#32_Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

This is the way my husband likes his Spaghetti: sauce on top of the pasta and sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese

This is how I like my spaghetti: mix the sauce up with the pasta, let it set in the fridge overnight and heat it up in the microwave the next day. This way the pasta soaks up all the flavor in the sauce

An Italian lady once told me that the secret of good spaghetti is in the sauce, and the secret of a good sauce is slow and long simmering.

This recipe is easy and simple but if you want it to be delicious and savory, it takes patience, as it takes more than one hour to simmer the sauce on top of stove or you can use a crock pot and let it cook for 5 hours.

Here's what you need for the sauce:

1 lb. ground beef (85/15)

1 lb. ground pork

1 can spaghetti sauce

1 can (14.5 oz.) tomato sauce

1 cup water

1 medium onion, chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 can (14.5oz.) whole peeled tomatoes, chopped

2 Tbsps canola oil

1/2 lb. Italian sausage, sliced

1 Tbsp. Italian seasoning

2 tsp salt

2 heaping tbsps. brown sugar

Procedure:

1. Heat a large skillet and brown the meat until they are no longer pink

2. Transfer the meat to a colander and drain off the fat

3. Take out the excess grease from the skillet and heat the cooking oil

4. Saute the garlic and the onion until onions are wilted and transluscent. Add the tomatoes and continue to saute for about 3 minutes

5. Add the browned meat and the sausage and saute for another 5 minutes

6. Stir in the tomato sauce and water; then add the seasonings and salt

7. Cover and let it simmer on low heat for 1 1/2 -2 hours stirring ocassionally.

8. Mix in the brown sugar 5 minutes before you take the sauce off the stove

9. Serve over hot spaghetti pasta

Notes:

1. The sauce will be enough for 18 oz cooked spaghetti

2. In the Philippines, we use banana ketchup (mafran/jufran) instead of tomato sauce; and sliced hotdogs instead of sausage, and always ground pork; and add the cooked pasta right into the cooked sauce and mix them together until all the pasta is coated with the sauce. The banana ketchup gives a little kick to the sauce because they are flavored with hot peppers.