A-spaghetti without a-cheese is like a-kiss without a-squeeze!
An Italian waiter at Sardi’s in New York City said that to me when I was a little girl. It stuck.
A-spaghetti without a-cheese is like a-kiss without a-squeeze, and spaghetti without good sauce is like…well, limp, hopeless noodles.
This spaghetti sauce…is good sauce, my friends. It’s rich, meaty, a cinch to make, and it can be frozen and used on spaghetti, in lasagna, on top of garlic bread, or over the top of ricotta-stuffed pasta shells.
And it can be made in bulk and frozen, which makes me love it even more. I made the batch you’ll see in this post over the weekend, but the batch in this Instagram photo was the stuff I whipped up two weeks ago, when I was doing a bunch of stocking up and bulk cooking. You can never, ever, ever have too much spaghetti sauce in the freezer and I am now stocked, baby. I can rest easy at night. Until I remember what the inside of my car looks like.
*Shudder*
The Cast of Characters: Ground Beef (I used ground round), garlic, onion, green bell pepper, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, Parmesan cheese (not pictured), bay leaf, ground thyme, ground oregano, salt, pepper…
and a mystery ingredient that’s either going to make you laugh or curse my name.
Or both.
But if you give it a chance, if you can see past everything you know about rules and propriety and good sense and purity, if you can reach deep into your heart to love me no matter what the ingredient winds up to be, you’ll end up with a fantastic plateful of spaghetti.
Let’s go on this journey together. I’m in.
Please note that I’m doubling my recipe because I already have a double batch of sauce in containers in my freezer and that’s evidently not enough for me. So whatever quantities you see me use, you can easily halve them.
Lop off the top of two onions, then peel them and cut them in half from root to tip.
Make vertical slices in the onion halves…
Then slice in the other direction to dice ’em up.
Then lop off the tops and bottoms of the green peppers…
Slice them into strips…
And dice up the strips.
Veggies! Hooray.
I love vegetable scraps.
I love lots of things.
I have a new plan. Assume I love everything. Then, when I come across something I hate, I’ll be sure to tell you. Sound constructive? Great! It’s a plan.
I hate not loving garlic.
Translation: I love garlic.
Never mind. I can’t do it. I love loving love.
Mince up a bunch! Like, five or six cloves. Or, preferably, more. Be brave! Be bold!
Carry breath mints!
Now grab that beautiful beef, baby.
I aspire to alliterate.
Throw it into a pot…
And totally brown it up, crumbling it as you go.
Remove it from the pot and throw it in a bowl for now, letting as much grease drain off as possible.
Discard the excess grease in the pot (I didn’t have too much because my beef was very lean, unlike my bottom) and drizzle in some olive oil.
A good couple/three tablespoons will do.
When the oil is heated over medium heat, throw in the onion and green pepper…
And cook them for a couple of minutes, until they start to get soft. What will also happen is that they’ll absorb all the wonderful flavor of the meat from the pan. Not that it matters, as all of this is eventually going to wind up in a big stew and cook to smithereens. But it makes me feel fancy anyway.
Next, throw in the garlic. Since I was doubling the sauce, I could have added more.
I love not hating garlic.
Stir it around and let the garlic cook for a minute or so, then pry the huge glass of wine away from your lips and pour it into the pot.
It’s better in the sauce!
I think.
Stir it around and let the wine reduce for a couple of minutes…
Then pour in a bunch of crushed tomatoes! I love all canned tomato products (whole, diced, stewed, puree, sauce) but for sauces I love to use crushed.
It has a nice, hearty texture but no huge tomato chunks to contend with.
To deepen the flavor, add a nice plop of tomato paste.
Plop! And look: the clump of tomato paste is fortifying itself against the enemy. It has already build a moat to keep attackers at bay.
I see things.
Okay, stir it around, then add in some ground thyme…
Ground oregano…
Some sugar, to counteract the acidy tomato effect…
And salt.
Stir it around and let it begin to heat up…
Then reach into the mystery bag.
Wait! Stop for just a second.
Just remember one thing: I’ve always loved you.
And your outfit looks really pretty today.
Store bought marinara sauce!
*Grabbing onto your leg*
*Not letting you leave*
*Crying and screaming “If you leave me, I’m going with you!”*
Here’s the thing. You can totally leave this out. You can simply add the same amount in more crushed tomatoes (or any tomato product) and things will be just fine. And I do believe that if you browned up a bunch of ground beef and poured in a bunch of store bought marinara sauce, you’d just never have the delicious, rich, homemade flavor of the stuff you could make yourself. In fact, it would be overwhelmingly…jarred sauce-tasting. But the one jar (or half jar, whatever your preference) of the store bought stuff is almost like adding a dash of something. It spikes your homemade sauce with just another little dimension of flavor; you get the benefit of the hours and hours another entity (manufacturer, factory, Emeril) spent stewing their sauce.
Plus, it’s just good, clean, ornery fun to spend all this time and effort making sauce from scratch, then crack open a jar of store bought sauce and throw it in.
I’m doing it…I’m doing it…
I did it.
Now I’ve really done it.
Next, grab the beef…
And throw it into the pot.
Then stir it around…
Grab some bay leaves…
And throw them in, too.
Then reduce the heat to a simmer, put on the lid on the pot, and cook very, very gently for an hour or so. Stir it from time to time, watching Real Housewives reruns on your DVR in between stirs.
After an hour, grab some parsley (or you can use dried parsley flakes).
Chop it up…
And keep on going until it’s really, really finely minced.
Throw it in and stir it around.
And next—this is just a nice little touch if you happen to have a wedge of Parmesan—cut the hard rind off of the end…
And throw it right into the sauce.
If you don’t have a wedge of cheese, no problem. Just throw in some grated Parmesan and you’re good to go.
Then violently allow it to simmer for another 30 minutes, give or take. Note that I did not say “allow it to violently simmer.” A violent simmer, of course, is called a boil.
Word order is so important.
Guess what? It’s time to eat now.
Drain the cooked pasghetti into a bowl and drizzle on some olive oil.
Then toss it around so the noodles are nice and coated. And olive oily.
To serve, mound some noodles onto a plate.
By the way, I don’t generally like to put a big pile of noodles and a big pile of sauce on a huge platter, then have everyone dig in and get their helping from the same platter. First of all, the platter gets totally messed up in a matter of seconds, and it’s difficult to salvage extra sauce if you want leftovers because it’s all mixed in with the pasghetti. Also, I just love the look of a neat individual plateful of spaghetti and sauce. It’s just so classically spaghetti sauce-ish.
Pile on a bunch of sauce right on top.
Seriously. The deliciousness is hurting my eyes.
Ouch! Anyone have an Advil?
Hello, lover.
But wait! There’s more!
Sprinkle on some parsley for a little freshness and greenness and prettiness and color.
But wait! There’s more!
Parmesan. Nice, chunky shavings of Parmesan.
But wait! There’s more!
Garlic cheese bread. Oh, yes.
A-garlic bread without a-cheese is like a-kiss without a-squeeze.
Who said that? Freud?
Never mind. It doesn’t matter. In fact, nothing matters anymore.
Nothing except…spaghetti sauce.
Enjoy, my friends!