Clay's Kitchen : Ricette Italiane (Italian Recipes)

Ricette Italiane (Italian Recipes)

© Copyright 1995-2023, Clay Irving <clay@panix.com>, Manhattan Beach, CA USA

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Best Spaghetti Sauce

Recipe from: Rossana

Here's my recipe. It's long and involved, but anything worth doing is worth doing well. For the extra sauce, you can either freeze it, or, pour hot into sterilized jars, BWB for 20 minutes, cool upside down overnight and Voila! Sauce in jar!

This sauce, when complete, almost fills my 18 litre stock pot.

For the meatballs:
2 pounds each ground lean beef, veal and pork
4 cups fine dry bread crumbs
2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon fresh oregano
2 tablespoon fresh parsley
2 teaspoon ginger
3 cloves crushed garlic
4 tablespoon olive oil
4 extra large eggs

Mix everything together until well incorporated. Shape into balls and allow to rest refrigerated about half an hour. I usually use this time to let the oven preheat to 350°F. Place meatballs in oven and bake for 30 minutes turning once. Makes approximately 30 2-inch balls, you can make them smaller or bigger.

For Sauce:
4 - 19 ounce cans diced tomatoes
4 - 750 ml bottles tomato purée
4 - 28 ounce cans plum tomatoes, broken up

Always taste your tomatoes to make sure they taste right. This may seem like a lot of unnecessary variety, but each of the types of tomato adds it's own character. In the absence of home canned, this most closely approximates.

3 litres water

In the bottom of a LARGE stock pot, heat 2 tablespoon olive oil until smoky. Add tomatoes and bring to a boil, add water, combine well. Allow to come back to a boil and cook for 30 minutes. Add:

2 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoon pepper
½ cup fresh basil
½ cup fresh oregano
½ cup fresh parsley
4 to 5 cloves crushed garlic (or less . . . or more)
1 fresh hot chili pepper slit but not in pieces (optional)

I know, everyone says add the fresh herbs last but my mother did it this way and her sauce was always AMAZING! So I strive to duplicate.

Allow to simmer over medium heat 30 minutes more.

Add meatballs and reduce heat to low. At this point, if you're not adding any other meat, it can be left to simmer for 4 hours or more. The longer the sauce simmers, the thicker it will become. I have found that the ideal thickness for us is a 5 hour simmer, ergo, through the night.

Buon appetito!


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