Sauce or Gravy? Call it Whatever You Want

Today I went to get a duplicate title for Kathy's car so we can distribute it. I had all of the paperwork, which the MVC (I still prefer DMV) was impressed with. My number is finally called and I find out I couldn't find the title because she was never released from the lien. The hardest part isn't doing this stuff, it's having to explain the whole, "my sister passed away and that's why I'm calling you. I can send you whatever paperwork you need through whatever communication outlet you prefer." It's never just one person, it's usually multiple and afterwards, I'm emotionally exhausted. After running another few short errands, I came home and made one of favorite comfort foods, a grilled cheese sandwich. Today I'll share a recipe for my ultimate comfort food: spaghetti sauce.

Mom called me a pasta puss when I was a kid. My comfort food of choice was buttered, elbow macaroni. It's still one of my comfort foods. Both of my parents were working full time with a commute when I started fourth grade and so Mom let me cook some things by myself, including boiling water and making pasta. This wasn't difficult as we were a jarred sauce kind of family. 

Boil Water. Cook Pasta for recommended amount of time. Drain and rinse pasta. Add microwaved sauce.

It wasn't until I moved south that I wanted to make my own sauce. No, it wasn't the trip to Italy in grad school where I ate my way through the country, but my move below the Mason Dixon line where it's difficult to find good Italian food, let alone pizza that isn't a chain. When you can't find it, you make it yourself. At first, I only used ground beef, but after time, I used a pound of ground beef and a pound of ground, sweet sausage and that was what I have been using since I moved back north. Note: the only place I could easily find ground ITALIAN sausage in the south was usually Aldi. I remember asking someone who worked at Ingles in my early days in North Carolina where I could find ground sweet sausage. We had a very long, detailed discussion about Jimmy Dean not being Italian and how breakfast sausage was not going to be used in any lasagna I was going to make. Aldi carried mild Italian sausage and that worked at the time. 

                                            sauce in Dutch oven

Jarred herbs, mild Italian sausage and canned tomatoes. My recipe has come a long way since 2016. I started making it in a Dutch oven on the stove and letting it simmer. But one of the reasons I love my crockpot is that I can fix it and forget it. Yes, I have fallen asleep on a Sunday afternoon, burning my sauce. Burnt sauce doe not taste good, nor is it easy to rectify.

RECIPE:

I found a base recipe on Pinterest that I have doctored over the years and this is my version:

1 pound 93% ground beef
1 pound ground sweet, Italian sausage
2, 29 oz cans pureed tomatoes
2, 6oz cans of tomato paste
2, 6oz cans of water
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon of onion powder
2 tablespoons of sweet basil
2 tablespoons of dried oregano

Instructions:

1. Cook ground beef and ground sausage together, breaking up into small pieces and mixing together. Drain and add to an empty six quart crockpot.

                                            uncooked crockpot sauce

2. Add the remaining ingredients to the crockpot, mix together and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

                                                    cooked crockpot sauce

Usually I will make a box of pasta and eat that for a week, then freezer two cups each in quart size freezer bags for an easy meal later on. Now, the first batch of sauce from the crockpot may make your leftovers a little dry. That's because we didn't use any fresh vegetables in the sauce. When I take a bag out of the freezer to make a pasta dinner, I doctor the frozen version. The meat absorbs quite a bit of the tomato sauce and thickens, so you'll need to add some sauce. I only recently started adding peppers and onions to the final version, thanks to BriAnne

When you are ready to prepare your defrosted sauce base, you will need:

1/2 a small pepper, finely chopped 
small onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2-3 teaspoons frozen fresh basil- you're welcome to use fresh, I keep it frozen for single person ease
1 jar tomato sauce, I use Francisco Rinaldi or a can of Prego (Ragu gives me heartburn)

Instructions:

1. Boil and start cooking the pasta. Meanwhile, chop the peppers and onions; sauté them for 2-3 minutes. Then add the garlic, sautéing until it becomes fragrant.

2. Add the jar of sauce and the defrosted freezer bag with the meat sauce to the pan with the sautéed vegetables. Add the basil, stirring it in as it cooks. Bring to a boil.

3. Drain pasta when cooked, bring back to the pasta pot. Add the pot of sauce and you're set!

4. Store leftovers for up to one week in the fridge. The moisture from the fresh veggies will prevent your pasta from drying out.