Pasta Sauce

About once every two months I make a huge pot of pasta sauce. The thing I love about pasta is that it's very quick to fix, once you have the sauce. And there's quite a few variations.

In my sauce, I put

2 lbs hamburger meat
1 package hot (or mild) italian sausages
3 reg size jars traditional prego spaghetti sauce
1 onion chopped
1 green, yellow, red, and orange bell peppers, diced
garlic powder, salt and pepper, italian seasoning.

1. In a crockpot, pour the spaghetti sauce, add veggies and stir. (low heat)
2. In a large skillet cook the hamburger meat and sausages (skins off) til done. While cooking add salt and pepper and italian seasoning. When cooked thru, drain, and add to sauce.
3. I like to let my sauce simmer in the crockpot for 3-6 hours. Add the garlic powder to taste.
4. At the end of the day, turn off crockpot and let sauce cool. Once it's about room temp, I pour 3 cups of sauce into large gallon size freezer ziplock baggies. This will make about 5 bags. When i'm ready to make them, I just take out of freezer, plop bag in a bowl of lukewarm water to thaw for 30-45 minutes, then pour into a bowl with a can of tomato sauce and microwave.

Tonight we're having spaghetti, but on the menu for the next month is tortelli (the premade kind in the grocery store), rigatonni (penne pasta cooked, sauce, and 1 cup shredded colby jack cheese added in the last 5 minutes to melt), ravioli, and maybe some manicotti. It's great and cheap. The sauce costs about $20 total (that's $4 a meal), the pasta $1-4, so it's my fall back when i need to really stretch those pennies.