The quest for the perfect meat and tomato sauce

The beginning of the quest

There's little that's easier or faster to make than a very very basic meat and tomato sauce. Brown some onions and some ground beef, add some jarred sauce or canned tomatoes, cook for 15 minutes, and out comes something passable enough to put on pasta. However, the result often doesn't really taste like meat, the tomatoes don't get cooked, and the sauce is not saucy enough.

Since I really like this sauce when it's made well, and I rarely have any sauce that's made to my taste (including at restaurants), I set out to try and make the perfect sauce for my taste. For me, this means that:

1. The sauce should have a pronounced meat flavor.
2. The tomato flavor should be mellow and not biting.
3. The sauce should be "saucy": not too dry or too liquid.
4. It should be reasonably fast to make, at least in a basic version.

There are several types of ingredients that I think are optional for me: wine, cream, and other vegetables (carrots, celery, etc.). I'm not a fan of cream in the sauce, because it makes it much heavier and keeps for a shorter time. I haven't yet explored how to add carrots and celery. As for wine, I love the taste of it in the sauce, but I've yet to figure out how to best add it. Future versions of this page will address the additional ingredients.

The first problem I tackled was the absency of a real meaty flavor. First I tried to remedy the problem in the same way I had for my stuffed grape leaves recipe. There I discovered that letting the meat cook in its own juices after being mixed with a spicy garlic paste worked wonders. In the case of the sauce, however, I didn't want to have too many weird spices to obscure the simple flavors, so I tried just browning some onions and cooking the meat on low heat with the onions. I found that the result was too greasy, and the resulting meat flavor was diluted when the remaining ingredients were added. I finally decided I should brown the meat on medium-high heat separately, and then add it to the body of the sauce right before adding the tomatoes.

On to the weak tomato flavor and biting taste. The cookbook "From America's Test Kitchen" has a great tomato soup recipe, that tastes wonderfully tomato-ey and fresh. One of the tricks they use is to cook the onions in some butter with some tomato paste, covered and on low heat. I decided to use this trick here and immediately the tomato quotient of the sauce shot up. Still, I was used canned diced tomatoes for the body of the sauce, and they didn't quite cook properly and were not saucey enough.

The next development came by mistake. I grabbed a can of whole peeled tomatoes in juice instead of the diced tomatoes I'd intended. Then I remembered that the tomato soup recipe used whole tomatoes, so I decided to go ahead anyway. I reserved the juice in the can, and coarsely and manually shredded the tomatoes over a sieve set over a bowl to collect as much juice as possible. Then I added the shredded tomatoes to the sauce with the meat, and cooked them for about 10 minutes with the onions and tomato paste until they released their juices and were nice and soft. Then I added some of the reserved juice (it turned out that I only needed about half of what I had), and simmered the sauce on low heat for about 15-20 minutes with a bay leaf or two added for good measure.

The result was much better than my original sauce, but still the meat flavor was a little bit weak. I think the mistake might have been to add the shredded tomatoes and the meat at the same time. It would probably be better to first add the tomatoes and cook them for a while, then add the meat and cook for a few minutes longer, then add the juice and simmer. The consistency of the sauce, on the other hand, was just right; by varying the quantity of juice added I can control exactly how runny the result will be. Finally, the next step (which is time-consuming but might be worth it) might be to imitate the tomato soup recipe one step further and roast the whole tomatoes with some brown sugar sprinkled on them to further bring out their tomato-ey flavor. However, for a quick weeknight dinner this might be overkill.

The recipe as it stood

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• A couple of garlic cloves, chopped (optional but desirable)
• 2 Tb tomato paste
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes in juice
• Pinch ground coriander (optional)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• About 2 Tb butter or olive oil

Procedure

1. Melt the butter or heat the olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the chopped onions and garlic and the tomato paste, mix well, then turn the heat to low, cover and cook until the onions are soft, stirring occasionally.
2. Meanwhile, brown the meat on medium-high heat until done. Pour off some of the fat if you want.
3. Reserve the juice of the canned tomatoes. Tear them to small pieces, preferably over a bowl so you can collect the juice, but this is optional as you don't need that much juice.
4. Add the tomatoes to the pan, add salt, pepper and coriander and cook until soft.
5. Add the meat, cook for a couple more minutes, then add some of the reserved juice (maybe 1 cup? I should get a precise measurement here). Add the bay leaves, turn down the heat, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes.

I haven't tried the recipe in exactly this order. I have combined steps 4 and 5, but I think the sauce would be better this way.

Fast-forward three years

Quick and flavorful tomato and meat sauce, the return

Ingredients

• 2 hot or mild fresh Italian sausage links, or about 1/2 lb ground meat
• 1 28-oz can of diced tomatoes in their juice (not puree!)
• 1 medium onion, chopped fine
• 2 cloves garlic, pressed or chopped fine
• Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes if desired
• Handful chopped basil leaves, if desired

Procedure

1. Dump the can of tomatoes in a food processor, and give it 10 1-second pulses.
2. In a saucepan on medium-high heat, brown the sausage or meat. Take out the meat and all but a little fat.
3. Turn the heat down to medium or medium-low, add the chopped onion and saute until soft, scraping the bottom of the pan to get the brown bits off. Add a little oil if there's not enough fat left, and a little salt to help loosen the brown bits, if necessary.
4. Add the garlic, saute for about 30 seconds or until you don't smell raw garlic anymore. Now would also be the time to add pepper or red pepper flakes if you want.
5. Add the now-crushed tomatoes, scrape the bottom of the pan vigorously, add back the meat, bring to a simmer and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes, uncovered.
6. Add the chopped basil leaves if using them.

Katia's cooking page

Katia Hayati
Last updated August 25, 2007