Beef Meat Sauce To Top Speghetti or Ravioli

8 basic ingredients make this sauce:

Virgin olive oil
A whole medium yellow onion chopped up
Fresh garlic, 8 to 12 pieces chopped or crushed
Several fresh tomatoes chopped into pieces, or a large can of pre-chopped tomatoes
A whole red pepper cut into pieces(optional)
Tomato sauce, the amount determined by how much sauce you want to make
A pound of ground, grass fed beef
Dry, ground oregano to taste

Method:


Put 3 TB virgin olive oil into the pot you are using.
Add the ground beef, and sauté the meat until all of the pink in the meat is gone.
Add chopped fresh onion, garlic, red pepper and mushrooms. Sauté the meat and vegetables over a medium heat until the vegetables are tender.
You may need to add a tablespoon or two of water to the pot to prevent the beef and veggies from burning.
Add the chopped fresh or canned tomatoes.
Add dry oregano at this time as much or as little as you like, and add finely chopped rosemary if you like rosemary in your sauce.

If oregano is not fine enough you can grind it down in your hand using the edge of your Other hand as the tool to reduce the oregano, and at the same time you will release flavor from the herb that will impart into the sauce..

Dry oregano has that old time taste from the pizza parlor where they traditionaly use the dry Herb in place of fresh. I like that old time pizza parlor flavor in my spaghetti sauce.

Add either an 8-ounce can or a 15-ounce can of tomato sauce, depending on how much sauce you are making. Bring all of the ingredients in the pot to a medium simmer, and then turn the heat down to low so the sauce simmers very low.

You should add a cover to your pot now so the sauce, which is getting thick in consistency, doesn't splash onto your stove

Simmer this sauce for app. 30 minutes.

This is the ‘basic’ recipe for traditional beef, meat sauce for speghetti. If you make the sauce without meat you have a basic marinara sauce, which is the start for many italian style recipes. Dry, freshly grated Italian cheeses can be added to this sauce for more flavor. If you add cheese then consider using canned tomato sauce in your recipe that does not contain salt because dry cheese is usually salty.

You can add a chopped yellow or a green bell pepper to this sauce in place of or with the red bell pepper.

Whichever you choose to make; the Beef Marinara Sauce or the Plain Marinara Sauce it is now ready to pour onto your favorite cooked pasta or ravioli.

Enjoy!

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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Beef Meatball Sandwiches

Ingredients

One pound of grass fed ground beef
Two large slices of French bread broken up into crumbs; bread can be fresh or stale
Two beaten large or jumbo eggs

Vegetables for your sauce

Several large mushrooms, washed, dried and sliced.
Several pieces of fresh garlic both crushed and diced
Half of a large yellow onion; diced
One medium to large red bell pepper, washed and chopped
Or
Two cups of your own pre-made marinara sauce in which you have already cooked down your vegetables
Extra virgin olive oil

Sandwich rolls of any shape or texture; if bread is too soft to hold meat in a sauce you will need to toast the side of the roll where the meatballs and sauce will be placed in order to prevent the sandwich from falling apart on you.

You will need slices of your favorite cheese to top off your sandwiches.
I prefer provolone cheese myself but use whatever cheese pleases you.


Method

Combine the meat, breadcrumbs and beaten egg together in a bowl and mix well.
Form meatballs the size of golf balls. Mixture will be gushy; just form the ball shapes as well as possible.

Drop the meatballs into a medium hot frying pan to which you have already placed several tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Fry…excuse me…sauté the meatballs until they are golden on as many sides as possible. Because they are very soft they will not retain a perfect ball shape.

Remove the meatballs to a side plate and add the sliced mushrooms to the pan; add a tablespoon or two of more oil if necessary.

If you are making your marinara sauce from ‘scratch’ then add the crushed and diced garlic, chopped onion, and red bell pepper that you have cut up into bite sized pieces. Sauté the vegetable for several minutes but do not over cook.
Add the tomato sauce and the tomato bits to the sauce, mix well and then add the meatballs back into the pan.

