Spaghetti Sauce
Spaghetti Sauce is a must-have in the repertoire of any well-rounded cook. There are as many types or styles of spaghetti sauce as there are chefs; probably more, in fact, as I am sure that many cooks will vary their sauces according to their mood, available ingredients, and what guests they have. As long as you have a good grounding in the fundamentals, you will be able to “wing” it, and make whatever comes to mind, and always end up with something tasty.
My spaghetti sauce always contains meat. There are many times I will have a meal with meatless tomato sauce, but spaghetti is not one of them. To me, the spaghetti just seems to cry out for it! But having said that, there is no earthly reason that you absolutely have to have meat in your sauce. You will still want something that will add some nice texture to the spagheti sauce, so you can substitute with anything that you enjoy: mushrooms, zucchini, chopped fennel root, or anything else that you have handy. Of course, you will treat these ingredients differently from the way the meat is cooked; most of these ingredients are simply tossed in at the beginning of the simmering stage, but you don’t want them to go in too early, as soggy veggies are no fun. A good vegetarian spaghetti sauce is a wonderful thing, regardless of my carniverous leanings, but if the veggies have dissolved by the time you serve the spaghetti then you have detracted from the texture, in my oh-so-humble opinion.
If you decide to use meat, then what kind should you use? Well, the best results in my own kitchen have always been a blend of ground beef and ground pork. The mixture of the two flavors seems to blend very well with all the spices, and leaving out either one of these always seems to lower the effectiveness of at least one of the flavors. But using just one or the other will not ruin your spaghetti; in fact most of the time I only have one type of meat on hand anyway. The difference is noticeable, but not drastic.
To start with, I always work with two pots, as it cuts down on the time to prepare the spaghetti sauce. In one pot I will be working with the meat, in the other I will work with all the other ingredients. It is easier to add the meat to the other ingredients, so make the other pot the one that the spaghetti sauce will be simmering in. We will refer to the two pots as the “meat pot” and the “veggie pot” for clarity.
In the veggie pot, I start with my aromatics. These are vegetables that contain a lot of flavor and aroma, and there are a few classic choices. The standard mirepoix contains carrots, onions and celery, whereas the “trinity”, common in Mediterranean, Cajun and Creole cooking uses green peppers in place of the carrots. Other options include leeks, fennel root, and other peppers, bell and otherwise.
In the spaghetti sauce that I made last I used carrots, onions and green pepper, and, of course, garlic. These are “sweated” in the veggie pot with some olive oil and salt until they become soft and the onions start to look clear. Once this happens I add a few spices: usually a decent helping of pre-mixed Italian spices (oregano, marjoram, basil, thyme, sage, and savory), but I usually help this along with a little extra basil because it goes so well with the tomatoand pork. A bay leaf or two, plus some fennel seeds or anise seeds round it out. Fennel and Anise seeds have a wonderful licorice flavor that goes so well in Italian cooking, especially if you are using pork.
I always allow my aromatic veggies to cook for a while with the spices. The longer the spices cook before the liquid is added, the more flavor will be gotten from them. Once I am satisfied that I have gotten as much flavor as possible, I then add my canned tomatoes and tomato paste. I use canned tomatoes for a number of reasons: simplicity, cost, easier storage and time all come to mind. I have used fresh tomatoes and enjoyed the results very much, but not the process, and the difference was minimal. Unless the tomatoes are picked from your own garden or someone else’s, you will not get that much more flavor. Tomato paste, because it is concentrated, adds a huge hit of tomato flavor, and is a must in spaghetti sauce. It also helps thicken the sauce, making it stick better to the spaghetti — there is nothing worse that having a bunch of uneaten sauce on the plate and no pasta left!
While the vegetables are cooking, I am also working on the meat pot. Browning meat is an important process for two reasons: health and taste. For health reasons, the meat must be completely cooked. (Food poisoning is probably more common than you think; in fact the symptoms are so similar to the flu that it has been estimated that one in three “flu” episodes are actually the result of food poisoning.) Of course, even if you do not brown the meat, you could let it simmer in the sauce for half an hour and you would be perfectly safe, which brings us to the flavor issue. Browning your beef or pork adds flavor. To understand why, read my post on Carmelization. Make sure you actually brown the meat, not just turn it gray. You should get a little bit of sticking action on the bottom of the pot, but NOT burning. To help the browning process, drain the fat from the meat pot once the meat is mostly cooked, and add some salt. The browning should then start immediately, and you will need to stir the meat occassionaly to prevent burning, and to make sure that as much of the meat as possible gets browned. When you have finished browning, you can get the little bits off the bottom of the pot by pouring in a bit of the water from the canned tomatoes and scraping a bit. The meat is now ready to be added to the veggie pot.
Once all the ingredients are together, you want to simmer the spaghetti suace for at least half an hour, and preferably an hour or more, at a fairly low temperature. This is partly to allow the flavors to mix and mingle, but it is also to allow the meat to soften. Browning the meat not only adds flavor, but it also “hardens” the meat. Letting it simmer in the slightly acidic environment of tomatoes will soften it considerably. If you are not adding meat, but you want to add other ingredients, you need to time it so they will soften but not dissolve. Half an hour for most vegetable is more than enough to make them soggy.
Lastly, a bit of grated parmesan or romano cheese makes a great topping — but remember: parmesan cheese does NOT come from a green cardboard tube!
Yours in Good Taste,
Erik Christensen