Eat, yes, of course. But “have a traditional pasta sauce recipe, handed down through the generations”? I’m not sure I’d expect a Mexican or Chinese family to have one of those.
You’re misquoting me. I said “handed down through the generation (from me when I was younger to me, now) or even further along than that”!
Ooooooohhhh. I couldn’t parse the parenthetical, so I thought it was some kind of typo! Sorry about that!
Not a problem, Leaper.
Anybody got any sauces that aren’t tomato based? I enjoy a good pesto sauce. Or a nice cheese one.
Or a nice oriental one for noodles? Maybe with some sesame oil, peanut butter, and ginger?
I fear I was a bit inadvertently restrictive when I called it a ‘spaghetti’ sauce, as I’ve had some delicious thai, vietnamese, and chinese noolde sauces in the past.
These aren’t sauce recipes, they’re gravy recipes. I’m not Italian and even I know that. 
How so? I know you are being facetious but I can’t figure what about.
It’s a Sopranos thing.
This is a very simple recipe based on fennel and basil:
Sauté 2 cloves of sliced garlic in olive oil to infuse the flavor – discard garlic
Add (1) 6-oz can of tomato paste plus 2 cans of water and let simmer until mixture is consistent
Add (1) 28-oz can of tomato puree Plus 1 ½ cans of water.
Add (2) tsp. Of fennel seeds, (2) tbsp. Basil and 2 bay leaves
Simmer 3-4 hours partially covered until fennel seeds have softened and sauce has cooked down.
Meatballs
(1) lb of lean hamburger
(1) egg
(3) slices of toast made into bread crumbs
Add Parmesan cheese in a ratio of ½ of the bread crumbs
Cook meatballs and Italian sausage with sauce. A lean hamburger should require no skimming to remove fat. The cheese is used to make the meatballs tender. Since it takes 3-4 hrs to soften the fennel seeds in the sauce it is not necessary to cook the meatballs separately and the flavor is incorporated into the sauce. Vegetarian substitute protein can be used instead of hamburger but I would add a little smoke flavoring in.
For everyone who uses ground beef in their sauce, just once leave that out and use ground Italian sausage instead.
I thought I made the perfect sauce until I was told to use Italian sausage instead of beef. It is the change that will make you go, “Oh yeah, that’s what it needed.”
I am Italian, and it just so happens I am getting ready to make a ravioli based Christmas dinner this weekend. Here is the old family recipe directly transcribed from my grandmother’s hand written guide (recipe really isn’t very accurate) to Christmas dinner:
Fry meat – sausage, pork, veal, steak
Add meat to already heated tomato sauce – canned tomatoes, garlic, thyme, parsley, onions
Beat that glowacks. 
You don’t sauté you onions? I Think that would leave them a bit potent.
Otherwise, I appreciate the simplicity. What type of canned tomatoes?
Well, I cook the onions with the meat in white wine. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I do this because that’s the way my grandmother did it.
Tomatoes are usually canned, imported Italian tomatoes, with a few fresh cut up and tossed in.
The sauce gets started first about 24 hours before dinner, then I make meatballs, fry up the rest of the meat, and it all simmers as low as I can get it overnight.
And you should see the ravioli “recipe” it calls for a “fist” of cabbage and spinach. If anyone knows the conversion from fists to cups I would appreciate it.
Cool! I’m a terrible cook, but one thing I can do is spaghetti sauce. Originally called “Funky Spaghetti Sauce” (in honour of a girl I was dating at the time whose last name was Funk, brought her up to my place after the date and was the first date I made the sauce for, and I got complimented on it well) but, after I married my wife (whose last name has never been Funk) I changed it to “Four Burner Spaghetti Sauce”, not because it’s overly hot but because all four burners are used on the stove at the same time (counting the one to boil the spaghetti with). Could also be called “Whole Stove Spaghetti”. It requires:
1 750ml (?) can of spaghetti sauce (don’t know exactly what size they are, and there’s none in the house presently to check. Just your average can you find in the store. Any brand/flavour works)
1 lb ground beef
1 yellow onion
a mess of mushrooms (hey, I’m a terrible measurer, keep this in mind throughout the recipe)
one red pepper and/or one green pepper
a handful or so of sliced olives
2 or 3 strips of bacon
On one burner get a medium saucepan and plop the spaghetti sauce in it. Simmer on low
On another burner, brown the ground beef. Dice the onion and slice the mushrooms and sautee them with the ground beef.
