Spaghetti And Meat Sauce
Minutes Prep Time: 25
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12 ounces dry spaghetti, uncooked
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2 tablespoons canola oil
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1 pound ground round beef
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1 can Hunt’s® Traditional Pasta Sauce
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Grated Parmesan cheese, optional
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Cook spaghetti according to package directions.
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Step two
Meanwhile, heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion cook 3 to 5 minutes or until onion is tender, stirring frequently. Add garlic and cook 1 minute or until fragrant. Add beef cook 7 minutes or until beef is crumbled and no longer pink, stirring occasionally. Drain.
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Step three
Add pasta sauce to skillet stir together. Simmer covered over medium-low heat 10 minutes or until hot. Serve meat sauce with spaghetti. Sprinkle with cheese, if desired.
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Make Ahead And Freezing Instructions:
To make ahead: You can prepare million dollar spaghetti 1 day ahead of time. Follow recipe instructions up to step 8 . allow it to cool, cover it well with plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator until ready to bake.
To freeze: Prepare recipe right up until the baking step. Cover well with greased aluminum foil and freeze for up to 3 months. When ready to eat, thaw in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 days, then bake for about 20 minutes covered and then 15-20 minutes uncovered. If baking from frozen, bake covered for about 40 minutes, then uncover and bake 20-30 minutes longer, or until bubbly and warm.
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What Is In This Meat Sauce Recipe
When I make this recipe, I like to use a combination of ground beef and plain ground pork sausage.
But you could use mild or spicy Italian sausage, replace the ground beef with ground turkey, or some combination of all of these. Just make sure you use about 1 1/2 pounds of meat total.
Most of the other ingredients are pretty typical to a tomato-based pasta sauce: canned tomato sauce, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, onion, a pinch of red pepper flakes.
But I like to include one secret ingredient that really makes this sauce ultra crave-able: pizza seasoning.
I always keep a jar of the King Arthur Flour Pizza Seasoning on hand. In addition to being great on pizza , its the best in this Homemade Meat Sauce.
Of course, feel free to use whatever brand of pizza seasoning you like best!
Whats In This Homemade Spaghetti And Meat Sauce
While I have several quick and easy spaghetti recipes like my pasta pomodoro or spaghetti carbonara that are ready in minutes, this spaghetti and meat sauce recipe is the ultimate Sunday, long-simmer dinner.
This is the type of pasta dinner recipe you can easily have at the ready thanks to a simply stocked pantry and a few foundation refrigerator ingredients I can always find at my local Smiths Marketplace / Kroger store.
My Moms spaghetti recipe is both Italian in its inspiration and American in its popularity. It doesnt call for anything extraordinary. In fact, its totally basic, and thats what makes it all the better.
Heres whats in this spaghetti and meat sauce:
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Make Rag Bolognese Even More Flavorful
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
There’s already parsley in the cooked the vegetables, but fresh parsley thrown in after cooking adds another dimension of herbal flavor. Grated Parmesan also increases the sauce’s umami, while helping to bind it.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
I like to finish my sauce with a glug of heavy cream. It makes the sauce richer and helps emulsify it, allowing that extra cup of fat you retained to integrate harmoniously.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Finally, we get to the secret ingredient. If you are from Bologna, now is a good time to avert your eyes: fish sauce. Yes, fish sauce. I’m talking the salty Southeast Asian condiment made from fermented anchovies.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
From a flavor perspective, it makes sense. Fish sauce is loaded with those glutamates and inosinates we talked about earlier. It brings an unparalleled meatiness to your finished sauce, and it will not make it taste like fish. Moreover, in Italian cooking, it’s not really that far out of place. There are plenty of Italian dishes that call for enhancing meat with a bit of glutamate-rich seafood. Fermented anchovies are widely used in Southern Italian cooking. And if we look to ancient Roman history, we find that fish sauce is similar to garum, the condiment of choice back then, made fromyou guessed itfermented anchovies.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
What’s The Best Type Of Meat For Rag Bolognese
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Bolognese is a meat sauce and the choice of meats is one of the most important elements. At No. 9 Park, Lynch used a combination of coarsely ground veal, pork, and lamb. Why? Veal is rich in gelatin, but low in flavor. It gives the finished sauce a silky, smooth texture. Pork is high in fat, with a moderate amount of flavor. That fat emulsifies nicely into the finished sauce. Finally, lamb has a ton of flavor, but a rather coarse texture. By combining all three, you get a mixture that’s flavorful, fatty, and silkyjust like you want in meatballs or meatloaf.
