I used ground beef in this batch, but that isn’t a requirement by any means. I switch between ground beef, pork, or turkey depending on sales or my mood. They’re all delicious. I even tried chicken once, but the bits of light meat were totally unappetizing to Adam. You don’t need to use any meat at all, I just like to have a thicker, heartier consistency and flavor. I would try increasing the number of cans of diced tomatoes from 4 to 6 to keep it thick if you skip the meat completely. I’d also replace the beef broth with vegetable broth (I use chicken broth when I make it with turkey). And every batch is different, after a while I just started eyeballing everything. Today is the first time I wrote down what I used step by step, so it’s definitely easy to tweak to your liking.

I also make this so often that I just use canned diced tomatoes instead of fresh diced tomatoes.

Ingredients:

2 lbs. lean ground beef
2 big onions (I like Vidalias) or 4 small onions, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
5 6-oz cans of tomato paste
4 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes
4 cups beef broth
3 good glugs of red wine
Salt and pepper
Oregano
Herbes de Provence

1. Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of a stockpot or large saucepan. Season the ground beef with salt and pepper. Heat the pot to medium high and brown the ground beef.

2. Add the onion to the ground beef. I chop my onions within an inch of their lives in a food processor so the juices come out and it’s almost like a puree of onion. I like a lot of extra onion flavor in the sauce. But a good chop works fine. Cook those together until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.

4. Add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds or so.

5. Reduce the heat to medium low and add the tomato paste. Mix the paste well wi

th the beef and onion mixture.

6. Add the diced tomatoes, stirring after each can.

7. Add the beef broth and the wine. Let simmer for 10 minutes or until it’s bubbling.

8. Season liberally with oregano (about 1 tbs) and Herbes de Provence (1/2 tbs).

9. Let the whole pot simmer together for 20-30 minutes, stirring to make sure it doesn’t burn at the bottom.

10. Ladle into small recyclable containers and let cool. Place lids on the containers and freeze. Leave one defrosted in the fridge at all times for immediate use.

11. This yields about 6 of those 42 to 48-oz entree size Gladware containers. Each container gets apprx. 4 servings of sauce.