The one and only spaghetti sauce I know is a red sauce with browned hamburger meat with some onions and spices, cooked up in about 30 minutes (less if you were using a jarred sauce). Through the years I've worked to improve the basic sauce with longer simmering times, fresh ingredients, freshly picked herbs, more garlic or a spoonful of pesto, but it pretty much resembles the original version.
And then last week I found something called Sunday Gravy. Man! Those Italians know how to keep a secret. The back history of the sauce is that Italian families have made Sunday Gravy for generations and passed the recipe and basic principles for making it from mother to daughter. It's completely adaptable, and an added plus is it transforms leftovers with an amazing sauce that tastes like nothing I've ever had. Apparently each new generation can totally make it their own without sacrificing the original flavor they remember as kids.
An Italian friend who didn't know the term Sunday Gravy until I described it, said, 'Oooh! That's the refrigerator gravy my grandmother made because she used up all her meat leftovers. We had it all the time.'
And that made me love it even more, because people like me who hate to waste food love anything that disguises leftovers into an amazing meal.
So I gave the recipe a try. We had it, we loved it, we shared it, they loved it, so it's definitely blog worthy.
Here is the amazing original post and long version of the sauce with, of course, the recipe: http://www.platingsandpairings.com/authentic-italian-sunday-gravy/
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| Browning |
- I didn't toss the garlic, because you don't do that.. And I increased the amount.
- I added in more seasonings.
- I cooked it all afternoon, in a Dutch oven at 325 degrees, not on the stovetop. My stove tends to run a little hot and I didn't want to burn the sauce and I didn't want to stand guard over it.
- I found there was so much meat in the sauce I ended up increasing the ingredients to compensate for it. Plenty of meat for tripling the original recipe. Basically I doubled the meat and ended up quadrupling the ingredients to keep up with how beefy it was.
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| The sauce starting out |
Step 1 - brown all the meat in oil, and set it aside on a plate
1 lb or less each of pork - beef - and Italian sausage (cooked or not; anything you have on hand)
Step 2 - turn down the heat, toss in 10 cloves of garlic to soften and scrape up stuff from the bottom.
Step 3 - add most everything to the pot except meat:
One onion, roughly chopped
Tomato product: 135 ozs of a combo of crushed tomatoes, diced, stewed, or garden/canned or frozen fresh.
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| Browned Meats, added to sauce |
A couple of branches of fresh Marjoram (just toss it in, stem and all)
2 bay leaves
Salt and Pepper (I leave the salt out until the end)
Any other favorite sauce flavorings
A couple of carrots sliced 1/4 inch thick, because I am wild for them in pasta sauce
Step 4 - Nestle the meat back in and bake it
If the meat is a little cramped, that's okay. If you're genuinely short of sauce, add broth and mess with it. Once everything looks good, put the Dutch Oven in the oven on a mid level shelf - covered - at 325 for about 4 hours. I checked it once an hour, because the aroma pretty much made it impossible not to.
At about the 2 hour mark taste for the kind of flavor you want - super meaty and deep. You can remove some of the meat here if you'd like. I left the sausage in for good. Step 5 - After it cooks awhile and flavors do their thing, remove the meat and pork chunks to a plate - and work on the broth.
Late adds/adjustments:
To thin: Add broth (beef or pork), and I did use at least a quart
To deepen the tomato-y flavor: Add tomato paste, up to 6 oz
By now, The Gravy is delicious enough without the meat, but I added it back in to my sauce. Personal preference, I guess.
The Gravy was served over linguine that night with some fresh parmesan, green salad and a sourdough baguette. Two nights later we had it again, this time over homemade ravioli from Jackson CA, and it was also excellent. I hear it's great over polenta and mashed potatoes.
I pressure canned the rest in pints, sure that it will be our reach-for sauce for entertaining, gifting, and when we are out on the road. The canned sauce definitely needs a little thinning, so a pint is plenty for four mouths if served with sides and some bread. As my mother would say, Delish.
PS I started another batch last night.
