Description
A thick, hearty and richly flavored homemade spaghetti sauce that freezes well.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 pound of lean ground beef
- 1 pound of Italian sausage (mild or spicy)
- 2 medium white or sweet onions, diced
- 4 large cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 (14.5-ounce) cans of tomato sauce
- 2 (14.5-ounce) cans of petite diced tomatoes
- 1 (6-ounce) can Italian style tomato paste
- 5 cups water (may need up to a cup more as the mixture cooks and thickens)
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 2–3 cups sliced white mushrooms (depending on how much you want to add!)
Instructions
- Remove casings from sausage and discard. Cook sausage and ground beef in a dutch oven over medium heat for about 5 minutes, working to break up and crumble meat with your spoon/spatula. Add onion and garlic and continue to cook for about 5 more minutes, stirring often.
Drain the meat and onion mixture and place in a separate bowl. Wipe out dutch oven. - Combine tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, water, sugar, salt, Italian seasoning and cayenne in your dutch oven and cook, stirring occasionally, on low heat for 1 hour.
- Add meat mixture and mushrooms and continue to cook on low heat, stirring occasionally, for another 90 minutes to 2 hours. Add a little more water if mixture seems to thicken up too quickly. You can also cover it for an hour or so and then uncover it for the last part of cooking. Mixture will start out relatively watery and should thicken up nicely as it cooks.
- Serve over pasta, zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash and sprinkle with parmesan. Freeze any leftovers you have to enjoy later.
Notes
Recipe adapted from Southern Living’s Our Readers Top-Rated Recipes cookbook.