Meatballs in Homemade Sauce
I have only made homemade sauce once but that was back in high school so I don't even remember what I did. I decided to give it a try tonight. I found this recipe for sauce that looked pretty good. I tweaked a few things, noted below.
Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
- Sea salt, preferably gray salt (I used Kosher)
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic (I used a bit more, maybe 4 large cloves)
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 bay leaf
- Freshly ground black pepper
- I added basil, Parmesan cheese, a pinch of sugar, 1 tbsp tomato paste, and I cooked the meatballs in the sauce near the end.
Directions
- Open the can of tomatoes and pour the juice into a bowl. Use the lid to press against the tomatoes to extract as much juice as possible.
- In the can, avoiding cutting yourself with the rim, use your hand to squeeze the tomatoes to a pulp. Re-strain out the new juices, and reserve the juice and pulp separately. Fill the empty can half full with water and set aside.
- Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat.
- Add the onion and cook with a pinch of salt, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 2 minutes.
- Add the garlic and cook until golden.
- Add the tomato juices and bring to a boil.
- Simmer rapidly until the juice thickens, then add the crushed tomato pulp, oregano, the half can of water, bay leaf, and salt and pepper, to taste.
- Adjust the heat to maintain a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching, until the mixture thickens and reduces to about 3 1/2 cups, about 30 to 45 minutes. (I let it cook for 90 minutes, added the meatballs, and let it go for another hour or so....it was still watery)
- Discard the bay leaf.
The Outcome....I was not terribly happy with this recipe. The flavor was ok, but it never thickened up. However, it was really good on Monday night! I don't understand how the directions called for 30-45 minutes of cooking to thicken it. I didn't even use as much water as the recipe called for, I added tomato paste, and it still wasn't thick.
I will try sauce again, but I may just wing it..things seem to work better for me when I experiment rather than follow a recipe.
The Meatballs...Let's just say I'll let Jon stick to making the meatballs. They were fine, and I followed his recipe, but they just weren't the same as his.
I mixed 1-1/3 pound of ground beef with about 1 cup of breadcrumbs, 1 tbsp oregano, 1/2 tbsp garlic powder, salt, pepper, and an egg. I cooked them in a frying pan before adding them to the sauce.
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Jon loves to make garlic bread. I've always heard him call it his "10-clove surprise" as he'd be making it. Of course I always thought he meant 10 cloves for just the bread. So since I was making this special pre-surgery dinner for him, I also made the bread.
I melted 4 tbs of butter and then cooked 8 cloves of garlic in it (pressed garlic). I poured the garlic-butter mixture over 6 slices of bread, wrapped it up in foil, and put it in the oven for about 12 minutes.
HOLY Garlic! We both love garlic, but wow. It was only after I made the bread that Jon told me that 10-clove surprise refers to the entire dinner - the sauce AND the bread. Oops! It was yummy but next time I'll stick to about 4 cloves.
