Tired of your pasta tasting like Chef Boyardee? It's true that some pasta is better than others. Make some goddamn homemade pasta once in a while, is what I'm saying. But that's probably not the problem. The problem is probably your meat sauce sucks. Here's the right way to make it.
1. Get some finely diced fresh garlic and onion. The onion's not required. If you grew up in a family (as I did) that doesn't care for onions, you can skip it. I'd recommend simply scaling back, though. The garlic, however, is critical.
2. Heat up some olive oil in a pan. Add your garlic and onion and sautee it for a couple of minutes. Then you want to add some spices to your pan. These are absolutely required: oregano, salt, black pepper and fennel seed. I strongly recommend white pepper. Thyme and especially rosemary are common additions. Do NOT add basil.
3. Dump some ground pork into the pan. Note I didn't say "sausage." If you go to Meijer and buy "Mild Italian Sausage," I can't help you.
4. After the meat is fully cooked, drain it if need be, depending on the fat content of the pork and how much oil you started with. Put it in the sauce pan with some diced tomato and chiles (another one of the 1,001 uses of Rotel), and some tomato paste and water. If you are too lazy to dilute tomato paste, use tomato sauce, but please note that many brands add salt, garlic and onion to their sauce.
5. Simmer for a while (half hour? hour? whatever) on low or very low heat. Just enough to get it hot, but low enough so that it takes a while. I use setting 2 out of 10 on a relatively low-powered electric range with a ceramic surface and let it go for an hour. This is the point you add the basil, by the way*. Basil goes in the tomato sauce, not the meat.
Cook your pasta, pour the sauce over the pasta and top it with cheese. Real cheese, not shaker cheese.
goat
* As an even fancier-pants alternative, get some fresh basil, and instead of adding it to the sauce, chop it up and add it to the dish as a garnish.
1. Get some finely diced fresh garlic and onion. The onion's not required. If you grew up in a family (as I did) that doesn't care for onions, you can skip it. I'd recommend simply scaling back, though. The garlic, however, is critical.
2. Heat up some olive oil in a pan. Add your garlic and onion and sautee it for a couple of minutes. Then you want to add some spices to your pan. These are absolutely required: oregano, salt, black pepper and fennel seed. I strongly recommend white pepper. Thyme and especially rosemary are common additions. Do NOT add basil.
3. Dump some ground pork into the pan. Note I didn't say "sausage." If you go to Meijer and buy "Mild Italian Sausage," I can't help you.
4. After the meat is fully cooked, drain it if need be, depending on the fat content of the pork and how much oil you started with. Put it in the sauce pan with some diced tomato and chiles (another one of the 1,001 uses of Rotel), and some tomato paste and water. If you are too lazy to dilute tomato paste, use tomato sauce, but please note that many brands add salt, garlic and onion to their sauce.
5. Simmer for a while (half hour? hour? whatever) on low or very low heat. Just enough to get it hot, but low enough so that it takes a while. I use setting 2 out of 10 on a relatively low-powered electric range with a ceramic surface and let it go for an hour. This is the point you add the basil, by the way*. Basil goes in the tomato sauce, not the meat.
Cook your pasta, pour the sauce over the pasta and top it with cheese. Real cheese, not shaker cheese.
goat
* As an even fancier-pants alternative, get some fresh basil, and instead of adding it to the sauce, chop it up and add it to the dish as a garnish.
