Jasons Spaghetti Sauce

[Bravo1-3]

For those who don’t know the answer to the age old question “What happens when you mix Irish with Italian, Russian and Pollock” You get ME!

My Grandmothers were both world class traditional old country cooks. They never wrote anything down, and when they passed, the sheer volume of cooking knowledge that was lost was comparable to the burning of the Library of Alexandria in my opinion. This recipe is my variation on grandmas 100% scratch recipe I only make her version every now and then because it’s so time consuming. I look at it as a way to greatly improve on store bought sauce.

Grandma used to prepare these ingredients step by step, from peeling her own tomatoes, to stuffing the sausages herself. I’ve got all of those recipes as well, and if you really need to know, you can PM me.

Note: Do not put sugar anywhere NEAR this. Nothing grosses me out more than seeing someone put sugar in sauce!
Also, there is a lot of temperature changing in this recipe. It is FAR BETTER to err on the side of too low of a temp, than to have too much. You can cook this stuff for as long as it takes, so there is no real hurry.

Total prep/cook time is about 6-8 hours.
Ingredients:
2 Large cans of Tomato Sauce.
2 small cans of Tomato Paste.
1 large can of condensed tomato soup.
¼ cup Red Wine (or to taste)
½ clove Fresh Garlic, peeled, crushed or sliced.
Crushed Red Pepper – to taste
2 lbs Fresh Italian Sausage (I prefer hot, but it’s your option)
2 lbs of Fresh Ground Beef, not too lean (anything less than 90% lean is good). I’ve gone as far as adding 3 lbs.
¼ TSP each (Maximum- after this stuff is done cooking, you’ll find it has quite a bit of flavor with far less qty used) :
--oregano
--rosemary
--basil
--parsley

Combine Sauce, Paste, and Soup into a large sauce pot (stock pot). Add 3 soup cans of water, and stir over medium heat until it is smooth.
Add heat, and stir at quick intervals until it’s at a very low boil. Turn heat down until the mix is juuuust under a low boil. Stir constantly until the temp is uniform.
Prepare meatballs to preference, but make sure you leave some unprepared ground beef.
If you’re going to use “filler” in the meatballs (I don’t) use lightly seasoned or unseasoned bread crumbs.
Add meatballs and sausages, crumble in remaining ground beef and stir until all the meat is sunken.
Stir in spices EXCEPT for the red pepper.
Cover the pot and allow to simmer. Stir every 15-20 minutes, make sure that the sauce does not get to a full boil. If it does, the bottom is already burnt and you might as well toss it out. Every time you open the pot, wipe the condensation off of the lid with a towel.
After about 2 hours on low heat, There should be dark red pools floating on top of the mixture. This is GOOD. No pools means turn up the heat in very small increments every 20-30 minutes until you see pools. Add the Red Pepper. Try to limit yourself to 1/4tsp.
Continue to stir, and monitor the progress.
After 4 hours, turn up the heat in small increments until there are small, rapid bubbles in one or two spots. Stir, stir, stir! By now the water you added earlier should be gone.
Begin adding wine little by little over the course of an hour. Keep tasting the mix, as the wine can get very strong, very quickly.
Once you have added wine sufficient to your taste, reduce to low heat, simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes, stirring every few minutes just to keep the bottom of the pot “clean”.
Re-cover pot, simmer on low, stir until hour 6.
Check the meat. The sausages should break easily with only a minimal effort on your part. The meatballs should be just the opposite, and not break without deliberately crushing them.
Turn heat to lowest setting, cover and prepare your pasta.

Serve the sauce “From the bottom” of the pot.

Prego.