Let’s face it, feeding families healthy, balanced meals has become a real challenge with today’s budget constraints. Although it may seem a lot as we go through this recipe for a healthy pasta sauce, the whole pot full can be made for under 20 dollars if you watch for sales on the ingredients. You can make four meals that will easily feed four people with this batch. Not only is it a budget-stretcher, it’s very healthy and hearty. For all the slow cooker fans out there, I’m including instructions for both stove-top, and slow cooker methods and no matter which you use, they both turn out wonderfully.
The first step is to brown two pounds of ground beef. Once it’s cooked through, set it in a colander to drain off the fat. I’m one of those people that waits to add my spices, and I rinse the hamburger with very hot water to bring down the fat content even more, especially if I use a fattier ground beef if lean hamburg isn’t on sale. While your ground beef is draining, saute three ribs of celery, and one large onion, both vegetables diced.
Saute your diced celery and onions, being careful to sweat them down until they're almost transparent, but NOT browned.
Add two packages (one lb, or 454 grams) of sliced cremini mushrooms. You can use button mushrooms, or any other you prefer, but avoid using canned mushrooms since they don’t have the same health benefits, and aren’t as hearty. The cremini mushrooms have an extremely high nutrient content, and are very “meaty” so they’re my preferred type for this recipe.
Again, the idea is to cook the mushrooms down without browning them too much. Mushrooms contain a fair amount of liquid, so this process simply draws out the flavours and makes the seemingly large amount of mushrooms more reasonable. Once they're almost uniformly softened, add two tablespoons of finely diced garlic if you're using fresh instead of powdered.
At this point, if you’re using a slow cooker, put your well-drained hamburger into the slow cooker. If you’re using the stove top method, add the ground beef to your vegetables in the pot.
Add the well-drained ground beef to your slow cooker pot, or to the pot on the stove that your vegetables are in.
Using a slow cooker, you’ll add your cooked vegetables to the ground beef in your slow cooker pot.
Add the sautéed vegetables to the browned hamburger in the slow cooker pot.
The following seasonings are used in BOTH methods. For the slow-cooker, you’ll toss them in with the ingredients we’ve already put in, and for stove-top, you’ll simply add them to your pot as well. Keep in mind that if you used fresh garlic in the first phase, skip the powdered garlic in this one.
The seasonings I add are: 2 Tbsp garlic powder, 2 tbsp crushed basil, 2 tbsp oregano, and 2 tbsp of onion powder. I also grind in some fresh black pepper, but I don’t add any salt since I used canned sauce in this recipe.
Normally I would use my own stewed tomatoes for this sauce, but I used up my stock this winter! Add two large cans of diced tomatoes to either pot you’re using. Try to make sure to buy the ones with no added salt. You can usually find them on sale for less than a dollar a can. Next, I add three cans of tomato sauce, again with no added salt or preservatives. Lastly, I add one can of prepared pasta sauce for a bit of a flavour punch. I like to use the varieties that have the least additives. Again, the sauces can be purchased for less than a dollar when on sale.
For either cooking method, add the canned ingredients to the meat and vegetable mixture.
Stir the ingredients well, and for the slow-cooker method, cook for about six hours on low. The stove-top method, I simmer for about three hours and stir every so often.
After simmering for a few hours on the stove top, this is how your pasta sauce will look.
For the slow-cookers out there, your pasta sauce will look like this when you get home, or when you’ve completed the cooking time. Once you give it a stir, it’ll look just like the picture above.
This is how the pasta sauce will look after the cooking process. Once you give it a good stir, it'll look like the sauce in the stove-top method.
The first meal for this pasta sauce of course would be pasta. Cook up your favourite pasta, maybe make a small salad, and serve with some garlic bread for a complete hearty meal. Try to limit the portion of sauce to about 3 cups total for this meal, and divide the rest into 3 portions. I’ll be posting a super-easy lasagna recipe next, and if you freeze the other two portions, I’ll make a post for you about what meals you can easily create with those too!
Before anyone gets up in arms over the fact that I used canned products in this recipe, I want you to know that this is aimed at beginner cooks, and this recipe is simple enough for even the most inexperienced cook to reproduce, and it’s aimed at stretching our dwindling food dollars. At this time of year, it’s just not feasible to create this recipe from fresh tomatoes.
I hope everyone enjoys this recipe!
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