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The Recipe Thread! Part II: Electric Mixaroo

Hey.. thanks for some of the suggestions and constructive critism..lol.


Still want to hear what others have to say to all of this.. including.. not use a slow cooker?
 
There we go.. Now it's over in Second Opinion.. lol.

Soo lets hear what people have to say.
 
you need to use fresh everything.

do a search on the internets for "tomato sauce". there must be 10^6 recipes online. pick one which calls for fresh everything.

do yourself a favour. buy a nigel slater cookbook. 'real fast food' is a good place to start.

:)

alasdair
 
lol.. yea, thanks for the advice. I am actually a pretty decent cook.. but I always feel like there is something I can do differently.. and I have never slow cooked any type of sauce before.. so I was just wondering what other people would personally do to their sauce.
 
Awww, you took out all the lounge responses. No more 'FUCK YOUR SPAGHETTI, BEETCH!" :(

In any case, if you want to make a good spaghetti sauce the key is to use fresh ingredients. Real tomatoes that you cook down. Freshly chopped onion and garlic that you brown first and not just ground spices. Shitloads of fresh grated parm. It takes longer, but it sounds like that is what you want anyways.

Mix some wine in there. Add sugar to cut acidity. That's about all I got without my recipe book...
 
^Excellent advice!

I made spaghetti sauce today. I used a bunch of crap I had in the house. I can't have tomatoes that aren't heavily processed (food allergy) so I have to use canned/jarred stuff.

I used:
1 jar Bionaturae Crushed Tomatoes
1 can Trader Joe's Tomato Sauce
1/2 cup cabernet sauvignon
2 cloves fresh garlic
1 small sweet onion (both of these chopped finely and sauteed)
A bunch of garlic powder
A pinch of red pepper flakes (do this to taste)
A pinch of oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup parmesan cheese (this is optional)

and I threw some frozen soy meatballs in there too.

Provided you don't have my weird allergy then alasdair's advice of making it all from scratch is very good. Easy, cheap, and pleases almost everyone... nutritious too!
 
My spaghetti sauce didn't turn out as good as I woud have liked it too..lol.. so I am going to try again this weekend.
 
Use fresh onions, fresh garlic, fresh tomatoes, bay leaves, oregano,salt, pepper, ... good spaghetti sauce comes from scratch.

Ragu? Prego? :|

Its a sad sad day when people see canned sauce as quality.

Ground Beef is great, but lamb meatballs... mmmmmm... *drool* Just swap out the types of beef. The recipes require some tweaking, but you should start with a base recipe and see how it is once its all done then modify it from there.

Also, you might want to do a little research on different spices and how they modify the taste of a recipe. How different starches and sugars within certain things will change the consistency of your recipe. Consistency is important. The best example I can think of is peaches within peach cobbler. If you use frozen peaches the peaches will be all deflated and blah, but fresh peaches mmmm then they peaches are firm. Tomatoes are the same way sorta. Preservatives are nasty and shouldn't be used. Canned tomatoes are OK, but homemade canned tomatoes or tomato paste is good. Its easy to make but requires a great amount of patience.

MmMmMmMm thinking about this makes me want to cook some. I'm going to go make some.

:)

Also, as a last thought 24 hours of cooking isn't really needed. I think that a Crock Pot all day or night makes it pretty good. For your starting you should try just toying with shorter recipes so you get used to what will work.

:)

You should give us some feedback. Let us know how it goes. What recipe you used, what you thought, etc.
 
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^ nice post.

retrospect, what's your goal? why the obsession with slow cooking specifically?

i assume your goal is a great-tasting tomato sauce? if so, quality fresh ingredients are the only way forward.

alasdair
 
I'm not a great cook by any means, but I am Italian so naturally I have marinara running through my veins, and I can make killer sauce.
I find I make the best sauce when I avoid all measurements. I know what needs to go in (most of it has been listed ... the key is FRESH INGREDIENTS!), and I just throw in this or that and taste accordingly until its perfect.
I only let it simmer for 1-2 hours, because I get really hungry and can't wait much longer to eat it.

