– Love is… a huge pot of spaghetti sauce. –
The way to my heart is through a huge helping of meaty spaghetti sauce, so I’m a huge fan of any easy spaghetti sauce recipe that hits it out of the park in the flavor department. Having grown up Italian in the Bay Area, spaghetti is something my mom made all the time, and to this day I still ask her to make it every time she invites me to dinner. It’s my idea of the world’s most comforting food; all carbs and meat and salty parmesan scattered over the top. Heaven.
This particular spaghetti sauce isn’t my mom’s recipe, though – rather it’s a recipe developed entirely by my boyfriend, which is an impressive feat considering he hasn’t been cooking all that long. He created this sauce as a way to treat me to something special, something that comforts me like almost nothing else.
This sauce is perfectly tangy, with the addition of lemon juice and red wine vinegar providing bright, bouncy notes of flavor, followed up by capers, which add a salty layer that brings the whole thing home. And don’t even get me started on the beefy richness of this sauce. I may drift off into a lazy, hazy food coma just thinking about it, with that luxurious smile I’ve been known to sport after the boy cooks me dinner.
Easy Spaghetti Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 onion chopped
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1 pound ground chuck
- 1 sprig fresh rosemary chopped
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme leaves removed
- 2 sprigs fresh marjoram chopped
- One 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes
- One 6-ounce can tomato paste
- 3 tablespoons capers
- 1/8 cup red wine vinegar
- 4 teaspoons lemon juice
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 whole bay leaf
- 1 cup hot water
- 4 cups cooked pasta
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- In a large, heavy-bottomed pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Cook the onions until gently browned, then add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add the ground chuck and break up into chunks. Brown the meat well.
- Add the chopped rosemary, thyme, and marjoram, cooking for 1 minute. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, capers, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Stir well to combine.
- Add the bay leaf and lower the heat to very low. Cook, uncovered, for 2 hours, stirring occasionally to keep the bottom from burning. If the liquid from your sauce evaporates too quickly, add a little hot water to keep it from burning. This is a thick, chunky sauce, but feel free to thin it out a little more if you prefer.
- Serve over cooked pasta. Top each serving with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan.
Nutrition
This content was originally posted on FearlessFresh.com.
