Colorado Style Spaghetti Sauce
I find that a slow cooker really makes this sauce extra-good, but I’ve also made it on the stovetop when I only had a couple of hours before and it’s very good like that too.
First off, ingredients:
Three boxes of Pomi Tomatoes. I like the texture and consistency of two boxes of chopped, one box of strained, but you might want it less thick than I enjoy it so you’d want two boxes of strained, one chopped.
If you’re inclined to make it even thicker, get one of those little cans of tomato paste (I like Contadina)
While you’re in the canned aisle, you should decide if you want mushrooms in the sauce or not. I like the button ones but I’ve had people explain to me that mushrooms don’t belong in spaghetti sauce so I leave them out if I expect these people to be coming over on spaghetti night.
You’ve already got olive oil, right? Of course you do.
A pound, pound and a half, of the meat you like. I like spicy sausage but other people like hamburger. You know your audience.
Now, in the produce section, this is where we load up. Go to the fresh spices and pick up:
fresh basil leaves
oregano
thyme
parsley
If they have a small tube of garlic paste, get you some of that.
Heck, if they have a small tube of pesto, get one of those too.
Get whatever other fresh spices look good to you. One of the things about my sauce is that it’ll have you picking little leaves out from between your teeth for the next couple of days. Maribou likes rosemary in the sauce, sometimes I like tarragon. The big ones are oregano, thyme, and FRESH BASIL LEAVES (that one is mandatory).
Get a nice big sweet yellow onion.
If they have a bag of the “traffic light bell peppers” get that. If they don’t, get one big green bell pepper, one big yellow bell pepper, and one big red bell pepper. Heck, get a second green bell pepper.
Now, we’re in “your taste” territory. If you want carrots in your sauce, pick up some carrots, some like zucchini. You know what you like.
I’m going to assume that you have stuff like salt and pepper and a stocked spice rack already at home.
Okay. Now we’re at home.
Spray your slow cooker with cooking spray. Or rub the sides with butter. It’s all good.
Fry up the meat and drain it the best you can.
Open the tomatoes and put them into the slow cooker, add the tomato paste if you have it.
Add the meat and the mushrooms.
Put the Fresh Basil Leaves in the fridge, they’re not used until pretty much the last step.
Now spend time picking the spices off of the various stems and drop them into the cooker. Throw garlic in there “to taste” (THIS MEANS ALL OF IT!!! ALL OF THE GARLIC!!!) and the pesto if you bought it. Put a bay leaf or two in there. Maybe some cumin. Salt and pepper to taste. A little bit of olive oil.
Cook this for 8 hours on low. Maybe 10. Whatever.
Get to the point where the water is boiling and you’ve just added the pasta to the water.
Chop up your onions and bell peppers and other vegetables. You want them chunky. CHUNKY. Look at your thumb. About that big. Chop them up and, hey, if you’re having a salad, you can sprinkle some of these on the salad too.
Take out the Fresh Basil Leaves now and cut them into thinnish strips. Maybe half a centimeter.
Now, this part assumes that everybody is pretty much ready to eat… take out the bay leaves if you can find them and then, right before serving, add the chunky vegetables to the sauce. Stir them once, twice… thrice… now ladle the sauce onto the pasta. Sprinkle the Basil Leave strips on top of the pile of food on the plate. It looks pretty!
The meat and the herbs and spices have been cooking in the sauce all day but the chunky vegetables are still pretty much raw and crunchy. Of course, the leftovers will cook the vegetables by the time it comes to put it into containers and put it into the fridge… but that first plate with the raw veggies?
It’s *REALLY* good.
(Note: I don’t know if this is *REALLY* Colorado Style or not. I just never encountered this variant in my travels and so I figure that I might as well name it after home. Maybe it’ll take off.)
I think I know what’s on the menu at our house this week.Report
Nice.
Interesting recipe writing style, too: starting with the trip to the grocery store for ingredients. I really like that.
One complaint: I really don’t law fresh oregano; it tastes too strongly of the mint family of which its a member. Drying tames it; and so I much prefer the dried.
The cumin is an interesting addition, have not tried that. Cumin, cinnamon, and dried (not fresh, different flavor profile) are all really good spices to add a pinch of to nearly anything where you want a deep satisfying flavor. Not enough that your dinner guests will taste the spice itself, but a pinch (1/4 scant teaspoon) for their warmth and sweetness.
