Friday, July 16, 2010

My Mama's Spaghetti Sauce


My mom makes a mean spaghetti sauce and she always shares her recipes and skills with me. This sauce is so good it could be bottled and sold. We use mostly homemade products in our home and rarely employ the use of pre-made sauces etc. So here is how that sauce happened (my mom makes a vat of it, literally, so that she can freeze it and use it for weeks and weeks to come... it freezes and thaws really well).

You will need a GIANT pot for this and a HUGE pan... you can scale it down but I have no measurements for that... just for the jumbo size!! ;)

First, put some olive oil into the GIANT pot and then start the heat. Take 8 cloves of fresh garlic that is chopped up pretty fine (you can use a garlic press if you like but those things annoy me, so I go for the big knife!!). Let the garlic saute for a bit (not at a high heat) and add 1 1/2 chopped onions to the mix. Once they have gone translucent, add 3 or 4 cans of tomato paste (yup, we buy that stuff) and then add in 2 GIANT cans of diced tomatoes (my mom uses her homemade ones when she has them - yes, that's right... she cans her own when the energy and mood hits her). Then let the heat begin to rise and add 2 or 3 big cans of tomato sauce (we buy that too). The last things that you add are the mushrooms and the meat mixture (see below).

The meat mixture: Take your HUGE pan and put some olive oil into it and put it on a medium heat. Add 8 more finely chopped garlic cloves and 1 more chopped onion. You got it, saute it to translucence (I don't know if that's a word, but it is now!!! ;) ). Then add the hamburger meat (we use extra lean ground beef, but you can go with turkey, chicken, bison or even tofu if you like). Cook until browned. Do not add salt or any other spices to this at this point.

Once your meat is ready to add to your tomato sauce, add it in while stirring constantly. Then add several leaves of fresh basil, oregano and a bay leaf or two. Let the vat simmer for a couple of hours. Make sure to give it a stir once every 15 minutes or so to make sure nothing is burning to the bottom.

Now, my variation on this little gem is to put a cup or two of red wine into the meat mixture. This way the alcohol burns off and the flavour is SOOOoooooOOOoooo good!!

Happy Eating!!

4 comments:

  1. I am making lasagne tomorrow, I think I might try your Mum's way of cooking the tomato sauce and the meat separately. I will be adding red wine (did you know you can freeze wine in ice block trays, then the next day transfer it to a container and keep in the freezer for all your cooking needs?)

    I canned my own tomatoes this last summer and made tomato relish and tomato sauce (ketchup). So useful to have in the pantry :-)

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  2. Yum!! Rach, that sounds amazing... would love to know how to do the tomato relish. My mom makes an amazing corn relish but a tomato one might be nice as well.

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  3. I used this relish, minus the apples,
    http://www.abc.net.au/tasmania/stories/s1334411.htm
    Lots of people here put apple in their relish and/or ketchup, but I am not a fan of it. BTW have you tried corn relish dip? You mix a small jar of corn relish with a block of Philly Cream Cheese? Yummo!
    I have my wok almost overflowing with bolognaise sauce on the stove top right now!

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  4. One of our goals in life is to make the perfect spaghetti sauce - our standard is Nick's on Commercial. We've made some good ones on our quest, we'll have to give you mom's a whirl.

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