Who says the old adage* of 'make soup by throwing a bunch of stuff together' can't apply for making spaghetti sauce?  Today we're going to explore this theme and make some delicious spaghetti sauce.


First off, the ingredients.  Onion, ground beef, tomatoes, ketchup, bbq sauce (optional), crushed tomatoes in a can.

First off,  dice up the onion and the tomatoes.  Add some soy sauce to the ground beef and let it marinate for a bit.

Caramelize the onions a bit and add in the ground beef.  Brown thoroughly and cook until it's fairly dry.
 

Add in some ketchup to give it a slight tangy taste.  I like to add barbeque sauce as well, but don't add too much!  Generally, I do 3 'rings' of ketchup and 1 ring of bbq sauce.  Stir into the beef/onion mixture until it thickens a bit.  Coke works pretty well, too, but it sweetens the sauce quite a bit.  Canned tomatoes can help balance this out. 

Add in the diced tomatoes.  The smaller the dice, the faster they will cook.  Six plum tomatoes was definitely too many tomatoes, but I don't really have another use for them so in they go.  (I should probably mention that I usually use way less beef than what was shown there, but I guess I grabbed an extra large bag.)

  

Cover the pot and let the tomatoes stew until they are soft.  Usually I don't add fresh tomatoes since they take forever and a half year to cook.  Add in a jar of pasta sauce or in this case, crushed tomatoes to make it saucier.  Reduce heat and let it simmer until the flavors mix.

Hooray, you're done!  Eat with rice.




* I just made that up.  It's okay because I'm apparently old now.