This recipe for my Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce is one that my Mom made for our family, and then I took over the recipe and started making it for my own family. The recipe has been around for a long time!
My Mom liked to make this recipe because it makes a LOT of spaghetti sauce that you can use for pasta or lasagna or stuffed manicotti. I want to say that the original recipe came from the folks who make Gallo wine. But I know it was published in the California Wine Country Cookbook too. Mom made this sauce over and over again because she had to feed a family of six, and spaghetti was a good way to keep everyone full. There was always extra sauce, so she would ladle it into large zip baggies and freeze it for the next spaghetti meal.
Ingredients needed:
- olive oil
- butter
- ground beef
- onion
- garlic
- salt/pepper/celery salt
- fresh thyme and fresh rosemary
- parsley
- dried mushrooms
- canned whole tomatoes
- tomato sauce
- water
- white wine
- white sugar
How to make Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce:
The complete, printable recipe is at the end of this post. The recipe calls for a bunch of ingredients, but it’s a very easy recipe to make.
I wouldn’t make any substitutions with this recipe because it’s just so good the way it is. But you may be surprised about a couple of the ingredients, so let me explain!
- There are dried mushrooms in the recipe. Don’t let that scare you, and don’t skip them because you say you don’t like mushrooms. The mushrooms are re-constituted in water, and then they are chopped. There aren’t a ton of them. And they add an earthy, delicious flavor to the sauce.
- The recipe also calls for using WHITE wine. You’re probably wondering why it doesn’t call for using RED wine! I don’t really have an answer for you except that this recipe was originally developed by a winery. The white wine works in Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce! But if you’re really worried about it, by all means use red wine instead of white.
This is a chunky sort of meat sauce. It simmers for three hours, so all of those wonderful flavors have plenty of time to meld together and make it awesome.
Spoon Mom’s spaghetti sauce over your favorite, hot cooked pasta. Add a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, if you wish. Added garlic bread is great for soaking up the extra sauce. Enjoy!
The Best Sauce Recipes:
If you happen to be following the Weight Watchers WW plan, you’ll find a link to the WW Points on the recipe card below.
Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce
Recipe Details
Ingredients
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter
- 1 pound ground beef
- 4 medium onions, chopped
- 4 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
- salt and pepper, to taste
- celery salt, to taste
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
- ½ cup fresh Italian parsley, chopped finely
- ½ cup dried mushrooms, soaked in 1 cup of hot water, then chopped (save soaking liquid)
- One 32-ounce can whole tomatoes, mashed with liquid
- Six 8-ounce cans tomato sauce
- 1½ cups water
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 teaspoon granulated white sugar
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil and butter together in a large skillet. Add the ground beef and saute until browned. Add the onions and continue to saute until onions are browned.
- Mix in the garlic and add salt, pepper and celery salt, to taste. Stir in the rosemary, thyme, and parsley. Add the mushrooms (with the soaking liquid), tomatoes, and tomato sauce. Use the 1½ cups of water to pour into the empty tomato sauce cans. Swoosh it around and add the tomato-water to the sauce too. Stir in the wine and sugar.
- Simmer for 3 hours over low heat, partially covered.
Notes
- This sauce yields a larger amount than you would typically use for a pasta recipe. Freeze the rest in covered plastic containers or in freezer zip bags.
- Acceptable white wines for this sauce are Chablis, Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay. If you don't wish to use wine at all, use chicken broth mixed with a little bit of lemon juice.
- If you're counting WW Points be sure to use 95% lean ground beef when making the sauce.
- If you're counting calories, this sauce is great served over cooked spaghetti squash!
Awesome recipe! Definitely adding this to the permanent collection.
Much like mine except I add Italian sauage and a quarter cup of Marcella wine