Sunday, March 17, 2013

Meat sauce recipe

My kids every now and then they ask me how we cook some of the foods.
I am not a "cook", so everything is pretty normal - but what I often capture in my instructions to them are the simple little things that I have learned understood and make my food, our food slightly different than the neighbor's food.

Here is my meat sauce recipee I just gave to my daughter:

Meat Sauce Recipee


Incredients:

- 1 Organic Beef 640gr (1.34lb) 15% fat Ground Beef from costco.
- 1 large white onion
- 2 cans of Tomato Sauce (425gr each- the ones I use have already salt/sugar/peper in it so extra salt/peper is optional)
- A bit of olive oil

Time for preparation 30-35 minutes.

Instructions.

Pour the two cans of tomatoe in a medium size pot that is on medium-high heat (I actually start on high and then I lower it when it start spilling)
Use water to clean any remaining sauce from the two can - essentially you add 1 can of water for 2 cans of tomatow. The more water - the longer you will need to wait.
Also the amount of time depends on how much the tomatoe sauce is actually pre-cooked. If you use just plain un-cooked tomatoe juice, it will be quite longer.
Taking it out before its time will have as effect that you will be tasting the sour-ness of the tomatoe. Some people dont' care about that.

Blend the onion to a puree and put it in a hot big ( I use 11") frying pan with a bit of olive oil until it starts to become brown.
You need to keep on stiring it with a wooden spoon.
When it is brown you pour it in the tomate saue pot and stir it. You will need to carefully scrape the frying pan with the wooden paddle - if you leave pieces of onion
they will turn black and some peoplke mind find black things in their sauce.
In the same hot pan you now put the ground meat (if it was frozen I defrost in the mw - high for 2-3 minutes, take out scrape the soften part - back in the microwave, high for 2-3 minutes - take it out scape the soften/thawed part etc.. you can have it ready to use in 5-10 mins from freezer)
Back to the hot pan.
Its important that the pan is hot. Puting the piece of ground meat - we should hear the sizzle.
The next  5 minutes is tiring. Using a big kitchen fork you keep breaking the lump of ground meat in smaller pieces.
In the beginning it feels like an impossible task - but as the meat cooks it breaks up easier and easier.
I like to find chunks of meat so I don't break it completely - but thats a personal taste thing.
You also keep in turning the side that is touching the pan - otherwise it becomes like a hard skin .
When the meat is mostly broken up - the pan should be practically cookiing the meat in its water.
It is important that you don't stop here. You want all the water of the ground meat out - pouring it now in the tomatie pot would result
a) the meat will feel boiled as opposed to sauted b) some of the heavey meat smell will be in the sauce.
After 5 minutes or so all the moisture is gone and now there is tiny chunks of meat that are sizzling on the meat's fat.
Thats good. You need to let it in this sizzling state for 2-3 minutes to get the burned fat taste and smoked smell.
You need to keep an eye for the smallest chunks of meat because they are the one that would turn dark first.
Keep on stiring now with the wooden paddle (no need for forl after the meat break up is done).
Anyway, when you are done with all that ... pour the ground meat in the tomatoe pot,
and turn it to a lower temperature at this point - and cover it up.
(it usually takes me 15 minutes so far and the rest takes another 15 minutes.)
Keep opening it it up ever 5  minutes or so.
When it spills too much around the pot - it means that it is ready.

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