Tomatoe Sauce

Sauce is not a simple matter for some of us. There are so many versions to be explored. Bolognese, gravy, marinara, meat, etc. There is the family recipe that must be kept true. There are internet recipes and advice on every cooking website. Here we are discussing our Farm Life Family recipe. This is basically my mother's mother's (gramma) recipe with a few minor alterations such as not using tomato paste. I still do not understand tomato paste.

Growing up Italian, making sauce was a ritual. It was a right of passage to be allowed to help at all. The family recipe was taught by grandma shortly after learning to walk. Your age did not matter...this was a serious job. Some of my earliest memories of childhood at grammas was standing on the highchair stirring and skimming the sauce.

Grammas was a meat sauce; not a gravy. Maybe we should take a minute and run through the terms:

• Marinara: A quick vegetable only sauce. The term Marinara originated with fishermen that would whip up a quick vegetable sauce on the boat or shore. This term came from the people making it, not what they put in it.

• Zuppa Di Pesce: THe above Marinara with seafood.

• Bolognese: A slow simmered meat sauce with gound meats in it.

• Ragu: Another slow-simmered meat sauce but this time with Whole meatballs and Sausage and things instead of ground meat.

  • Also referred to as Gravy and meat sauce depending on where you grew up. Anecdotally, I have found the term Gravy used a great deal with New Jersey Italians I have interacted with over the years.

Today we are discussing the Traditional Italian-American Meat Sauce. It is rare that I will make a pot of sauce for just one meal. I make gallons at a time and pressure can everything. Our children are then able to make dinners in our absence with us knowing that there is nothing but wholesome goodness in there. Our vegetables, our meats. The fact that there is meat in the sauce is a constant. Exactly what meat is subject to change. This batch contained lamb shanks, homemade sweet and hot sausages, and the family favorite, meatballs. Last batch, I used beef shanks and Ox tail with the sausages and meatballs. This batch of meatballs was beef and rabbit meats.

I start this process with the meatballs. I do apologize, but I do not have hard measurements for you. I was taught measurements such as a pinch, a handful, it looks right, and my favorite...Enough, but not too much. Very helpful right? I can tell you the quantities I used for this batch, but you have to play with the amounts of everything to match your pallet and pot.

• 13Lbs Beef Bottom Round: ( I just cannot buy ground meat at a store. I worked in a butcher shop as a teenager with true professionals, all of which took quality and safety as paramount objects. Still, the ground meat, as in all butcher shops, was made with the bits that were trimmed and the oxydized meats that could not stay on display. All ground to order, but still you did not know exactly what pieces were going in. If it did not look lean enough or too gray, run it through the grinder again and it would appear "red-er" with less notable fat and oxydization. Do not misunderstand, there were no safety issues like in the 1850's, but still. I will never forget how the first butcher I ever worked with would get a gleam to his eye when someone ordered a pound of 90% lean ground beef. He would always say something like, "would you like to choose a steak here in the case for us to grind or would you prefer the house grind?" With the prior being full steak price, they would almost always choose the house. He would then say to me, "You know what to do" and I would run the 80% lean through again to look leaner. He had made it clear to me at the onset of my employ that this was his one untruth, his one thing he would not be completely honest with the customer about. Though looking back on it, it really wasn't dishonesty, it was just not full disclosure. He felt that a customer had to pay for what they wanted. There was a reason the house grind was $3/Lb and our least expensive sirloin was $7/Lb. He explained how he hated wasting the meat and simply could stay in business if he ground a seven dollar steak and sold it for 3.. Ground meat was the leftovers. Now I go to the grocery store or restaurant depot and see ten pound tubes of ground meat. No country of origin, no piece list of what they ground. It just isn't my favorite. So I get whole cuts and grind them myself from known farms. (As a side note, beef calf costs more than doubled a couple years ago and we could not raise a cow this year or last. Our last cow was three years ago and we just finished eating him a few weeks ago.)

