Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce
This recipe I got from Marcia who got it from her mother Eva. It is my favourite spaghetti sauce.
The recipe makes a nice large batch of sauce. You have enough to freeze 3 plastic containers of sauce and also have enough for a meal of spaghetti.
Note that while in Medellin I could not find tomato juice, nor tomato soup, so I just substituted 6 large tomatoes quartered, and it turned out quite tasty.
Ingredients A
- Olive Oil
- Onions Diced 1 Cup
- Mushrooms Diced 1 Cup
- Lean Ground Beef 2 lbs
Ingredients B
garlic 3-4 cloves diced
Tomato Juice 750 ml
Tomato Pase one little can
Tomato Soup 1 can
Tomato Ketchup, plenty.
Celery Diced 1 Cup
Bay Leaves 4
Celery Salt, Salt and pepper to taste.
Italian spices Cover once, mix in and do it again.
Hot Cayenne Pepper to taste, cover twice, or once, or even less depending on tolerance for spicy.
My default is just a little bit, because not everyone can tolerate a spicy sauce.
Preparation
Pre-brown the meat in frying pan. Since there are 2lbs of ground beef, it works best to do this in two pan loads.
Add half of ingredients A to a frying pan at medium high heat, when the onions and mushrooms are almost ready, add the meat and brown it all. Then transfer everything to the crock pot. Don't overdo the browning, you needn't worry if some of the meat is still a bit red, it is going to cook 4.5 hours in the slow cooker.
Repeat for second pan load.
Now that you have transferred everything from A to the crock pot, add ingredients B. Cover the slow-cooker and turn it on low heat, leave it at least 4.5 hours.
Transfer some of the sauce to plastic containers, let those cool and freeze for later use.
Serve the remainder with noodles.