Episode 075 Meat Sauce for Spaghetti

Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing Dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

What’s up, everybody? Okay? Today I have such an easy recipe for you. It’s kind of like the recipe that anybody goes to when you’re like, okay, what in the hell are we going to have for dinner tonight? I don’t know, but I definitely have pasta and I definitely have sauce. Right? We are making a traditional spaghetti with meat sauce. We’re not making our own sauce. We’re going to use our very favorite jarred sauce and just keep it super simple. 

But there are a few ingredients that you can add to make it just a little bit more delicious and troubleshoot the flavors so that it comes out perfect and it will become your new go-to meat sauce that’s easy for any old Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Tips and Tricks: A couple tips when you are making spaghetti with meat sauce. First of all, let’s talk about pasta here. We’re talking about spaghetti, that’s fine. But anytime you are cooking pasta, you want to make sure that you salt the water. That is the key number one rule when you cook pasta. What you want to do is fill up a large pot with water and then bring it to a boil. Then you want to salt it generously, probably two tablespoons of kosher salt. Basically, you want the water to taste like sea water. So if you were to get a spoon, get a little bit of water, let it cool off, take a little sip of it, it should taste like salty sea water. Then you know that you’re actually going to season that pasta with the water, which is excellent. It makes a huge difference in the way your pasta dishes taste. 

The next tip here is obviously we’re not making our own sauce, so you want to use the very best sauce you can. For us, we find that Rao’s pasta sauce is number one. It is 100% more expensive at the grocery store, but that’s the main flavor that you’re using here. So you want to make sure that you’re using something that is super delicious. Even though you’re buying, let’s say a bottle of RAOs, that’s $7, and actually the very best place to buy RAO’s is at Costco. You get a double pack, and I want to say it’s $9 for the double pack. So if you want the RAO’s, go to Costco. But if you’re going to buy it at the regular grocery store, let’s say you buy that RAO’s. $7 for a bottle. You get a little pasta, maybe it’s a dollar for a pound of pasta. You get your ground beef, maybe another five or $6. You still have a fairly inexpensive dinner on your hands. 

The next tip we have here is for ground beef. We’re just making a traditional ground beef meat sauce. So with ground beef, anytime you’re making a recipe, the more fat content that your beef has, the more flavor it’s going to have. The fat is what equals flavor. However, the fat also is what equals greasiness. So in recipes like this where you’re actually cooking the meat in its own juices, I recommend using an 85/15 or a 90/10. You’re still going to have enough fat for it to be flavorful, but not so much fat that your dish turns out greasy. There’s also an option of 80/20 at the grocery store. I always like to say save that 80/20 for when you make hamburgers and you want all of that greasy juice, because some of it will cook out in the flames of the grill, but you’re left with just enough to have flavor.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce Recipe: So let’s get on to making the full recipe for spaghetti with meat sauce. Obviously the first step is to go ahead and get your water onto boil, get it salted, and get your pasta cooking. 

While that’s boiling, it’s time to make your sauce. So what you’re going to want to do is grab a large skillet, something that has high sides that will hold all of the sauce and eventually the pasta. Go ahead and put that over medium heat and add one or two tablespoons of olive oil. Then you’re going to add your ground beef and cook it and kind of crumble it while it’s browning through. There is a tool called a meat masher that I will link in the show notes for you that is such a great tool to have. Anytime you’re cooking ground beef, ground sausage, ground pork, ground chicken, ground Turkey, it works really, really well. Now, if you have a lot of grease in the pan, you’re going to want to drain that off before moving on. Next, you’re going to add in half a yellow onion that’s diced, and three garlic cloves that are chopped. Get that sauteing around the pan for probably about five minutes until it’s starting to soften. Then we’re going to add a few extra spices. So you’re going to add one teaspoon of dried oregano, one teaspoon of dried basil, and then a half a teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder, and kosher salt. Give that a really good stir and let it coat all of the onions and the garlic and the ground beef.

Here’s a tip with your dried spices. Anytime you’re adding dried spices to a recipe, I always recommend that you put them in the palm of your hand, take the fingers from the other hand and just kind of crush them lightly. That will start to release their oils so that they can season your dish just a little bit better.

Now you want to turn the heat down to a low and go ahead and pour in that 24 ounce jar of marinara sauce. This is another tip that I love. We’re going to add a little bit of water, or you could do red wine, to your marinara sauce. But what you want to do is add about a third a cup of water to that empty marinara jar, you know how it’s really hard to get all of the sauce out of the jar. If you add just a third, a cup of water or red wine to that jar, pop the lid back on, give it a really good shake, and then pour it into the pan, you’ll get all of the sauce. Especially when you’re buying that expensive RAO’s sauce, you want to get every single drop out of that jar.

So then you’re going to let that simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes, just making sure that you’re stirring it occasionally, and then at the end you can either add the pasta right to your sauce and give it a really good toss or you can let people dish their own sauce onto their own pasta. Just make sure that you serve it with a little bit of Parmesan cheese or a Parmesan shaker on the side. Then we always love to add garlic bread or garlic breadsticks and a Caesar side salad. Some kind of just, especially on a weeknight, just an easy packaged salad is perfect here. So we usually get a pre-packaged Caesar salad and have that for dinner. 

Now, right on the recipe on momsdinner.net, you’ll find a lot of options for flavor troubleshooting as well. So I know that all store bought pasta sauces taste completely different. Some are really sweet, some are tangy, some are salty, and some are a little too acidic. So there’s lots of options for troubleshooting the flavor. Everything from adding a little cream to adding some sugar, adding some more spices. So you can find all of that right on Mom’s dinner.net.

Like always, I will link all of the recipes and all of the information that I shared here, right in the show notes for you so you can find it, pin it, share it, make it whenever you’re ready. 

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