What are your favorite spaghetti sauce recipes?

What are your favorite spaghetti sauce recipes? (Particularly those that involve your own homegrown tomatoes that you've canned.)

I never really used a strict recipe, but it struck me that there are probably some pretty good ones out there. I usually like to do something like the following:

* 2 quarts of canned tomatoes (I'd blend them up after opening, juice, seeds, and all; I think they were usually Early Girl F1 or Roma tomatoes back in the day)
* Oregano (a fair amount)
* Two or three bay leaves (remove after cooking)
* A tiny bit of garden sage
* White sugar or brown sugar (maybe a tablespoon or so; I forgot which kind tasted better; I think white sugar was the original method)
* Ground mustard
* Salt
* Black pepper
* Parsley
* Minced onions and onion powder
* Garlic powder or granulated garlic

Then I'd just cook it and mix the hamburger with it or something. I'd season the scrambled hamburger with salt, pepper, sage, and maybe onion/garlic powder or similar.

I add salt and/or extra virgin olive oil to the noodles while they're cooking.

More recently I've taken to replacing the sugar with blended up raisins (although I haven't tried it with the exact ingredient list above). Also, ascorbic acid powder can do a lot for the taste of spaghetti sauce; it can make it rich and zesty (but I'm not saying ascorbic is necessarily ideal for the aforementioned sauce, as I've not tried it with that exact list of ingredients). I like mushrooms with spaghetti a lot, too.

I've discovered that not all oregano is the same. I love some of it, but some of it has an overpowering cough drop smell. Some other ingredients may differ, too. The resulting sauce is not supposed to be bitter, btw (and it never was when I made it years ago), but I think some kinds of one/some of those ingredients can potentially be bitter. Can parsley or oregano sometimes be overpoweringly bitter?

So, what do you do to make your spaghetti sauce? What have you discovered?

I really love the smell of summer savory (which smells a lot like the oregano I like). If you have a good sauce recipe that utilizes summer savory, that would be awesome. I've attempted using it to get that good oregano taste, but I haven't quite succeeded yet (in spaghetti sauce, anyhow).

[Worth1]

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=33529

Here's mine.

Thanks, Worth. That's awesome that you got tarragon to work well in a spaghetti sauce recipe. Tarragon in sauce can really give the noodles a nice texture, but when I experimented with tarragon in spaghetti sauce, getting it to taste good was still a work in progress.

We've got lots of tarragon! No shortage there.

Are there any substitutes for the muscato, champagne and vermouth, by chance?

[DonDuck]

Here is my recipe.


One can of crushed tomatoes and some thyme and oregano to taste. Pretty darned good. Actually, my absolute favorite is garlic infused olive oil on spaghetti with some garlic crustini.

DonDuck

I never tried thyme with pasta that I recall. I'll have to try your recipe. Maybe I'll do that now if I have the right kind of oregano on hand. Short and sweet. Reminds me of a very simple raw salsa recipe I discovered: raw tomatoes (I grated them with a cheese grater), onion greens (I used Crimson Forest, which is pretty tasty), and salt (I used canning salt). It actually tastes like salsa (yes, more ingredients sure don't hurt, though)!

Okay, I'm making it, except I'm using blended tomatoes instead of crushed. I'm not a huge fan of the texture of thyme, so I blended it and the oregano up with the tomatoes. I tasted a bit before cooking it, and I have to say, I think thyme might work! I think I've tasted that flavor in people's sauces before.

DonDuck

Okay I tasted some of the sauce cooked. Maybe I cooked it too hot, but I liked it raw more. I think you've inspired me to invent some raw spaghetti sauce recipes (granted my tomatoes were canned), or not to overheat my oregano in future (I know that can cause problems). I'm still planning to try it with the spaghetti noodles, however, to see what I think. I plan to edit this post with the results.

EDIT: Okay, I tried it with the noodles (those noodles sure cooked fast; I should find out what brand they are), and it works. Very mild; so, I added salt and pepper. I still liked the sauce better raw, though. Maybe it's a lot different cooked if it's not blended up and you use crushed tomatoes instead of blended, if you don't overheat the sauce.

[AlittleSalt]

I have seen on PBS cooking shows and online - so many different tomato sauce cooking recipes. Have eaten 4 generations of tomato based sauces, and have heard of many more.

The simplest way made me want to say ... NO way!
Can you imagine just squirting ketchup/catsup on pasta? Some people really like that a lot. We do all have individual tastes after all, and I respect that.

There are so many recipes that call for cooking the tomato sauce for a long time (Hours) - to me it tastes way overcooked, but again, it's about the indivual's personal taste.

