Below is the original recipe from my paternal grandmother, it is a great tasting and simple recipe to make. Over the year I have experimented with the recipe. This fall I made it with roasted paste tomatoes from my garden. I used 2 quarts of Amish paste tomatoes, cut in half, removed the core and place cut halves down in a boiler pan. Place the pan on the upper rack under the broiler and roast until the peels blacken. Then remove pan from the broiler and let the tomatoes cool slightly before pulling off the blackened peels. Set roasted tomatoes aside for later and add them after onions and meat have been browned. Because I only used paste tomatoes in the sauce I found that only one 6-oz can of tomato paste was needed to thicken the sauce.
For the meat mixture I used one pound ground Italian Turkey sausage and one pound ground beef then browned it in olive oil instead of butter. The only another change I did was to used ¼ cup of fresh basil instead of a pinch of oregano to season the sauce.
Nana’s Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients
¼ cup butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 lbs. ground chuck beef
¼ cup olive oil
4 garlic cloves
2 cans 28-oz whole tomatoes
2 cans 6-oz tomato paste
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
Brown meat in butter and throw in onions with browning meat. Add olive oil, turn burner down, add tomatoes with 1 tablespoon sugar, chopped garlic cloves; add salt, pinch of oregano. Simmer sauce for 3 hours.