Need any specific tips, just ask...
 
This sounds nasty. Ragu and Prego are pre-made sauces - you don't need and shouldn't add anything to them. You shouldn't even bother to buy them.

Next... minced garlic and onion powder? Are you joking me? Are you trying to make American Chop Suey for uncultured redneck schoolchildren or something? Dehydrated garlic and onion are garbage.

What you need to start out with is fresh picked tomatoes, or unseasoned, unsugared, unsalted tomato 'sauce'. Like, the cheapest type of tomato sauce they sell at the store. Just liquified tomatoes.

I don't know why you want to cook your sauce for 48 hours, but it can't hurt. I'd wait until the last 2-4 hours to add your spices and sugar. For spices, I'd recommend FRESH basil leaves, fresh rosemary leaves, some dried thyme, black peppercorns, salt, brown sugar, and some dried peperoncini (hot peppers).

Around the same time you add the spices, saute a lot of fresh garlic and yellow onions in a lot of olive oil and add that to the sauce. This is the most important part of delicious spaghetti sauce if you ask me.

I'm a vegetarian so I don't know anything about slow cooking your meat, but I imagine 'ground beef' will leave little chewy gristle chunks in your sauce even after 72 hours of cooking. You can feel the gristle in the Prego and Ragu even. I'd get the deli/butcher at the supermarket to grind you some good lean steak instead. I recommend avoiding having any meat fat get in the sauce, and make sure most of the fat in the sauce comes from olives.

And a little red wine never hurt anybody either... especially not any Italians.
 
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^ why dried thyme specifically? you specify fresh everything else so why dried thyme?

anywhere that sells fresh rosemary and basil should have fresh thyme. if you (plural) are into cooking and have trouble getting fresh herbs, consider growing them yourself - then you'll always have plentiful supply of the freshest herbs.

alasdair
 
I've never seen fresh thyme sold in any market around here, is why. I've seen thyme plants at nurseries, but never sold in the grocery store. Didn't wanna send him on a wild goose chase.
 
Coolio said:
I've never seen fresh thyme sold in any market around here, is why.
Click to expand...
maybe he doesn't live where you live? :)

i think the best thing to do with herbs is always try to use fresh and, if you can't get them, plump for dried.

alasdair
 
alasdairm said:
make your sauce from scratch using fresh tomatoes! geez.

why go to all this trouble but start with some crappy canned sauce?

alasdair
Click to expand...

Canned tomatoes are picked at their ripest, and are produced from varietals that haven't been bred for enduring a transcontinental shipping. If you have access to enough fresh, ripe Roma tomatoes to make a good amount of sauce, great... for most people though canned tomatoes (not ragu, or jarred sauces) is the best base available.

The canning process even brings out some subtle flavors that using fresh tomatoes wont do (unless you spike your sauce with a little alcohol while you're stewing them.


For the OP: your sauce sucks
 
Pander Bear said:
...(not ragu, or jarred sauces)...
Click to expand...
that's what i was referring to (when i said "crappy canned sauce").

alasdair
 
I find that the best tomatoes to use are the canned ones that we can in the summer at my parents house. Homemade, home grown and home canned tomatoes are the best thing.

Also with the garlic you want to use halved cloves maybe quarters. Or very thin slices. If you cook it for the right amount of time they garlic sorta gets squishy and the taste permeates through the whole sauce.

Johannes, don't you start with a base recipe and work upwards? I find thats the best, but yes you're right sometimes the amount, type and volume of spices you use can change. However, as I make sauces more and more I'm finding that I have a set of spices, tomatoes and what not that is pre-measured and very little changes.

Retrospect, what did you end up doing? How did it turn out?
 
My friend and I used to get tomato paste and just go nuts adding spices to it and a little bit of cheese. I dont add meat cause I hate meat :) But doing it from scratch is totally the best. But Im not opposed to canned sauce either.

Man I'm just a bunch of help today arent I ;)
 
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