Yes! I am a nerd…both in real life and in the kitchen! Hope you picked up on the reference to J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic saga. Just like the abundance of rings in “The Lord of the Rings”, there are a ton of different red sauces out there for every imaginable application. Vegetable, Meat, Garlic and Herb, Parmesan, Old Italian, 5 Cheese, 4 Cheese, and on, and on…It is so easy to just grab a pre-made generic spaghetti sauce and use it. Most people do not realize how easy it is to make a homemade base red sauce and then tweak it for that particular taste you are looking for when you want it.
No matter what your cooking skill, you can easily make homemade red sauces that taste like they came out of some little Old Italian grandmother’s kitchen with only the smallest effort. This process can be done in a quick pinch, say less than 15 minutes, but the longer the sauce simmers the more flavor it will develop over time.
This is my go-to Italian red sauce recipe, because it can easily be transformed into different variations for different applications such as meatball sandwiches, lasagna, spaghetti, and pizza sauces. I like to make a couple large batches and freeze the base sauce for use whenever I want it, adding other ingredients to it after it is thawed such as ricotta and cottage cheeses for making lasagna.
While this version of the recipe is a meat sauce you can easily just leave the meat out if you so wish. It will still come out with a fabulous flavor!
Red Sauce Base recipe
A delicious easy to make base red sauce that is easily customizable for every occasion or type of recipe such as spaghetti, ziti, lasagna, etc.
Servings 15 approx. servings
Calories 318kcal
Equipment
- 5 Quart Pot with Lid
- Wooden Spoon or Spatula
- Chef's Knife
- Grater
- Set of Measuring Spoons
- Set of Measuring Cups
- Can Opener
- Ladle
- Digital Minute Timer
- Cooking Scale That can weigh in grams
- Zip lock Freezer Bags
Ingredients
Getting Started…Soffritto!
- 3 to 6 tbsp Olive Oil
- 4 Cloves garlic or 3 heaping spoonfuls of minced garlic
- ~300 g Onion – white (medium)
- ~150 g Fresh Celery (Approx. 3 stalks)
- ~150 g Carrot (Approx. 1 carrot)
Meats (Perishables)
- 1 lb Ground Beef 80/20 (Optional)
- 0.5 lb Pork Sausage – Medium (Optional)
Staples (Canned)
- 29 oz Tomato sauce (2) Cans
- 12 oz Tomato paste (2) Cans
Salt, Pepper & Spices
- 1/2 tbsp Turmeric
- 1 tbsp Paprika
- 1 tbsp Pepper
- 2 tbsp Salt -Kosher
- 2 tbsp Italian seasoning dry mix (unpacked in cup)
- 2 tbsp Sweet Basil dried (unpacked in cup)
- 4 Bay leaves (Whole)
Other
- 24 oz water
Instructions
One thing before we start…
- I choose to use 80/20 ground beef for one reason, it has more flavor and it is not as dry as "Lean" ground beef (90/10 or 95/5) fat content. The problem is is all the grease. Some grease in the sauce adds to the flavor, but if you added all the grease, it would only taste like grease, and would not turn out very good.So there are two ways to work around this problem. You can either cook the ground beef and sausage together in a 5 quart pot, drain the grease and set it aside, and continue the recipe with the same pan.orif you are like me and always trying to be prepared on the cheap then you buy burger meat in bulk and then freeze 1 pound zip lock bags of it. In this case either let the ground beef sit in the fridge for 24 hours and defrost or stick it in the microwave on defrost for 5 to 10 minutes or until no longer frozen. Because the sausage is not extremely fatty, I tend to toss it in raw with the already cooked ground beef out of the freezer after the soffritto is cooking. Just follow the directions below and you will be fine.
First things first…Making the Soffritto
- This can be considered the holy trinity and base for almost all outstanding Italian sauces. Onions, celery, and carrots, sautéed until they begin to caramelize and the onions become translucent. Soffritto:⮚ Olive oil: 3 table spoonsAdd the olive oil to a large 5 quart (or larger) pot and place over medium heat.⮚ Garlic – diced: 4 cloves or 3 heaping spoonful’sWhen oil starts reaching cooking temperature, gently drop garlic into the pot and sauté until fragrant. (you can tell the oil is ready when you can drop a small piece of garlic in the pot and it sizzles)⮚ White onion – diced: ~300 g (1 medium/large onion) Add the onion and cook 5 minutes until slightly brown / translucent
- ⮚ Fresh Celery – grated: ~150 g (Approx. 3 stalks)⮚ Fresh Carrot – diced / grated: ~150 g (Approx. 1 carrot)Before adding the carrots and celery, try to dry the celery a bit with a paper towel. If the celery is too wet when you throw it in the liquid tends to make everything burn and stick together. Add the carrots and celery. If the mixture starts to dry out add 1 tbsp of olive oil at a time mixing thoroughly, until once again coated and sauteing correctly.
- Cook 10 minutes until onions are almost clear** Note** Actual weighs do not need to be precise. You just want it to be somewhat close, I usually go by the rule that going 25 g (over or under) is perfectly fine as you can see in the picture. Typically The Onion to carrot to celery ratio is 2:1:1 so the amount of onion you have should be roughly equal to the carrots and celery combined. If you are close you will be fine.