Cook all together on a low simmer so the meatballs will continue cooking, and the sauce will thicken as the moisture evaporates. When the sauce is thick the meatballs are cooked and ready to spoon onto your rolls.

Slice your rolls and place the bottom halves on a cookie sheet.
Spoon on three (3) or four (4) meatballs with the thick sauce onto each roll.
Top each mound of meatballs and sauce with one or two slices of your favorite cheese.
Place cookie sheet with sandwich bottoms under the broiler in your oven, and broil these sandwiches until the cheese is melted.

Remove the cookie sheet as soon as you see the cheese is the way you like, and place the top slice of the bun on top of the sandwich. You can grill, brown the sliced portion of the top slice of your roll if you wish but watch it all carefully as everything grills, browns up very fast under a broiler.

Lunch or Dinner is ready!

Enjoy!

I like to make more meatballs and sauce than I need for a meal when I do this recipe because the leftovers freeze well, and make a quick meal on days when I am too busy to cook.

For illustration purpose I have posted photos of meatballs made with ground turkey. You can use ground beef, ground turkey or ground chicken to make these meatball sandwiches.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Homemade Corned Beef Hash

First you need a piece of raw corned beef at least three (3) pounds.

You need to cook this meat for at least three (3) hours in a deep stew pot on top of the stove with enough water in the pot to keep the meat covered. The meat must ‘simmer’ throughout the cooking time. A ‘simmer’ is a low boil where the water gently boils.
Add water as needed throughout the cooking time.
Be sure to open the packet of spices that comes with the raw meat, and add them to the water. Cut up a large yellow onion and add it to the water so it will flavor the meat.

After the Corned Beef is cooked store it in the refrigerator tightly wrapped, and it will keep at least two (2) weeks, maybe longer depending on how cold your refrigerator is. This corned beef can be used to make the hash, recipe below, and it can be sliced and eaten in sandwiches.

INGREDIENTS FOR CORNED BEEF HASH

To make your Corned Beef Hash you just slice off several hunks of your Corned Beef and cut the meat up into chunks.

Chunks of cooked Corned Beef
One (1) whole red bell pepper
One (1) onion, sweet or yellow or
One (1) bunch of green onions
A large pat of butter or several tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
Cooked potatoes, red or white, fresh or Alexa frozen

METHOD
Prepare a whole red bell pepper for cooking and cut it up into bite sized pieces. For the onion part of this recipe you can use a standard yellow or a sweet onion, medium size, chopped up. OR you can use a bunch of green onions, called scallions on the East Coast.
Wash, dry and cut up the green onions and add to the pan along with the bell pepper or add the cut up sweet or yellow onion to the pan with the red bell pepper..

Add chopped up chunks of your favorite type of potato. I prefer red potatoes. You can prepare your potatoes by boiling them beforehand and finish the cooking in the microwave.
The potatoes you use should be pre-cooked.
You can also use the ‘Alexa’ frozen red or white potatoes. Just pre-cook them in a 350 degree over before you add them to this recipe.

Sauté the raw, red bell pepper, onion, and potatoes together in the pan to which you have already added either the butter or the extra virgin olive oil. Add the Corned Beef chunks to the pan.
Your Corned Beef Hash is done when everything is blended and hot. This hash can be eaten by itself OR on the side with a plate of scrambled eggs OR this hash can be a filling in an egg omelette.

Every year in March I buy extra hunks of corned beef on sale when our local supermarket has an abundance of this meat, and the price is low. March 17th is the traditional St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S., and our supermarkets stock up on corned beef for St. Patrick’s celebration dinners. Yes, I know that in Ireland corned beef is not a traditional Irish dinner but somehow it became traditional here in the U.S. .

I store raw corned beef in a 'dedicated' deep freeze where it will keep indefinitely. Don’t expect to store frozen foods in your refrigerator freezer for long periods of time because refrigerator freezers are designed to keep your frozen foods fresh, and tasting good for only three (3) months of storage.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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