Traditional Italian Sunday Sauce Recipe

Empty two 28 ounce cans of peeled plum San Marzano tomatoes into a large heavy-bottomed pot. Crush them with your hands. Make sure you are "popping" the tomatoes with your hand submerged in the liquid or you will have a huge mess on your hands. Place the pot on a burner over low heat.
Add some olive oil to a large frying pan over medium heat. Fry the sausage for a couple of minutes per side. Take the sausage and put it in the pot with the tomatoes.
Add some extra olive oil to the pan and fry the meatballs for a couple of minutes per side until they are nice and browned. Take the meatballs and put them in the fridge.
Add 2 tablespoon of minced garlic to the pan. Stir it and scrape the pan to release all the bits from frying the meats.
Add in two cans of tomato paste. Scrape and stir to mix everything into the paste and flatten it out a little bit. Let it cook for a few minutes. Let it almost burn. Once you have a nice color on the paste fill one of the tomato paste cans with water and add it to the pan. Scrape and mix well so you get everything from the pan. Pour the entire mixture into the pot with the tomatoes and sausage.
Add 1 teaspoon of onion powder, 1 tablespoon of garlic powder, 1 tablespoon of dried basil and salt and pepper to taste. Start with 1 tablespoon of sea salt to start. Add as much pepper as you like to make it as spicy as you like.
Cover the pot and simmer on low for 3 hours. Make sure you are stirring it every 15 -30 minutes and that your heat is not too high. This is also where a good heavy bottom pot is important to prevent the bottom from burning. If you do not watch and stir this and it burns the bottom it will seep through the whole pot and make it bitter and terrible tasting.
After the 3 hours is up it is time to add the meatballs. This is also where you can taste the sauce and adjust any seasoning you want. Add more salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder or basil to your taste. Simmer for an additional 2 hours uncovered. You still have to watch it and make sure you are stirring every 15-30 minutes.
When the two hours are up taste the sauce and do a final seasoning adjustment. Dad's tip is to make sure you add enough salt. Dad usually ends up doing the initial tablespoon and an additional teaspoon or 2 of salt. A sauce with not enough salt will just taste wrong. Serve it over the pasta of your choice.

Traditional Italian Sunday Sauce Recipe

Equipment

Ingredients

Instructions

Video

Notes

Nutrition