For me, I cook pasta sauce for three generations ranging from age 7 to 54. That's 1965 until now, and we can either buy bottles of prepared sauce, or make our own. For 30 years, I made my own sauce from store bought canned tomatoes and cans of tomato sauce - along with other fresh vegetables. I don't like sweet in pasta sauce. But with my son and family moving in almost 2 years ago - I altered the sauce.

It does not answer your question, but it does add some thoughts:

Brown some hamburger meat - around a pound. Drain it.
Add a jar of HEB garlic and herb tomato sauce. (It's not sweet)..kind of boring tasting.
A 15oz. can of diced tomatoes.
An 8oz. can of tomato sauce.
Chopped onions. Whatever kind you like (Medium yellow works)
Paper thin slices of garlic. However much you like.
Fresh Mushrooms sliced.
Oregano to taste
Basil to taste
The 30 year olds like newfangled spice mixes, but I don't use them.
Garlic and onion powder to taste.
A little salt and pepper. Each individual can add more, so don't add too much.

Most importantly, don't overcook it. As soon as those onions and garlic are easy to chew - it's ready. Total cooking time is how long it takes for the pasta water to come to a boil and be however done you like it.

It's food time.

AlittleSalt

Thanks.

Back when I was a kid and hamburgers were rare (to me), I loved hamburgers with ketchup so much that I made ketchup sandwiches, imagining there were hamburgers there. You know, the first few bites of a hamburger are like that anyway. People just thought I was weird and liked ketchup a lot, I guess. (I did like ketchup a lot, and I was kind of weird, but that's beside the point.) I probably enjoyed getting a rise out of my family members, too. I think I convinced my younger sibling to try it once. I actually kind of liked it.

I think I've heard of ketchup on spaghetti for the sauce before. The idea doesn't appeal to me, due to the vinegar and cloves, but I'll probably want to try it some day to see what I think. You never know. Some vinegar is fine, but enough to make ketchup is quite a bit, for me.

My grandma's spaghetti was always orange. I'm not sure why. It was a lot different than mine, but I liked it.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by shule1

Thanks, Worth. That's awesome that you got tarragon to work well in a spaghetti sauce recipe. Tarragon in sauce can really give the noodles a nice texture, but when I experimented with tarragon in spaghetti sauce, getting it to taste good was still a work in progress.

We've got lots of tarragon! No shortage there.

Are there any substitutes for the muscato, champagne and vermouth, by chance?

I would think any like it would work.
No Champagne just a flute.
More later.

[DonDuck]

I'm not really a fan of traditional spaghetti. I prefer angel hair pasta cooked barely al dente. I like marinara sauce, but not so much on spaghetti. If I use it, I try to keep it as simple as possible emphasizing the tomato taste instead of the herbal flavors of spices. I do like meatballs in marinara sauce and I like it in lasagna. I also like marinara as a dipping sauce, but even for that; I prefer garlic infused olive oil. My favorite Italian dish is eggplant parmigiano with marinara sauce, but I always order angel hair pasts with olive oil as a side dish.



I don't use much ketchup. I loved it as a kid. My mother used it like a sauce in everything. She would even put some on my spinach and I grew up thinking it was normal to eat ketchup on spinach.

[SueCT]

I have run the gamit. Grew up on a sauce that cooked for hours on the stove. Then I discovered a simple margarita sauce with canned tomatoes, fresh garlic, fresh basil and salt and pepper to taste. Then I started making that sauce with tomatoes canned from the garden. Then I started making my version of the long cooking sauce I grew up with but with fresh tomatoes. I have come full circle. I love both. I love the simple, fresh just barely cooked sauce. Tastes like fresh tomatoes. On the downside, it just doesn't stick well to pasta. I drink what is left when the pasta is gone, it is so good. But it doesn't hold up well to sitting on top of chicken, eggplant or veal for Parmesan. The long cooking sauce is thicker, more complex, has a stronger flavor and sticks well on pasta, coats meatballs and the taste stands up to both meatballs and sausage, especially if you want to use them on a grinder/sub, and it sits on top of meat or eggplant for a classic Parmesan, etc. There just isn't a right/wrong here. You will find both in my freezer right now.

[Worth1]

Another one of my favorites is my homemade chili on spaghetti.
Had it last night and again tonight.
Chili goes very well with pasta. If you dont like the texture of herbs like thyme in your food.
Consider making a tea with them and putting the tea in the sauce in the end before serving.
Just dont boil it and make it bitter just like you would regular tea.

[DonDuck]

Anyone using marjoram in sauces or anything else? I have a lot of herbs growing in containers under tomato plants. I thought I had fresh thyme growing under some flat leaf parsley. I lifted the parsley to harvest some thyme. I was wrong. I had sweet marjoram growing under the parsley. I suppose I can use it instead of oregano in dishes.

[Worth1]

Marjoram

I use it in all kinds of stuff.