Ahem, I would like to announce an actual original recipe!
Brooke's Best Spaghetti Sauce
A few weeks ago I was having a throw-what-you-have-together-and-call-it-dinner night. The result was better than I could have hoped for! I will make this sauce again and again for sure. Matt agrees, it is the best.
Ingredients:
14.5 oz can fire roasted diced tomatoes (Muir Glen makes the fire roasted variety -maybe other brands do as well-...the taste is awesome!)
8 oz can tomato sauce
1 whole tomato cooked with olive oil, garlic and shredded parmesan cheese (um, this was a random item from the refrigerator...probably not essential, but thought I'd include it just in case it is, in fact, essential:)
1/2 onion, chopped
4 tsp minced garlic
12 oz ground beef
3/4-1 tsp each dried basil, oregano, and marjoram
1 Tbsp olive oil
Dash of salt, crushed red pepper, and onion powder
Directions:
1. Brown the ground beef in a large skillet. Drain, transfer beef to a medium-sized bowl, and return skillet to the stove.
2. In the same pan (you gotta love that, right?), saute olive oil, onion, and garlic until onion and garlic are soft and slightly browned.
3. Add remaining ingredients, stir, and simmer for about 10 minutes.
4. Return beef to the skillet and simmer 5-10 additional minutes.
**Just in case you'd like to turn the best spaghetti sauce into the best baked spaghetti, (as shown in the photo) here is my version of doing just that:
Best Baked Spaghetti
Ingredients:
1 recipe best spaghetti sauce
1/2 pkg spaghetti noodles
4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
Dry grated parmesan, garlic salt, and basil to taste
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Cook spaghetti according to package directions and drain.
3. Place drained spaghetti in 8x8 glass baking dish. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese to taste. Top the spaghetti with the sauce, then mozzarella, spreading each evenly over the preceding ingredient. Sprinkle to taste with garlic salt and basil.
4. Bake for 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and slightly browned. Remove from oven and let sit to cool and thicken for 5-10 minutes.
Enjoy!!
The picture above is also spaghetti, but different sauce and different noodles. I made it last week with spaghetti squash! Many of you probably already know about spaghetti squash, but I had never known what it was before, never! I was following a recipe and kept wondering what it was going to be like to have my spaghetti sauce on top of squash...didn't sound like the world's best idea to me.
Despite my reservations I tried it, and I am still amazed. It looks like squash and cooks like squash, but after you bake it the most amazing thing happens. The smooth flesh instantly transforms into thin noodle-y strands when you scoop it out! I'm serious!
Some of you are thinking I'm an idiot, but imagine if you were a kid (um, like me) wouldn't this be the most amazing thing? It got me thinking, for one thing, that this would be an awesome science activity to do with kids. They would eat it up, hahaha.
Okay, enough already. If you haven't tried it, go for it. Even my husband loved it, so you are safe. Enjoy the recipes and God bless!
I want to just come over for dinner. Sound good? But seriously, I'll have to try your spaghetti sauce, it sounds yummy, and the baked spagetts might make me even more interested. And I chortled a little at the part about the kids "eating it up" haha. I've never seen spaghetti squash, so I'll have to try that in my free time! :) You are THE best.
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