On the strained tomatoes: After you’ve browned the meat and poured the fat off, use that tomato juice to deglaze the pan; get it good and hot, pour the juice in, and use it to stir up all the browned bits of meat juice; cook until the tomato juice is thick and almost gone, and pour that precious few tablespoons of concentrated flavor into the crock pot.
And I love the idea of nearly-raw vegetables, still filled with crunch!
Thank you, Jaybird.Report
Edit: that’s dried ginger, the companion to the cumin and cinnamon.Report
Oooh, I’ve never done that with the meat juice before. I will do that next time. Excellent.
(And I *LURVE* the fresh oregano. The mint whispers are the best part!)Report
This, I believe, may be the defining difference between libertarians and liberals! Mint or no mint flavor in the sauce!
If you care; in Soffritto, Bernedette Vitalo writes about the importance of deglazing something three times; a small amount of deglazing liquid in the pan, cook till nearly gone, then another splash, and again a third time; this, she says, builds up complex layers of flavors. She deglazes with wine; I use the tomato juice. And I do it in threes.Report
Hmmmm… I’m a bit concerned about the garlic. Does it cook down?
I had to have a sit down with Zazzy recently when she made a butter in garlic sauce, but simply microwaved the butter and poured that and raw garlic over pasta. Good idea, poor execution. Raw garlic is just too powerful. And the flavor doesn’t diffuse through the dish, meaning some bites are like biting into a whole clove while others have zero garlicky deliciousness. If you allow garlic to heat a little in hot oils, it releases a lot of its flavors (aromatics, too, which is why the house smells so good), dulling the pieces of garlic itself but infusing the entire dish.
Does the crock pot get hot enough to achieve a similar effect? If not, I’d probably put the garlic into the meat and utilize Zic’s deglazing trick.
Regardless, I am intrigued by this. To me, it reads more like a chili than a pasta sauce, but I consider that a good thing. I sometimes have to get all squinty eyed with people who look at me like I’m crazy because I’ll eat delicious, thick, meaty pasta sauce out of a cup, like soup.
Oh, and I love the way you describe things. For instance, when you say to do with the basil is known as a chiffonade. Not that it matters, because you explained it perfectly. You employed more technique than you might have realized. Which is a big check-plus for you in my book.Report
Kazzy, there are thousands of varieties of garlic; many sweet and mellow and delicious raw.
And this is the time of year to explore them, if you stumble across a farmer’s market where they’re for sale and you can ask you friendly farmer about the milder flavors. Look for varieties like Georgian Crystal, Persian Star (both are hard-neck, the only kind of garlic that will grow well in my cold climate.)Report
As always, zic, you are a goddess amongst mere mortals. Gracias.Report
It’s not that the crock pot gets hot enough it’s that the garlic is in there long enough for it to release its goodness.
(The magnificent thing about the slow cooker is that you can do all of the slow cooker stuff the night before and let it sit in the fridge for overnight. Last thing before you leave for work, just turn it on for 8-10 hours and you’ll come home to a house that smells like someone’s been cooking all day. Do the last little bit of prep and it’s good with pretty much minimal effort.)Report
My wife and I used to do a lot more slow cooker cooking. We need to get back to that for all the reasons you mentioned. Coming home to dinner being ready is pretty awesome.Report
re: the chiffonade – for most of his youth, Jaybird worked at a restaurant where the owner had been trained by Paul Bocuse. It shows up now and then :D.Report
I also usually like to put some wine in the sauce (at the beginning, with the meat) and have it be more or less from the same batch as the wine we’ll be drinking when we eat.
That’s, like, 100% optional though.Report
A complaint: nowhere do I see the husk of a Parmesean cheese added. I can hang with the tubed garlic paste and tubed pesto (note that pesto includes both pine nuts and olive oil, so it’s pretty fatty) and I have great approval for the use of the slow cooker (an under-utilized appliance, IMO).
But the richness of the Parm — from the whey and the rennet — is not replicated by anything else in Italian-esque cuisine. It also is the best use of the heel which is otherwise too thick to be consumed directly. It’s a mandatory component in all of my sauces incorporating tomato.
Compare Jaybird’s style to mine: http://notapottedplant.blogspot.com/2009/09/ragu-bolognese.htmlReport
I’m not a cheese in the sauce guy for my red sauces (I do put cheese in my cream sauces, though). I thought about adding a paragraph about having freshly shredded cheese on the table (with, of course, some crushed red pepper next to it) for those inclined to add a little something… but I can’t think of a single spaghetti sauce recipe that wouldn’t include that paragraph and, as such, it struck me as extraneous.Report