Last night I decided to make my own pasta sauce. I had seen a friend of mine, and fantastic chef, make home made pasta sauce a few times before, so I had some idea of what should go into it. Tomato paste, diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, oregano, basil, salt, peper, and maybe a few other things. I wanted to be sure I didn't miss anything, so I pulled out a jar of pasta sauce and looked on the back to see what the ingredients were. :) I thought that was pretty clever. I also added ground beef and mushrooms to make it fun. Like everything else I've cooked thus far, I started with oil, onions and garlic. Once I sauteed them for a while I added the ground beef, followed by the tomato paste. I then added the diced tomatoes (from a can), mushrooms, and spices. In hindsight I could have added the mushrooms earlier so that they were softer by the time the sauce was done. Otherwise, it was pretty damn good. I think I added a bit too much tomato paste, and not enough salt and pepper. But otherwise, so far so good. 
Any suggestions on how to improve it? Also, any recommendations for my next dish? Chef-Boy-R-David
5 comments:
Yes! Great call on making your own sauce. Here's a few things I do with sauce:
1. Deglaze the pan with dry wine after cooking the meat and onions. Mmmmm. (http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/tips/qt/deglazingtip.htm)
2. Add 1-2 dried chili peppers (finely diced), or if you don't have them on hand I suppose chili flakes would work. But the freshness and kick of the whole dried peppers is worth it. It gives the sauce a very subtle perkiness without being spicy. And don't be afraid to add a bit more salt.
3. Make Lasagna!!!!! It's definitely a labor of love, and a great way to use lots of veggies (chard, spinach, eggplant, etc.).
Have fun David!
I will refer you to The Godfather. Follow Clamenza's advice to Michael: "Come over here kid, learn something,you never know you might need to cook for 25 men someday. See you start with a little oil, fry some garlic, then ya throw in some tomatas, tomata paste ya fry it ya make sure it doesn't stick. When you got it to a boil you shove in ya sausage and your meetballs. Then you ad a little bit of wine, and a little bit of sugar, and that's my trick."
Once you got that down, i suggest you try the vodka marinara! Not too hard and very tasty!
Ohhh...Wine and sugar. Thanks. Good call! Next week's pasta sauce will be even better. :)
Yeah, but NOT with the bottle I gave you! That's a nice one! Share that one with Katie when you perfect the white pasta sauce. =)
Looks to me like too much meat. I usually use about 1/4 lb of ground beef as opposed to a full lb which looks like what you used. The first time I tried red wine in my sauce, I couldn't believe I had never tried it...it's such a good flavor!
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