But I always wondered: Since veal is pretty bland , is there a better way to get both gelatin and flavor into the mix? I knew if I got rid of it, I’d have to find an alternative source of gelatin. This was compounded by the fact that while the original recipe uses gelatin-rich veal bone stock, I pretty much never have anything but chicken stock at home, and I’m not about to spend a day making veal stock for a recipe that takes four hours on its own.
I tried following the exact same recipe, but replacing veal with ground beef and using 100% chicken stock. It was more flavorful, but the sauce lacked its classic silkiness. The solution? Just add that gelatin on its own.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
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Other Variations For This Easy Meat Sauce:
Its official, you dont ever have to make another easy meat sauce with jar sauce. Once you have this basic recipe, its arrivederci, Prego.
Plus you can customize the sauce to your taste exactly. Who knows, maybe youll become famous, like Giada?
- Green peppers. Cook them down with the onions so they have time to soften.
- Mushrooms. If youre a mushroom person, this should make you very happy. Add them when you cook the onions.
- Fire roasted tomatoes. A readers fabulous suggestion to use canned fire-roasted tomatoes for a little extra smokiness. Try it!
- Chili flakes. For a spicy tomato sauce with meat.
- Homemade meat sauce with fresh tomatoes. Switch out some fresh ones for the crushed tomatoes in the recipe, but keep the sauce. Add a small can of tomato paste if you want your sauce even thicker.
You’ll Love These Other Family Favorite Pasta Dinner Recipes
Easy Garlic Parmesan Pasta – My kids call this ‘white pasta’ and I make it weekly! So good, kid-friendly, and easy to keep the ingredients on hand.
Creamy Tomato Beef Pasta – Pasta covered in a creamy ground beef sauce.
Perfect Instant Pot Baked Ziti – This really is ‘perfect’ each time! This is a no-fail Instant Pot recipe.
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How To Make Homemade Italian Spaghetti Sauce In The Crock Pot:
Spaghetti With Hidden Vegetable Pasta Sauce
This week I had a killer craving for some classic spaghetti and meat sauce. But, as you may know, I like to add vegetables whenever and wherever I can to recipes. So I shredded a couple of handfuls of vegetables, tossed them into the sauce, and added some extra herbs and spices to make this absolutely incredible hidden vegetable pasta sauce. It has more flavor, more color, and more texture . Its a win-win-win!
Originally posted 11-21-2015, updated 4-17-2021.
Shown with Homemade Garlic Bread.
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Tips For Making Spaghetti And Meat Sauce
While the easy homemade spaghetti sauce cooks low and slow for 3 hours, stir it occasionally. You dont want anything sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning, adding a bitter flavor to the meat sauce.
Serve this meat sauce with regular spaghetti noodles. It would be just as good with any other twirly pasta, tortellini, ravioli or even as a filler for lasagna.
This homemade spaghetti recipe makes a lot so its great for serving to a crowd or a big family. If youre making for two or a few, it makes excellent leftovers for lunch all week long or divide the sauce into gallon freezer and save for later.
How To Get Tender And Flavorful Meat
And now we get to the most crucial phase of the process: the long cook. Browning meat adds flavor, but can toughen it. How do we get great browned flavor without reducing the tender meat to dry rubble?
The whole reason I was extra excited for Bolognese season to start this year was because of a new red sauce technique I developed simmering it in the oven instead of the stovetop.
Not only does the oven deliver more even heat and better reduction with less mess, it also creates delicious caramelized bits of tomato on the surface of the sauce and around the edges of the pot, which you can stir back into the finished sauce for richer, deeper, more complex flavor.
What if I were to do the exact same thing to my Bolognese? In theory the technique should provide plenty of flavor through the browning of stray proteins and sugars stuck to the inside edges of the pot, along with whatever small bits of meat are exposed on the surface of the simmering sauce, while keeping the vast majority of the meat submerged and tender.
Don’t you just love it when your theories end up panning out in real life? By cooking down the sauce in the oven and scraping around the edges as it cooked, I ended up with a finished sauce that was packed with browned-meat flavor, but still silky and tender.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
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How To Store Meat Sauce
Homemade meat sauce will keep about a week in the refrigerator if it is covered. Just reheat on the stove and add a little extra garlic to refresh the flavors!
To freeze meat sauce, ladle it into zippered bags and lay them flat. Once frozen, stack them upright to save space in the freezer! The homemade sauce should last about 3 months in the freezer!
How To Make Homemade Meat Sauce From Scratch:
The photos take you through the general steps of making the best spaghetti meat sauce without giving you exact amountssee the recipe card below for the details.
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How To Make Pasta Salad:
Make dressing: combine olive oil, red wine vinegar, parsley, onion, lemon juice, basil, oregano, salt, sugar, pepper.
Cook pasta according to package instructions. Drain water and rinse pasta in cold water. Allow to cool, then pour half of the salad dressing and toss to combine.
