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Spaghetti's meat sauce

 Spaghetti's meat sauce recipe

¼ to ½ sweet onion, chopped

1 sweet bell pepper, chopped

1 lb. ground beef

2 14.5-oz. cans diced tomatoes

1 8-oz. can tomato sauce

1 6-oz. can tomato paste

2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced

2 Tbsp Italian herbs, extra oregano

½ tsp. cinnamon

A pinch of sugar; salt & pepper

Cook the onion and green pepper in olive oil until soft and fragrant; scoop out and set aside. Brown the ground beef in the fragrant oil left in the cast iron; drain off the fat. Return onion & pepper to the pan; add tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, a spoonful of crushed garlic. Stir. Sprinkle herbs over the top of the sauce. Stir. Sprinkle the cinnamon over the top of the sauce. Stir & add a pinch of sugar. (The sugar takes the edge off the acid in the tomatoes as well as counterbalancing the cinnamon.) Salt & pepper to taste. Simmer while your spaghetti noodles are cooking in salted water. Sprinkle freshly grated good parmesan cheese over the top if desired. Serve with spaghetti noodles and garlic bread and a crunchy green salad. 

Notes: Wesley started this recipe in 1987 or so; I added the vegetables & Italian herbs, then the cinnamon and sugar at some point. 



I have to admit, this is a really good topping for pasta. It isn't the least bit authentic or Italian, but it is tasty.

I read recently that Italian food never uses both onion and garlic in the same recipe. You can have onion, but no garlic. And you can have garlic, but no onion.

Clearly, I am not of Italian descent. 

So many notes here -- make sure you don't add the garlic until there's already a swimming pool of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Garlic burns insanely quickly, and then it becomes very bitter and unpleasant. Be gentle to your garlic; let it hang out in a hot tub of tomato goodness.

Never use the "parmesan cheese" in the famous green lid canisters on the dry pasta aisle. They put wood pulp in that stuff to stabilize it and to make it safe for a long shelf life. And then the stuff doesn't melt nicely into your dishes. It gloops and glops into terrible piles of gross cheese-type substances riddled with wood pulp. Ugh. 

I'm a great proponent for saving money and using generic things for your cooking, but when it comes to parmesan cheese, I'm sorry, but it's much wiser to buy the good stuff that goes bad more quickly. At least parmesan is easily frozen. Buy it in bulk from Costco and freeze most of it. Freezing won't hurt it at all, and real parmesan is worth the trouble. Seriously.

And a lot of people believe that you should sprinkle the parmesan on the naked pasta before you spoon the sauce over the top. It melts into the pasta that way. I've done it both ways, and the only opinion I can endorse is: Please use parmesan cheese if you like it.

Buon appetito! Oh, wait, that's right, this isn't authentic Italian cuisine. Ahem. Y'all come and get it!

That's better.

Here are some pictures from the process of making my crazy spaghetti sauce:





Comments

  1. erik98122September 6, 2020 at 7:58 PM

    I fully agree on Parmesan cheese! It’s worth every extra penny to go with the good stuff. Even more so if you can splurge on the longer aged Parmesan! My dream is to buy one of the huge wheels! I love to make the traditional long simmering Sunday “gravy”. If I’m really pulling out all stops I will put in a couple of short ribs and a touch of really good balsamic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. erik98122September 6, 2020 at 8:04 PM

    I’m going to try out the dash of cinnamon. Ive never heard of that one in a Italian sauce before. I love Moroccan food and they they use it a lot. It adds that little touch of something that makes the dishes more interesting

    ReplyDelete

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