Ground meats are also the most dangerous things we can buy. There is just no way of knowing exactly what is in there. The USDA monitoring has improved the safety, but it remains a crap shoot. My gramma and her sister both would insist that they go back with the butcher when they ordered ground meats. Back in the 50's through the 80's, neighborhood butcher shops were a still a thing. You would pick a steak and have it ground at full price of course. Somewhere in the mid to late 80's, as the family stores were being pushed out by our mega markets, this stopped being an option. Now we have ground meats pre-packaged or pre-ground in the display case. The package is filled with nitrogen to stop the chance of oxidization of the meat, increasing the visible shelf life. Prior to this procedure, meat did not need an expiration date as you would see a piece of gray meat that you just did not want to buy. Ok, I will climb off of the ground meat soapbox.

• 6 LBS of ground Rabbit: We raise rabbits and harvest them on a regular basis. Rabbit meat is delicious, with a texture and appearance similar to ground chicken, and a mild flavor. To be quite honest, our family would prefer just rabbit meatballs but Nana will not eat them, so we meet in the middle with a mix.

• Eggs: (I use three duck eggs for this amount of meat) It would be four or five chicken eggs depending on their size)

• Breadcrumbs: about four cups. I use homemade crumbs from our bread.

• Onions: 2 large (I actually ran them through the grinder with the beef) If chopping by hand, you want a fine dice so they don't fall out when you are rolling them into balls.

• Garlic: two whole bulbs

• carrot: 4 medium (also run through the grinder or a fine dice)

• Parsley: A ton of parsley. about three handfuls finely chopped

• Basil: just about the same as the parsley

• Marjoram: a small handful

• grated Romano: three cups (Parmesan will do fine)

There are two methods for mixing the ingredients. the first is to simply put everything in a mixing bowl and mix till combined. The proper method is to mix everything but the meat until well blended. add the meat to the mix and fold it in just till combined. This will make the most fluffy meatballs possible. If you prefer your meatball chewy-er, (like the frozen meatballs at BJ's. Costco, or Sam's Club) then use the first method and mix like you are making sausage.

Next, you must decide how to cook them. I fry them. Gramma fried them in olive oil. We have a Bayou Classic fryer which is loaded with beef and lamb tallow and pork lard. You can also bake them at 375 degrees. Now I mentioned earlier that I pressure can my sauce. With that in mind, I fry them at 350-375 quickly so I get a nice hard crust but the inside is still underdone...they will finish in the sauce. If you are not canning, add your balls to the sauce about 30 minutes before it is done. You can also drop the raw meatballs into your sauce and cook them completely in the sauce. This removes the precooking step, but also removes the outer crust. Again, it is just a personal preference. I can tell you if you drop them in raw, do not stir for at least 20 minutes so they have time to firm up, otherwise you will be making Bolognese. As a note, there is only one tray pictured while I made two and a half trays with the 20Lbs of meat mix.

Now onto the soffritto. (vegetable mix) I use the classic Italian mix.

• Onions (3)

• Carrots (4)

• Celery (1 head)

Technically garlic is not part of the soffritto as it is too delicate and is not added at the initial stage.

All are diced to a medium dice and added to the pot with hot olive oil. We sweat the veggies until soft and translucent.

• Garlic: Two whole bulbs pealed and sliced thin.

• Parsley: a few handfuls of chopped parsley

• Basil: Just a bit less than the parsley

• Sweet Paprika: just shy of two tablespoons

• Marjoram: just shy of two tablespoons

• Marconi Pepper: Just one whole pepper slit down the center. I would use more, but our girls don't yet like spicy. (this is the classic long thin Italian pepper.

• Red Wine: 2 cups for this much sauce. We used the family wine as a child. The making died with my great uncles and I now buy wine. This time I had a blended red from California...any dark red will do...no Chablis.

The process started with the sweating of the soffritto.

I then add the remaining herbs and let them sweat a few minutes.

I then move the herbs to the outer rim of the pan and place the lamb shanks on the high heat to brown. Once they have been browned on both sides, take out the shanks, stir the veggies and move them back out to the side of the pot and brown the sausages. Once the rest of the meat is browned, pour in the wine. Allow it to reduce for just a minute or two.

