Share your best spaghetti recipe

Sometimes we all stumble upon a good recepe'....even if we invent it as we go along.

I'll share my best spaghetti recipe. I've had people say this one should be used in restaurants.

I haven't gotten the water amounts down to a science yet. But my good freind told me the key to any good food is to have the right amount of water...especially with foods that soak up water.

Please share yours too.....or try mine and enjoy.

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Ingredients:

12-16 Oz ? of Jimmy Dean’s Hot Pork Breakfast sausage (comes in mushy plastic….not sausage links)
1-1 ½ lbs Ground Chuck ( 15-20% lean )
10-16 White Button Mushrooms ( standard salad mushrooms )
1 Jar Di Parma Classico Four Cheese Spagheti sauce ( 26 Oz )
2 Jars Prego (? 26 Oz…about same size ) Cheese Spaghetti sauce ( one jar can be tomato basil )
1 cup Cabernet Savignon (sweet French Red wine )……you have to buy more than you need unfortunately...not!..good to have some to serve with dinner
1 Large Green Bell Pepper
1 Large Purple Onion
1 package fresh chives ( chives about 5 inches long, comes in rectangular package )
Black Pepper
Fresh Garlic cloves (enough for 4-5 cloves )
1 (or 2 ) packages of spaghetti noodles ( I use the organic high quality ones )

Utensils:

Large Skillet with lid
Scissors
Knives
Large Pot (think for cooking lobsters or a huge stew) with lid
Cutting board
Measuring cup
Colander
Large Bowl for Draining meat juices from colander

Preparation:

Veggies:

Wash mushrooms and cut stems off (or you can use good parts of stems if you prefer )
Wash Green Pepper
Peel Purple onion and cut off top and bottom

Sit down with cutting board and suitable bowl for veggies

Cut mushrooms into about quarter sized pieces and about 2-3 x the thickness of a quarter
Peel 4-5 Garlic cloves. Slice into thin slices (about the thickness of a quarter)
Cut up Green pepper into small chunks (about half size of dime )
Slice up Purple onion into ¼ inch Disks ( that is: parallel to top or bottom of onion )
Set 1/3 of these onion slices aside on a plate next to your stove
Put other 2/3 of these onion slices in with rest of veggies


Meat Browning:

Put Pork sausage into large skillet and put over medium-medium high heat
Use spatula while browning this meat to cut up the sausage while cooking.
Cut, stir and turn over sausage while browning.
Make sure all sausage is fully cooked and in small chunks before draining.

When done, drain sausage grease using colander but drain this grease into bowl. Press
Out as much grease with spatula as you can. Save these drippings. Put pork sausage into
Large pot and free up colander for next step.

Put ground chuck into same skillet (without the sausage) and put on medium heat
Using scissors, cut up fresh chives into skillet as well as 1/3 of the onion into small pieces
Use spatula to stir , cut up and turn over this meat until all is brown.
Toward the end of this process add 1 cup of red wine to browned meat and boil this for about
3-4 more minutes.

Then drain this meat into colander (where you drained pork sausage) and keep all the liquid
from this draining as well.

Put meat into same large pot and add all the spaghetti sauces. Stir up mixture will and put on very low
heat as you go onto next step.

Put all the grease and wine drippings back into skillet. Add all vegetables and stir them up.
Put on medium heat. Add ¼ -1/2 teaspoon of black pepper to this mix as well. Put on lid to this pot and re-stir
this mixture every 15 minutes until veggies have cooked down and are soft to fork (about 45 min total).
Note: towards the end……these veggies should be bubbling nicely.

When finished, dump this mixture into large pot with the rest of the meat/sauce. ( you may decide you only want half of the “drippings” if you want to cut down on the fat……I didn’t do that…I used all that was in the skillet from simmering the veggies ).

Stir the pot every 15 min over low-medium heat. Start out low and work up to medium heat……as you don’t want the bottom of the pan to scorch. Keep lid on while not stirring. Do this for about 1-1 ½ hours.

At this point……..you may want to see how liquid the mixture is. This is a rough guess ;but add one prego jarful of water to the mixture.

Then add one box of spaghetti noodles but break into ¼ length sections (you might want to do fifths or sixths)
Stir and simmer this the same way for another hour or so. Then turn off heat…..after another hour afterward make sure noodles are soft and thick.

Hopefully your mixture isn’t too thick at this point……if it is, you can slowly add ¼ cup water at a time and stir to consistency desired. Or if it is TOO THIN…..you can add more noodles (shouldn’t have to).

We haven’t gotten the noodle/moisture ratio’s down to a science yet on this recipe.