Spaghetti with Meat Sauce is universal comfort food that mothers all over the world prepare for their children. Although the sauce and pasta have Italian origins, it was not until Italians began to migrate to other regions of the world that they came together as a dish.
People are busy these days, and it is understandable the desire to use pre-made things from a jar, but creating it from scratch isn’t that difficult, and it tastes SO much better. Because meat sauce freezes well, you can prepare a huge quantity on the weekend, split it out, and freeze it to reheat and combine it with newly boiled spaghetti on a weeknight if you’re really rushed for time.
Recipe:
- Because water takes a long time to boil, I always start with a large pot of salted water. For every gallon of water, I normally add 1 tablespoon of table salt. This ensures that each strand of pasta has a good amount of seasoning.
- Spaghetti comes in thicknesses ranging from 1.4mm to 2.2mm thick and can be used in this recipe. Thicker noodles will take longer to cook, while thinner noodles will take less time, so check the label to see how long to boil the pasta. I usually cook it for 1 minute less than the package instructions and then finish it in the sauce.
- This allows the pasta to absorb some of the sauce’s moisture, which not only adds taste to the noodles but also thickens the sauce. In fact, because the sauce can thicken, I always save about a half cup of the pasta liquid before draining it, so I can put it in at the end of the spaghetti begins to clump together while I’m mixing it with the sauce.
The Sauce
- Caramelizing the aromatics is the first step in preparing an outstanding sauce. This is a process that can take up to an hour to complete properly, but by cutting the aromatics small, adding baking soda, and heating them covered with a lid, we can cut the time in half.
- Baking soda, among its numerous abilities, has the ability to break down aromatics, allowing them to simmer more quickly and finally dissolve into the sauce as if they’d been cooked for hours. It also increases the pH of the mixture, hastening caramelization and the Maillard reaction. Both browning events result in the formation of new taste compounds, transforming pungent, spicy onions into mellow, sweet flavor bombs.
- Remove the lid after about 10 minutes of steaming and boil off any leftover liquid, allowing the aromatics to caramelize in just a few minutes.
- For creating spaghetti sauce, ground beef and pork have been added to the caramelized aromatics.
- The meat and pork are then added and crumbled with a spatula before adding the wine. The wine should be added to the meat before it is fully cooked to prevent the ground beef from becoming tough (which would require a lot of time to tenderize).
- Finally, I combine the tomato puree, ketchup, oregano, salt, and pepper, and boil everything over medium heat to decrease fast. In around 10 minutes, you should be able to make the sauce to the appropriate consistency. Even yet, it’s critical to keep stirring it since it not only prevents the sauce from burning but also speeds up the evaporation of surplus liquid. When you scrape a spatula down the bottom of the pan and the sauce fills in the gap, you know the sauce is done.
Also Read: 6 Styles Of Making Scrumptious Prawns
