef and brown. Add 1 jar Prego (flavoured with meat), 1 small can hunts tomato sauce, a dash of sugar, cream cheese! My family likes spaghetti sauce kinda orange and creamy.

I do the exact same thing almost! I brown my ground beef and add diced onion and cut up red and yellow bell peppers. Add whichever jar of Prego (no meat) you like (I also use organic sauce sometimes). You could also add diced fresh tomato if you wanted. Makes great spaghetti!

(Small jar of Prego to 1 lb of ground beef to serve 2 or maybe 2 plus a child. Large jar of Prego and 2lbs of ground beef for 4 or so, or 3 lbs will serve 6)

People have preferences often based on what they are used to. So it sounds like to me he wants it made more like his mother made it.

 

[amc80]

I would just make it his mom's way, 'cos that is what he grew up with, and what he likes.

Mine is a variation of his mom's sauce.

I have diced garlic and onion (sautéed), add ground beef and brown. Add 1 jar Prego (flavoured with meat), 1 small can hunts tomato sauce, a dash of sugar, cream cheese! My family likes spaghetti sauce kinda orange and creamy.

I do the exact same thing almost! I brown my ground beef and add diced onion and cut up red and yellow bell peppers. Add whichever jar of Prego (no meat) you like (I also use organic sauce sometimes). You could also add diced fresh tomato if you wanted. Makes great spaghetti!

(Small jar of Prego to 1 lb of ground beef to serve 2 or maybe 2 plus a child. Large jar of Prego and 2lbs of ground beef for 4 or so, or 3 lbs will serve 6)

People have preferences often based on what they are used to. So it sounds like to me he wants it made more like his mother made it.

Yes, it does sound like that. The funny thing is that when we go to Italian places he often gets spaghetti, and LOVES it...you know that didn't come from a can and a jar...

 

[dk168]

One of the most indulgent sauce I made was duck foie gras (from a tin) with a hint of garlic, chopped parsley and freshly ground black pepper.

DK

 

[HollyS]

Gypsy's sauce recipe sounds authentic and yummy.

Me? I really like a sauce that our local grocer stocks (their own brand). No, seriously. Their Tomato/Basil sauce in a jar is near perfect, with no chemicals or corn syrup to make it weird. I like to tweak it by playing with some of my own seasonings, but it is pretty darn delish on its own. This sauce is so not Ragu.

 

[UrsTx]

I'll throw in my recipe. It's famous in my household.

We made up the recipe so the measurements are approximations.

32 oz can crushed tomato w/Italian herbs
16 oz can tomato purée
8 oz can tomato paste with basil oregano
1 lb of ground beef or beef/Italian sausage
1 medium onion, rough chopped
1 sm box sliced mushrooms
1 tsp chopped garlic (or 1-2 cloves)
Couple shakes of garlic powder (we like garlic)
Pinch of cayenne
Salt and pepper to taste
EVOO
Grated parm as a garnish - optional

Heat medium-large nonstick pot bw medium and medium-high heat. Brown ground beef (sprinkle with pepper and a half pinch of cayenne). Remove from pan and set aside on a napkinned plate so the fat can drain.

Heat 1Tbsp EVOO in same pan. Add onion and sauté for 3 minutes. Add mushrooms and sauté another 3-4 minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add cooked ground beef.

Add the cans of tomato. Heat through for a few minutes. When it starts to bubble, lower heat to Low and taste it. Add other half pinch of cayenne and now salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste. Let sit for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

If you feel the sauce is too thin, add one small can of tomato paste to thicken it.

Awesome with garlic bread!!

 

[Lulie]

Gypsy's sauce recipe sounds authentic and yummy.

Me? I really like a sauce that our local grocer stocks (their own brand). No, seriously. Their Tomato/Basil sauce in a jar is near perfect, with no chemicals or corn syrup to make it weird. I like to tweak it by playing with some of my own seasonings, but it is pretty darn delish on its own. This sauce is so not Ragu.

Yes DH keeps pork chops or neck bones in the freezer for his sauce.
Brown a few pieces seasoned with salt and pepper in a bit of olive oil. Transfer to a plate then add the sausage to the pan, etc. etc.