The savory taste of fresh herbs or the spicy taste of delicious meats? Take your pick for a sugarless spaghetti sauce. In fact, if you were a firm believer in a tablespoon of sugar in your sauce–we might just change your mind! Both of our sauces use the method of slow cooking spicy meats as a means of bringing out rich flavors. Simmering in the crock pot is a key means of cooking these sauces and I have to tell you, if you think you’d do better to simmer it on a stove–you’d be wrong. So with that said, take your pick and have a heaping bowl of spaghetti tonight!
Lisa’s Spaghetti Sauce
Pull out your biggest crock pot or stew pot and start filling it with these:
Chop one large onion (I prefer the red ones)
Chop 3 bell peppers (green, or all three colors if you like. The more colors the better!)
Slice one large package (about 8oz) fresh mushrooms or used canned
Brown one pound extra lean ground beef (get it to crumble as small as possible)
Brown one pound hot italian sausage (I like Johnsonville or Jimmy Dean)
If you use skin-on sausage, remove the skin and scramble it into small pieces.
One package Hormel sliced pepperoni (separate the pepperoni as you put it in as it tends to stick together.)
Once you have all the meat and vegetables in, pour in some crushed tomatoes and stir until all the ingredients are covered with tomatoes. (I like to buy the huge cans at Sam’s club.)
I season with one capful of Mrs Dash Italian blend, about 6 cloves worth of crushed garlic and parsley & italian seasoning to taste.
Cook it in the crock pot on high until the sauce is hot and then on low overnight.
Lisa notes: You cannot overcook this. The more it stews, the better the flavor. by the way, this makes for a very thick sauce that can be a really quick complete meal served with breadsticks (if you don’t have the time to boil noodles).
Valorie’s Spaghetti Sauce
In your largest crock pot add: one medium chopped onion, one chopped bell pepper (it doesn’t matter what color although I usually use green), 8 oz. of sliced fresh mushrooms, and sometimes I add a small can of chopped olives if I feel like it.
Brown one pound of Italian sausage and add to the crock pot. Brown one pound of ground beef and break it up as small as possible.
Add one large can of crushed tomatoes. Let it simmer on low in the crock pot for at least 8 hours but preferably over night.
During the last two hours of cooking add the following: one to two tablespoons of finely chopped fresh oregano, one to two tablespoons of finely chopped fresh basil and one clove of freshly minced garlic.
Lisa writes regularly for our weight loss blog! She also writes the Body for Life Challenge 2008 in the food blog!
Valorie Delp shares recipes and kitchen tips in the food blog, solves breastfeeding problems, shares parenting tips, and current research in the baby blog, and insight, resources and ideas as a regular guest blogger in the homeschooling blog. To read more articles by Valorie Delp, click here.
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