Add remaining ingredients: mozzarella cheese pearls, salami, black olives, red onion, cherry tomatoes, fresh parsley, parmesan, pepperoncini , and additional dressing, to taste. Refrigerate for 1 hour or longer, before serving.
Canning And Freezing Meat Sauce
This pork sauce may be made ahead of time and frozen. It should be transferred to a jar or freezer-safe container once it has cooled completely. Make sure you allow a solid 2 inches of space in the jar you put it in to account for the fact that it will expand during storage. For up to a month, you may keep it in the freezer. Canning is not something I am familiar with. Because this product includes meat, act with caution while using it. I recommend that you go to the USDAs website and look for the section on canning beef in particular.
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Dressing Pasta In Rag Bolognese
Cook pasta in some well-salted water , then drain it, reserving some of the starchy liquid. Return it to the pot, add most of your sauce, thin it out with the pasta-cooking liquid, and cook at a hard simmer for about 30 seconds, until the sauce gets a nice pasta-coating texture.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
This is the kind of sauce that not only delivers on the promise of deliciousness while you’re eating it, but also makes your entire house smell wonderful for the four to five hours it takes to cook, and for days after you’re done. It’s totally intoxicating and addictive.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
The Best Homemade Meat Sauce Recipe
Although there are lots of ingredients you can add to meat sauce, we like to keep it simple so that the flavor of the ground meat, Italian sausage, tomatoes, garlic, and basil really shine through.
It is basic but incredibly satisfying with lots of rustic flavor. Our Meat Sauce recipe can be enjoyed on everything from pasta to polenta and even potatoes!
Read more: how to make buttery garlic sauce for pizza | Family Cuisine
This sauce is fabulous on day one, but even better after 24 hours. Its a great recipe to make and freeze for an effortless homemade meal later in the week or month. I love preparing several batches at once to stock the freezer and to give to friends.
We hope you enjoy the best meat sauce with your family, too!
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What To Do With Leftover Spaghetti Sauce
We eat leftover spaghetti sauce every day and count on there being some the next day. Here are a few excellent examples of how to make advantage of it:
- Make some handmade garlic bread in place of the spaghetti and use it to soak up the sauce instead. Serve it on top of some roasted spaghetti squash for a wonderful low-carb alternative. Substitute a scoop or two of ice cream for some of the ingredients in this American Goulashrecipe. It may be used to make Skillet Lasagna.
To Cook The Best Spaghetti We Have A Few Simple Tricks
Check the package directions of the spaghetti you plan to cook. On the box, there should be an approximate cook time for al-dente, which means the pasta will be tender, but not mushy. It will still have a bit of a bite, which is perfect.
When you know the suggested cook time, set a timer for a minute or so before it. So if the box suggests 10 minutes, set a timer for 8 minutes.
This way, at the 8-minute mark, you can check on the spaghetti to make sure it isnt done already. The box directions are a helpful guide, but its always a good idea to check the pasta early!
Cook the spaghetti in salted water. The water should taste salty. This seasons the pasta as it cooks and is necessary for the best-tasting pasta.
Toss the cooked spaghetti with a flavorful sauce like our homemade spaghetti sauce. Dont just spoon the sauce on top of the pasta.
For more spaghetti recipes, look at this baked spaghetti is similar to lasagna, but easier and if you love veggies, try our easy veggie spaghetti.
If you were looking to reduce the carbohydrates in your dish, swap half or all of the pasta with zucchini noodles. Heres our recipe for zucchini noodles pasta.
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Balance Your Costs With Vegetables
My favorite trick for stretching ground meat in recipes is to use vegetables or beans to replace half of the ground meat. This time I shredded vegetables, which mimicked the texture of the ground meat, but added a subtle sweetness and a whole lot of extra flavor, texture, and nutrition to the sauce. This sauce is so delicious that I couldnt stop sneaking spoonfuls while I took photos!
How To Make Spaghetti Pie:
1. Cook spaghetti noodles.
2. Season noodles and add to pie dish. Add hot cooked noodles, butter, parmesan cheese, basil and beaten egg to a large bowl and toss well to combine. The egg and parmesan cheese help the noodles to hold their shape when you cut the pie. Press mixture firmly into pie dish.
3. Layer with cottage cheese and sauce. Spread a thin layer of cottage cheese over top and then top with spaghetti sauce. You could use my homemade spaghetti sauce, or store-bought pasta sauce. Youll need about 1 ½ cups of sauce.
6. Bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes. I like to sprinkle the top of the sauce with a little extra parmesan cheese.
I love how bubbly, warm and delicious it gets when it bakes. Allow it to cool for a few minutes and then slice and serve it like you would a pie.
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