D’Arezzo Family Pasta Sauce
D’Arezzo Family Pasta Sauce
My Italian great-grandmother created this recipe over 100 years ago, and my family has been enjoying it ever since! Making your own sauce is a budget friendly way to have the best possible ingredients, without all that added sugar! Wanna know the secret ingredient?! Pork neck bones! My favorite part of this exotic meat is that it is cheap, adds an amazing flavor, and can be bought at Walmart or any local butcher!
Equipment
- Large Sauce Pot
Ingredients
- 2 lb 80/20 ground beef
- 3 onions chopped and sautéed
- 1/2 cup olive oil to sauté onions
- 30 oz no sugar added tomato sauce
- 84 oz cans of San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes
- 3 handfuls Pecorino Romano cheese or really as much as you want
- 3 handfuls grated Parmesan cheese
- 56 oz water fill up tomato sauce cans with water
- 18 oz tomato paste
- 16 oz cans of sliced mushrooms or ½ pound fresh mushrooms
- 7.5 cloves minced garlic
- 4 pinches dried oregano
- 4 pinches dried basil
- 6 pinches Italian seasoning
- 4 bay leaves
- 1.5 lbs sweet Italian sausage, browned
- 1 lb meatballs, browned
- 1.5 lbs boneless country style pork ribs, browned
- 1 lb pork neck bones in cheese cloth or nut milk bag I used my @elliesbest nut milk bag!
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Start by browning onions in olive oil in a 24 quart or larger pot. (You can also half the recipe and put it in a slow cooker, or just have two pots going).
- While the onions are sautéing, brown all meats in cast iron skillet and set aside (e.g. sausage, ground beef, neck bones, boneless short ribs, etc.) Brown ground beef last, because it’s easier to dump right in the sauce.
- Add the browned neck bones to a cheese cloth or nut milk bag (I used my Ellie's Best bag!)
- Add all the tomatoes, water, spices, mushrooms, salt and pepper into the pot. Don’t be shy with the salt. Good sauce needs salt. You can always add more as you go along, tasting as the sauce reduces.
- Once all the ingredients are in the pot, bring to a very light boil. But don’t leave it too long or you will burn the pan and cleanup is tough.
- Once boil is achieved, simmer on low/medium heat for at least 8 hours. Stir about every hour or so.
- The sauce should reduce around 20%, achieving a deep robust, dark red color. You can pull the sausages out after about 5 hours if you wish.
- Once the sauce has simmered down, remove the bag of neck bones. – When you open the bag you will see the chunks of meat that have separated from the bones. You can add those neck bone meat chunks to the sauce for a great flavor! Discard the remaining neck bones.
- I let it cool and then put them in freezer gallon sized bags and freeze. This recipe will make about 3-gallon freezer bags worth. I freeze them flat and they store conveniently!
Notes
Neck bones add flavor and nutrients to the sauce. The beauty of the bag is that it traps all the tiny bones from getting into your sauce, but allows the marrow and deliciousness to get into the sauce. The bag is particularly useful for neck bones because there are so many little pieces that have marrow. When the bones cook down the meat separates from the bone and you can easily pick up that meat and add it back into your sauce. Since this sauce is so thick and full of meat it is difficult to easily see or strain for bones, so the bag is essential!
Bag:
You can get the bag that I used to make this sauce from Ellie’s Best. They sent me a code that will get y’all 10% off your entire order.
http://elliesbest.myshopify.com?afmc=girleatketo&utm_campaign=girleatketo&utm_source=leaddyno&utm_medium=affiliate
Code: girleatketo
I use it as a sauce on my pizzas, with zoodles, Miracle Noodles, spaghetti squash. It’s so good I could eat it straight from the bowl!
-A great thing about this recipe is that you can easily make it your own. Add your favorite meat, if you love garlic powder-go for it! Have fun with it, and hopefully it can become your new family tradition too!
This sauce looks amazing! Would you be able to make a Pinterest pinable link so we could pin it straight from your blog post?
Thanks! Yes, looking into that! This blogging this is more complicated, than I thought! 🙂 Thanks for the idea!