Adding the Meat (This Step is Optional)
- ** This step is optional. If you would like this to be a vegan/ vegetarian sauce omit this step. The sauce will still come out just as fabulous without the meat addition **Once the vegetables are cooked through, it is now time to add the beef and sausageYou should be adding either the previously cooked mixture of burger and sausage, or the defrosted cooked burger and raw sausage added to the pot together with the veggies
- ⮚ 1 pound 80/20 ground beef⮚ ½ pound medium ground pork sausageBreak the beef and sausage up as it cooks into smaller pieces with the wooden spoon or a spatula.
Making it all come together. Time to add the tomatoes!
- Once the meat is browned and cooked through, reduce heat to low and add the following:⮚ (2) 29 oz cans of tomato sauce. Add both cans of tomato sauce (We will make this from scratch in a later posting)
- Always remember to wipe down the lids of food cans before opening preferably with soapy water on a paper towel, and rinsed with a clean wet paper towel. You never know how long those cans have been sitting around, where they have been, if there were any rodents crawling around on top of the cans, etc… Be safe, not sorry!
- ⮚ (2)12 oz cans of tomato paste.Add the tomato paste in to the pot one can at a time. Stir the paste in to sauce completely before adding second can, and once again stir the paste in completely.
- ⮚ 24 oz waterTake both paste cans and fill them with hot water. Add both of them to the pot. (**Note…if you want thicker sauce but don’t have a lot of time to wait for the water to cook off, add less or no water to the mixture)
Spices…
- Next we will add some flavor to our dish by adding some spices.Add all of the spices, making sure to stir the contents of the pot in-between each spice addition.
- ⮚ Turmeric: 1 tbsp.
- ⮚ Paprika: 1 tbsp.
- ⮚ Pepper: 1 tbsp.
- ⮚ Kosher salt: 2 tbsp.
- ⮚ Italian seasoning (Dry mix): 2 tbsp
- ⮚ Sweet Basil (Dry): 2 tbsp
- ⮚ Whole Bay Leaves: 4
Cooking and reducing your sauce
- Once you have everything in the pot, cover the pot and turn the heat up until you achieve a very slow simmer (slow bubbling). On my gas stove this is best achieved by cooking on medium heat until the sauce starts to bubble, and then turning down the temperature until it is bubbling about once every 10 seconds or so. The bubbles in the video are way too fast and it was turned all the way down. I had to move the pot to the small burner in back and turn that one all the way down to low to achieve the slow bubbling that you want. Cook for a minimum of 15 minutes; the longer it simmers the more flavorful the sauce will be. I like to let mine go for a couple of hours. Just make sure you stir somewhat often (10 to 15 minutes) and remember that every time the pot bubbles, it brings water to the surface, and everything else drops to the bottom of the pot. Make sure you stir the pot until it is well mixed each time.and if the sauce starts to get too thick just slowly stir in more water until it is the consistency you want the sauce to be. ** Always remember you can add more/less/other seasonings to make it how you want it to taste or for certain diets like low sodium.
Bay Leaves…Make sure you remove all of them! Your guests will thank you!
- Please remove the bay leaves from the sauce at this time and discard them.
- Enjoy over Spaghetti, rigatoni, or even lasagna. Tweak it by adding different Italian cheeses to it, or more garlic, or fresh herbs. There are hundreds of different ways to tweak the basic recipe. Be creative, come up with something special!
- This is meant to be a large batch on purpose. I find it really easy to use zip lock freezer bags and ladle sauce into them, lay them flat on a cookie sheet and freeze them. I use a scale and do at least one bag at around 26 ounces which is about what a jar of spaghetti sauce is. I make a couple smaller bags up 6 to 8 ounces up for use with cheese sticks or other various uses. Don't forget to write what the bags are, and when they were frozen. Will stay good for 6 months maybe longer.Bon Appetit!Howard
Notes
** Just a safety note, you will have very hot liquid bubbling and basically exploding everywhere inside the pot (See Video above). If you remove the cover you could get splashed causing 2nd or even 3rd degree burns! Either, remove pot from heat first and wait for bubbling to stop or tip the lid from the far side toward you effectively using it as a shield, and start stirring around the side of the lid. I recommend doing both, removing the pot from heat first, and using the lid as a shield while stirring around the side. Just make sure you return the pot to the heat source when you are done 🙂 **
** Side note about the Soffritto. The larger the pieces of veggies, the more noticeable they are in the final product. If you are trying to sneak vegetables into your kids (or anyone who does not like certain veggies), use a grater to make all the pieces small, if you want a thick sauce with really noticeable vegetables then use a knife and make larger pieces. How long you cook the Soffritto will also have an effect on how noticeable the vegetables are.
** A word about Bay leaves. These leaves are used more for their flavor than for their slightly bitter taste, adding a somewhat floral, and very herbal scent similar to oregano or thyme. Only use green leaves, if the are brown then they are useless. Most people use them whole and pick them out later. Bay leaves remain unpleasantly stiff, even after being cooked. They can be a choking hazard or present the risk of harming the digestive tract if swallowed whole or in large pieces.Crushed Bay leaves can also be used and have a much stronger aroma and flavor. Most people use tea infusers or muslin bags to make it easier to retrieve the leaves.Ground Bay leaves may also be used, but are even stronger than the crushed. You can use ground Bay leaves in your recipe and not worry about retrieving the leaves.. Just remember to use less due to strength.
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