Whenever my family asks to have spaghetti for dinner it is implied that its served with this sauce. Basically its a rendition of the meat sauce you get at Italian-American restaurants, especially ones around here.
Unlike most food blogs, I don't start with my life story before the recipe. If you like that sort of thing and want to know more about why this is crap worth writing down, scroll down past the ingredients list, instructions and option selects.
ingredients
2 T Olive Oil, divided
3 lbs ground beef (or pork or veal or lamb or sausage or mix)
salt and pepper
2 yellow onions, diced
1 large carrot, diced
2 celery rib, diced
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
1 t anchovy paste
pinches red pepper flakes (to taste)
2 T fresh thyme leaves
2 t dried marjoram
1.5 t dried oregano
5 T tomato paste
0.5 C red wine
2 bay leaves
2 28 oz can San Marzano whole tomatoes, crushed by hand
28 oz can San Marzano tomato purée
3 oz bunch of basil, leaves torn or chiffonade
1/2 C parsley, chiffonade
2 lbs dried spaghetti noodles
grated Parmesan cheese
red pepper flakes
instructions
1. Heat oil over medium-high heat in large pot or dutch oven. Cook about 5/6 or so of the meat for a few minutes until barely not-pink. Season with salt and pepper. Be sure to break meat up with spatula or potato masher so it has that consistency you find in restaurants. Remove to a large enough bowl. Fry the remaining meat in remaining oil and juices until its very brown and leaves fond in the bottom of the pot, 10 minutes or so. Ensure it also is broken up well. Remove to same bowl, leaving oil and any juices in the pot.
2. Ensure there is about 2 T of oil still in pot (add more olive oil if needed). Add onions, carrots and celery to the pot. Use wooden spatulas to stir veggies and scrape fond and cook for about 5 minutes until just starting to brown. Add garlic, anchovy, red pepper flakes, thyme, marjoram, oregano and cook 1 minute more.
3. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 3 minutes or so, until the paste starts to caramelize and a new fond develops. Deglaze with the red wine. Turn heat to medium and cook until alcohol smell burns off.
4. Add bay leaves and tomatoes and reserved meat and accumulated juices. Bring to boil then reduce to a simmer. Cook for at least 30 minutes but two hours or more is better.
5. Meanwhile prepare noodles so they are 'al dente' when you are ready to serve. Before straining noodles, save a cup of 'pasta water'. Place strained noodles into a large pan or pot, ladle in some of the cooked sauce and stir so noodles are no longer dry and have liquid they can continue to cook over medium low for 3 minutes. Add a little bit of pasta water if they get dry.
6. Just before serving stir in the basil and parsley into the sauce. Serve noodles with remaining sauce and parm.
options select
+Mushrooms, pan fry separate when you start cooking the noodles.
+Links of italian sausage, pan fry separate till brown on all sides and stew in the sauce when you start cooking the noodles.
-fresh herbs + dried herbs, I prefer fresh thyme and basil now, but used dry for years. Its easier and still do it in a pinch. 1 T of dried thyme and 1 T dried basil at step 2. Skip step 6 and parsley all together (dried parsley is a waste of time in sauces).
story time
Some of my earliest food memories revolve around spaghetti. Old Spaghetti Factory was one of those special occasion restaurants for our family. This recipe is my attempt to touch that particular touchstone, to capture the taste and texture of their meat sauce. Improve on it also, using details gleaned from dozens of other recipes and years of cooking this for friends and family
It's also inspired by early home cooking. Mom cooked it quite often by request. I remember one time in particular. I had to have been 4 because we were still living at the Grandparents house, and they still lived in Arizona. Right before dinner I got a hold of a disposable razor and tried to shave my face. All I managed to do is put micro cuts all over my lips. Needless to say, eating spaghetti was not particularly pleasant! I recall being upset as much from pain as from missing the joy of my favorite meal. There was also another time after eating spaghetti, I got a hold of some fish oil pills our guests had. I thought they were candy I guess, chewed them and they made me puke. Lessons learned the hard way.
I survived though and went on to try and make spaghetti myself. Started off using my Mom's recipe. Also inspired a bit by my ex-mother-in-law. She used thyme, fresh thyme even, if I recall. At first I was surprised and didn't think it was a major ingredient (other than its inclusion in the italian seasoning mix) but I came to prefer thyme as the base flavoring over other seasonings. In fact I'd dare say it's my favorite herb.
Then other inspiration came through cooking shows and interwebs. The now maligned Mario Batali and his use of carrot and celery, finely diced, to add thickness and sweetness to the sauce. The use of San Marzano, which truly are worth the trouble, so good, is now ubiquitous in recipes on Food Network and elsewhere. I also started to use some traditional techniques for things like Ragu Bolognese to get that extra bit of richness. The more recent tweak for most of my recipes is using 'umami' bombs to up the tastiness. In this case anchovy paste, which is a key ingredient in another of my favorite pasta dishes, Puttanesca.
So in the end this recipe is culmination of over 40 years of food journey and so was deemed worth writing down.
