Spaghetti Sauce with Italian Sausage

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This spaghetti sauce – it tastes like you spent all day in the kitchen, letting it simmer and bubble, with all kinds of secret ingredients and steps, when really… you spent 30 minutes making it. There are just a few steps to getting that cooked-all-day, mouth-watering flavor. Lots of variations- you can make it as a meat sauce with Italian sausage, a marinara sauce, or a filling vegetarian sauce with mushrooms.

Ok… let’s start with the obvious. WHY make spaghetti sauce when there are perfectly good jars of yummy sauce ready for you to buy at the store? Seems like it would be a Sloth move to just… *add to cart*. Literally. Alright, I do buy sauce sometimes. Often, actually! However, I love the taste of homemade sauce, and how easy it is.

It’s super. duper. cheap. Even if I try to buy jars of sauce when they go on sale, this is still way cheaper! The ingredients are simple, and they go a long way to make lots of sauce that I freeze.

It’s easy and fast. Really! 30 minutes! Use the sloth shortcuts for a fast, weeknight meal.

Last but not least… a good spaghetti sauce makes such a huge difference! A simple meal of pasta and sauce can be amazing with the right sauce.

Now, how to get that spaghetti sauce, with tons of flavor, without letting it cook all day?? The ingredients are simple, and there’s just one secret step.

The Ingredients

• Italian sausage – you can also use ground beef, or use chopped mushrooms and zucchini to make it vegetarian. Or omit it if you’re making a marinara red sauce.
• Canned crushed tomatoes – no need to use fancy tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes- these canned tomatoes are getting a nice makeover and no one will know they came from a can!
• Tomato paste – to kick start the tomato flavor
• Garlic and Onion – some nice smells and flavors
• Basil and oregano – either fresh or dried
• Salt and pepper – to get the sauce juuuust right
• Honey – just a little sweetness
• Olive oil – to finish off the sauce with some creaminess.

The Method

The reason some sauces taste soooo good that have been cooking all day long is that the flavors have had lots of time to develop, get nice and rich, and get to know each other. Another way to get all of that flavor is to use a higher heat to develop lots and lots of flavor.

Time for a Sloth Science moment. Cooking at high temperatures causes a browning chemical reaction, which transforms sugars and proteins into ALL kinds of new flavor molecules! (this is why that browned part of your grilled chicken tastes so good. Or why crispy, oven roasted broccoli is SO much more exciting that steamed broccoli). Now, we don’t’ want to go so far as to burn it (that’s too much browning!) but a higher heat will make all kinds of new, delicious flavors that you can’t get on low heat. The keys here and 1) lots of browning and 2) don’t leave all that delicious flavor stuck to the pan. Here’s how:

Brown the Italian Sausage

Sauté the sausage (or ground beef, or mushrooms) in a large stainless steel pan– not a nonstick pan, because we actually DO want it to stick… a little bit. Let it brown- cook it at a high enough temperature that there’s some browning on the bottom of the pan. That’s the good stuff- all kinds of flavor down there. You don’t want it all stuck to the bottom of the pan, but you want a little browning. When the meat is cooked, drain off the excess grease, but leave a little (about a tablespoon in the pan).

Onion, Garlic, and Spices

Turn the heat down (just low heat here!) and add the chopped onion, dried basil, dried oregano, salt, and pepper (wait to add any fresh herbs until the end). Lots of flavors and good smells! The reason you want lower heat here is that garlic can burn easily, and it gets a bitter taste when it gets too hot.

Tomato Time

Here’s the magic step! To get a rich tomato sauce that doesn’t taste like it can from a tin can, these tomatoes need to be treated to some high heat and browning. They’ll taste like the cooked in a sauce all day long.

Add the crushed tomatoes and tomato paste to the pan and turn the heat back to medium high. It will start to pop and splatter pretty quickly – cover that angry pan! Why do tomatoes pop so much? Don’t wear a white shirt when you do this.

It will sound like a battle is going on in the pan. You’ll want to take the lid off the see if everything is burnt to a crisp. You’ll want to turn the heat down to low. You might want to run away! Let it splatter and pop (covered!) for 4-5 minutes, and THEN check it. First though! Slide that pan off the heat and then uncover it, so you don’t get splattered with sauce.