Now it is time to add the tomatoes. In a perfect world, this post would have started a day earlier with the processing of a tub of tomatoes. Blanching, and peeling, and crushing. Unfortunately for the recipe, My girls have been devouring our tomato crop before they leave the garden. It also would take several cubic feet of raw tomatoes to make 12 quarts of crushed tomatoes. For this round, I used Sclafani Crushed and Isabella diced tomatoes, two number ten cans of each. The diced pour out clean, but the crushed tomatoes leaves a bit in the can. I like to wash down the sides and pour that watery mix into the pot as well. The sauce needs some water for the slow simmer. I then add all the meats, except the balls, and keep it on medium heat, stirring often, Once the simmer starts, I move it to the lowest burner and simmer on low, covered, for three or more hours. I know it is done when the shank meat falls off the bone.

When the sauce is cooked, I then scoop out all the meat. Of course sauce was gonna be dinner, so a smaller pan separated enough sauce and meat for dinner, including the meatballs. An hour before dinner, I added those meatballs to the dinner pot and simmered to fully cook them. The last ten minutes I add the other meats that are fully cooked just to heat them.

Canning time:

I add meatballs to fill the quart, wide-mouthed mason jars, add an inch of water, then fill them up with sauce. In the past, I added the watered down sauce to the jar first, and place the meatballs into the jars, and then top off with additional sauce if necessary. This is a much faster method. The way I did it this time caused the need to push the balls around to remove air pockets. It took an extra minute per jar. One jar I did not get all the air out and the lid blew off during the canning process covering the other jars with sauce; what a mess.

Sausage links are added to other jars and filled with the same inch of water and sauce.

The sauce jars without meats, I use regular mouth jars as there will be no battle with balls when its time to reheat. What about temps and times? This has been a lot of trial and error. Meat free marinara can be canned in a water bath as it is high acid. When I add meat, I see a clear need to pressure can them. The internet says quart jars get 70 minutes at 10Lbs of pressure. I have attempted 45 minutes at 15Lbs and we lose a lot of sauce to boil over at the higher pressure. One note is that not all pressure cookers have the ability to adjust pressure

3-piece canner weight. 5, 10, or 15 pounds

This is the weight on my presto canner. This is an internet picture of a replacement that is available. My smaller pressure cooker has only a 15Lbs weight. I use the smaller for three wide mouth pint jars or 4 regular mouth pint jars. The large unit will hold 7 quart jars. Someday, I hope to own the giant presto canner that will hold 14 quart jars.

The meat free sauce still has meat juices and fats. Marinara can be water bath canned if you can assure the acidity is high enough. I always pressure can everything and we do can quite a bit of foods. For the quarts of sauce only, I used 10Lbs of pressure for 45 minutes. I also have rarely canned anything for over forty-five minutes. Again, this is not the recommended time, but I do like to experiment. After a decade of jarring meat sauce, I find the 45 mins of actual pressure time has been sufficient. The one time that I only went 30 minutes, half the jars pressurized on the shelf with dangerous bacterial growth. One of the best things you can know is to store your canned foods WITHOUT THE RINGS.

Years ago, we had made a batch of dog food, We apparently did not can it long enough. At that time, I stored with the rings on so we could double stack the cans. About a month later, we heard an explosion. Not shake the house loud, but clearly something went pop. The smell; any other EMT's out there...something like UTI mixed with GI Bleed and a week of decomp. And then the mess. Botulism and chicken bone bits all over everything. It took hours of gagging to get that cleaned up. Since then, we have had a few cans go bad. Without the rings, the can off gasses as necessary. A slight whiff of an odor the first days that slowly increases until you know to go looking. Not having the rings on in storage also makes it easier to "spot check" every month or so. I simply grab the jar by the rim of the lid and lift it up off the shelf. If the lid comes off, it goes in the trash. Just that simple.

One final note...skimming. As the meats cook, their fats are released. most of those fats and oils float to the top. Depending on how fatty your meats are will decide for you if skimming is necessary. I want fat in my sauce. So much of the flavor is provided by that oil. Still too much of a good thing is often not a good thing. When it appears that there is a layer of fats/oils covering the entire pot, consider skimming by sinking your ladle just below the surface of the fat. Work slowly and gently so you do not just mix it back in. The method we used in some of the restaurants I worked in was to bring the pot into the walk-in (or in your fridge, and allow the fats to solidify. Then lift it off of the pot. In this method, you are going to remove 96% of the fats. If you are concerned with the amount of fat you are eating, consider this method, but remember that our bodies do require fats and lamb fat is one of the best sources for your body. Children absolutely need fats to properly develop.