Super Beefy Pasta Sauce

This pasta sauce is super beefy in case you were wondering why I named it that. It is not at all any kind of traditional Italian recipe or any of that. In fact, it is practically chili. Look at this stuff:

Now that's super beefy! And super fun to make.

Here's what you need:

1.5 lbs ground beef
2 x 28 oz cans diced tomatoes
2 x28 oz cans whole tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
2 green peppers, chopped
1 tbsp red pepper flakes
1-2 tbsp basil
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp salt (or to taste)
4 bay leaves
1 cup red wine (I used Cabernet this time)

First thing you need to do is brown the ground beef. Try to make sure to get it fairly finely chopped--though part of the appeal of this sauce is it's so chunky so do what you will. If you want to make it a giant hamburger that sits at the bottom of the pot, that will probably taste pretty good anyway. Once it's done, you are going to want to drain the fat. I try to do a good job of this but I am not super cautious to get every last bit of fat. Normally, winds up looking about like this:

 

Don't worry if it's a little pink. You are gonna simmer this stuff for hours. It'll be fine. While you're browning the meat chop the green peppers and the onions up. Add them along w/ everything but the wine, turn up to high heat, bring to a boil and reduce to simmer. Simmer at least one hour and up to about three. The longer you simmer, the more the tomatoes will break down and the smoother the sauce will be. Here it is after a couple hours:

 

I like to add the wine about fifteen minutes before I'm done cooking. Generally, I allow it get a little thicker than I'd like because, as you would expect, adding liquid thins this a bit. I feel the wine is pretty much essential in this recipe.It brings out the sweetness and fruitiness of the tomatoes and just adds that little bit extra to keep this from tasting like you got it out of a can. When I used to make pasta sauce, I used all kinds of herbs in it--basil, oregeno, thyme, you name it. Now a days, I stick w/ one per batch but change it up. I feel like the flavor, rather than becoming more complex from using multiple herbs, just become muddled. I'd rather just use some good basil and really let it shine than have fifteen hundred things in there that you can barely taste. If your sauce is a little runny, go ahead and add a can of tomato paste to thicken it a bit. That happens sometimes when you make pasta sauce from canned tomatoes rather than from crushed tomatoes or sauce.

I served this up over linguine as seen above. My favorite for a sauce like this is rotini and I even like those green and red vegetable flavored ones like people make pasta salad out of. I used the most of this for a big tray of super beefy lasagna which I will post in a few days. If you make this, let us know how you served in comments! We at TFK are constantly looking for new things to pour sauce over.