It should be browning (aka sticking) to the bottom of the pan some—if it seems like it’s really really a lot, you can reduce the heat to medium. Cover the pan, put it back on the heat, and let it cook 5 more minutes covered completely.

Side note… no crushed tomatoes in the pantry? You can used canned diced tomatoes or canned whole tomatoes, just drain off the liquid (save it!) and add the solid tomatoes in this step. You’ll add the liquid in the next step. Make sure to drain the tomatoes though, or they won’t brown, swimming in all that liquid.

Deglazing

Wax on, wax off. We now have all that good, browned stuff stuck to the pan, where all the flavor lives. We’re going to deglaze the pan – which just means, add something to the pan that’s going to get all that good stuff off. Good things to use to deglaze a pan are wine, vinegar, or water. Here, we’re going to use wine.

Off the heat, add the wine to the pan. Use a spatula and scrape and stir the bottom of the pan to get all of that browned flavor up. You shouldn’t need to scrap much- it should come up easily. Return to medium or medium-high heat, cover with the lid cracked, and let everything simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir and scrape any brown bits on the bottom of the pan.

Finish it off

It’s almost done! If you taste it now, it probably tastes pretty good but like it’s missing some key players. It needs some sweetness- add the honey (or you can sub white or brown sugar), fresh basil (if you’re using it), and maybe more salt, garlic powder, or basil if you want- it will depend on the strength of your herbs. Finally, finish it off with a drizzle of olive oil! Yummm.

Serve up your spaghetti sauce with italian sausage on top of spaghetti (all covered with cheese!), or for a healthy version- some zoodles! (make them with a spiralizer like this!)

Variations

Marinara Sauce – make it without the Italian sausage. Start with step 2, by sautéing the garlic and onions in some olive oil. I often do this and serve it with meatballs, or use it to serve over Chicken Parmesan… or to dip my frozen mozzarella sticks in. I usually have some of this in the freezer as well as the Italian sausage version!

Vegetarian sauce – to make a hefty, filling vegetarian sauce without the meat, start with chopped mushrooms and zucchini in the first step instead of sausage.

Sloth Shortcuts

Sloth Shortcut #1: To get that rich, cooked all day sauce taste, but in 30 minutes (!), use this high heat method- get those tomatoes nice and browned, add the wine to deglaze the pan, and get all that good stuff to make a sauce your people will think you spent all day in the kitchen making!

Sloth Shortcut #2: Use what you have! No crushed tomatoes, but you have canned diced tomatoes? Or canned whole tomatoes? Great! See recipe notes to adapt. No fresh garlic or basil? Totally fine! Use garlic powder and dried basil.

Sloth Shortcut #3: If you’re going to make this, you might as well make extra to freeze! It’s not much hard to make a big batch, and it freezes so well. Never worry that you’re out of jars of spaghetti sauce for dinner again!

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2 from 1 vote

Italian Sausage Spaghetti Sauce

A hearty meat sauce for pasta

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Keyword: spaghetti sauce

Servings: 10

Author: The Kitchen Sloth

Ingredients

• 2 lb italian sausage
• 2 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes
• 2 8 oz cans tomato paste
• 8 cloves garlic minced (or 1 T garlic powder)
• 1 onion diced
• 1/4 c fresh basil chopped (or 2 T dried basil)
• 1 T dried oregano
• 1 T salt
• 1 t pepper
• 3 T honey
• 1 T olive oil

Instructions

• Brown the sausage in a large pan and drain excess grease, leaving about a tablespoon behind in the pan.
• On low heat, add the garlic, onion and spices to the meat in the pan and sauté 2-3 minutes.
• Add the crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, cooking on medium-high heat for 10 min, covered. Remove from the heat once and stir- there should be some browning on the bottom of the pan.
• Off the heat, add the wine to deglaze the pan, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan. Return to medium-high heat, partially covered for 10 minutes.
• Add fresh basil, honey and olive oil to finish.

Notes

Makes 8 cups sauce.

Freezes well – freeze in zip lock bags or freezer safe container.

To use diced tomatoes or whole tomatoes, drain the liquid from the can (reserve) and add the tomatoes with the tomato paste to allow the tomatoes to brown. Add the reserved tomato juice with the wine to deglaze the pan in the next step.