Cut up the bacon into little pieces and cook that on another burner.
Combine beef, mushrooms, onions, and bacon with spaghetti sauce. Throw in olives
Cut up peppers and throw them in too.
After about 20 minutes throw in a squirt or two of BBQ sauce and a spoonful or two of salsa. Heck shred some cheese and throw it in!
The great thing about this recipe is that it’s extremely versatile! Since we’re trying to watch our fat intake, haven’t had it (or anything) with bacon in years. My 8 year old doesn’t like mushrooms or onions or “spicy things” (she has an incredibly liberal definition of “spicy”) and wife doesn’t like olives, so it’s basically been lately the beef, salsa (as long as the kid doesn’t know) and BBQ sauce. Since we have wild chives growing in our yard, we often take some of them, chop them up and throw them in too, as I said, versatile. IMHO, though, the peppers, bacon, mushrooms, olives, and onions are what the recipe is about and what makes it special. (Plus, the bacon uses the fourth burner to give it its name).
Depends on what you’re going for. Unless I’m doing an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Sunday gravy type of sauce, I don’t like Italian sausage in mine.
My standard meat sauce is a bolognese: pancetta, chicken livers (not enough to give the dish liveriness, but enough to make the flavor richer), onion, carrot, celery, NO GARLIC, milk, white wine, beef, tomato sauce, salt, pepper. Beef is not browned in this preparation. Basically, I follow this recipe with pancetta instead of Prosciutto di Parma, and I skip the beef broth.
Why no garlic? Just curious.
Bolognese properly does not have garlic. And in a lot of classical Italian cuisine it’s garlic or onion, not both. But this is very regional. Personally, I find a lot (but not all, by any stretch) of American adaptations of Italian dishes to be a bit too heavy on the garlic and overloaded with spices in general. They also tend to be way too heavy on the sauce-to-pasta ratio, just too heavy in general. IMHO, of course. My absolute favorite pasta dish is bucatini all’amatriciana, as seen here, with recipe linked to. Olive oil, onions, guanciale (or pancetta), pepper flakes, black pepper, tomatoes, and pecorino romano. Note the sauce to pasta ratio in those photos. That’s perfect for me. God dammit, I’m hungry now.
That really, REALLY depends on the region. Some people will call it sauce, some will call it gravy.
I don’t like the seasonings in Italian sausage. For one thing, I don’t like anise or fennel. I’ve made pretty good sauce with bulk sage breakfast sausage though.
Nah. I actually made that change on *purpose *- my mom does use Italian sausage. I switched to ground beef/pork when I realized that I could control my ingredients better and it’s considerably cheaper. Red pepper flakes, garlic, oregano and fennel are the seasonings in sausage, so why buy theirs for $5.99 a pound when ground beef is on sale for $2.49 and ground pork $3.49? And, just like in meatloaf, I like taste and texture of the mixture of beef and pork, which you don’t get in Italian sausage.
Plus, I’m always suspicious of supermarket fresh sausage. Who knows how old those scraps were before they went into the grinder?
Are the canned tomatoes, whole, diced, crushed, sauce or paste?
I refuse to use tomato sauce, I need more texture than that. My mom used to use whole tomatoes, but I think that was too much. I find a can of crushed, a can of diced, and a can of tomato paste gives a nice texture.
Red onion, garlic- diced and fried til soft.
Add meat (chicken, turkey, minced beef, bacon, salami, whatever)
Add vegetables- usually some combination of diced red/yellow pepper, courgette (zucchini), mushrooms, aubergine (eggplant), celery or carrots
Add tomato- 1 tin of chopped plum tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of double concentrated paste.
Add woody herbs- thyme, rosemary, oregano- whatever is available
Add secret ingredients- star anise, splash of Worcestershire sauce, red wine, or balsamic vinegar, chopped sun-dried tomato, anchovy paste, chilli flakes, paprika- whatever comes to hand- depends on meat and veg used and my mood.
Season to taste
Add a sprinkle of brown sugar if tomatoes too tart.
Add soft herbs (parsley, basil, sage) if using.
Serve over pasta, topped with cheese.
Mine comes out different every time, but it is still good.