Slow Cooker Pasta Sauce (That Your Italian Grandmother Would Love)

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 I feel fairly confident that you have never had a spaghetti sauce made quite like this before. Here’s what happened: I had a craving for meatloaf, so I pulled out a favorite recipe and made one. It was very tasty and I enjoyed it for a couple of days, and then, quite frankly, I’d had enough. I thought about cutting it into slices, wrapping each slice in plastic wrap, putting those slices into a gallon Ziploc freezer bag, and putting them into freezer, but as I have no doubt mentioned to you in the past, it is like playing a game of freezer Jenga every time I attempt to add something new. My goal is to take things out of the freezer, not to put things in. That freezer, that wonderful, magnificent freezer, that I bought in 1979 is still (knock on wood) working. That was back in the day when appliances were worth the money you paid for them. I was freshly out of college, living on my own, and that was one of my first major purchases. Sure, other college kids were buying furniture, I figured that I could sit on the floor, a freezer was what I wanted. But, as freezers tended to be back in the day, it wasn’t frost-free. Defrosting that freezer is something that I have not done since I moved into this house nine years ago. Now do you understand why it looks like the Arctic north? But I digress.

Where am I going with this, you ask yourself, well, I’ll tell you. I went from craving meatloaf to craving a good spaghetti sauce. I had Italian sausage that I could use and indeed, I had a couple of pounds of frozen ground chuck, but as I looked at that meatloaf from the other day, I thought, why not just cut it up into tiny little cubes and use it in the meat sauce, so I did. It was excellent! Because there was so much flavor in the meatloaf itself, I think that imparted an additional flavoring into the sauce. Now, all of this said, I’m not suggesting that you make a meatloaf and cut it up. Go ahead and, as listed in the recipe below, use ground chuck. This is a good sauce whether you make it the way I did with the meatloaf or not, but keep in mind that leftovers have many uses. More than you might think. Be creative. Always.

 

Slow Cooker Pasta Sauce

(That Your Italian Grandmother Would Love)

1 lb. sweet or spicy* Italian sausage, sliced 
1 lb. ground chuck

2 Melissa’s shallots, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 c. minced fresh parsley

1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes

1 14.5 oz. can tomato sauce

2 6-oz. cans tomato paste

½ c. red wine**

2 T. sugar

1½ t. dried basil

½ t. fennel seed

1 t. Italian seasoning 

1 bay leaf

½ t. oregano

½ t. salt

¼ t. freshly ground black pepper

½ t. Montreal steak seasoning

 

In a 10- to 12-inch sauté pan over medium heat, cook sausage and beef until browned; drain on paper-towel-lined plate. Once drained, add it, and the rest of the ingredients to a 6-quart crockpot, give it a mighty stir, and cook on high for four hours.

 Mangia!

 *I like food with a bit of zing, so I used spicy sausage, use what your family likes.

**If you don’t have red wine, use coffee or beef stock. In the name of all things holy, do NOT use water! Water has no taste. It will add nothing to your delicious homemade sauce.