Spaghetti with meat sauce, along with a tossed salad and garlic toast, shows up on the menu around twice a month at Chez Losing It; it’s one of our favorite meals year-round. Our all-time favorite recipe for meat sauce was sent in to Cooking Light magazine several years ago by a reader, Erika Boyer, and then passed on to me by my sister. I love this recipe for a variety of reasons:
- It makes enough for at least two meals, or for a crowd if you’re having a party. There’s enough sauce for me to freeze half for another meal which saves on cooking time later.
- It has lots of vegetables in it! When the garden is bursting with peppers, tomatoes and zucchini in the summer, I make up extra batches of this sauce for the freezer. It can easily become vegetarian/vegan with a ground beef substitute (I’ve done this and no one noticed). One-half cup grated carrot can be substituted for the sugar if you want to add even more vegetables.
- It’s low fat. If you use ultra-lean ground beef, there are only 4.6 grams of fat per serving. Ground turkey or a meat substitute can also be used instead of beef to lower the fat content even more.
- It tastes really, really good! We usually have it over spaghetti, but it’s equally good served with polenta or gnocchi.
MEAT SAUCE FOR PASTA
1 pound ground beef
cooking spray
1 1/2 cups diced onion
1 1/2 cups diced green bell pepper
1 cup diced red pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups shredded zucchini (about 2 large)
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
1/4 cup sugar (can substitute 1/2 cup grated carrot)
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes with garlic and basil
1 12-oz can tomato paste
1 7-oz bottle of roasted red bell peppers, undrained
1/2 cup good red wine
salt & pepper to taste
In a large Dutch oven or pot, cook meat over med-high heat until browned and crumbled. Drain meat well and set aside. Wipe out pan and coat with cooking spray. Heat pan and add onions, diced peppers and garlic and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini and saute an additional 5 minutes. Drain the vegetables and return to pot along with the meat; add oregano and crushed red pepper. Cook mixture over med-high heat for another 5 minutes, then add canned tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar and water from bottle of roasted pepper. Chop the roasted peppers and add to the pan, along with wine. Add salt & pepper to taste. Bring sauce to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for at least an hour, or until the sauce is thick.
(The photo comes from http://www.myfirstkitchen.net/. I forgot to take a picture last time we had this, but this picture looks pretty close to how the sauce turns out.)
