Sometimes We Make Sauce That Will Last FOR DAYS!

You probably can not tell that I have Italian heritage what with my blonde hair and hazel eyes and pretty pale skin....but I am!  My mom is Italian and with that comes some FANTASTIC food!  My mom's Italian butter cookies are a highly anticipated Christmas treat (perfect for dunking in hot drinks!) as well as Grandma's giambotta (an Italian vegetable soup).  Mommy also makes a massive pot of delicious sauce every once in a while and we have it on Sunday over pasta for lunch after church!  Definitely something to look forward to!

This helped inspire me to make our own sauce.  Mommy's sauce has beef chunks, pork sausage, and she makes a mean beef meatball.  The thing is, I have not eaten beef or pork for eleven years.  I do not really miss it at all because I love turkey, chicken, and fish, so we substitute those ingredients into many recipes in our house.  For our sauce we used ground turkey and it is sooooooo delicious we end up eating some of it by the spoonful....Jeffy has claimed he could just eat a bowlful or two for dinner and be happy!

When we make our sauce we have multiple plans for its uses - from regular pizza, to eggplant pizza, to zucchini lasagna, to its intended purpose of being a sauce for pasta.  (I will be posting two of these recipes soon as well!)  So when you have all these plans, a simple single pound of ground turkey and single cans of tomatoes is just not enough.  Instead, we QUADRUPLE the recipe!  All the pictures below are what we did for four pounds of ground turkey (you could sub ground chicken if you prefer), so take that into account when you see the size of the pot!

Since we quadrupled the recipe, we chopped four onions and four (seeded!) green peppers and tossed them in with a bit of olive oil to soften in the pot over medium heat.  As those began to cook, I peeled and minced an entire head of garlic.  That was 14 cloves of garlic....yeah, it took the entire time Jeffy chopped the onions and green peppers and began cooking them!  Finally, I was able to toss the minced garlic into the pot and begin to let those flavors combine with a little salt.  When the onions are translucent, the peppers are softer, and you can smell the garlic, put in the ground turkey and sprinkle some salt over the mixture.  We used the leanest turkey possible because we wanted to lighten up our pasta sauce.  Cook that turkey until it is no longer pink, breaking it into smaller chunks.  Below are a few pictures of the process so far - remember this is for FOUR POUNDS and made a full EIGHT QUARTS of delicious meaty pasta sauce!

The onions and peppers had a minute or two alone, then we tossed the garlic right on top. 

The trio cooked down quite a bit.  (Still have not gotten better at taking pictures of my food....)

The ground turkey combined and cooked until it is no longer pink.

At this point you add the tomatoes!  You use both tomato sauce and either crushed or whole peeled tomatoes from a can.  I have used both and loved each of them (we just smushed the whole tomatoes against the side of the pot).

The army of tomatoes we used to make eight quarts of sauce....

After the addition of the tomatoes, your sauce will look something along the lines of this:

Super full pot of deliciousness before seasoning....

Now comes the most important part - adding the seasoning.  I use dried seasoning because that is what we have right now.  Basil would be great, too, but I just planted ours, so we don't have any yet.  I seasoned the entire thing a total of ten times, each of them looking like the picture below.

Dried oregano, dried thyme, a little bit of crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and ground black pepper.

Next you bring it to a boil, which is really hard and extremely scary when you start with the sauce to the brim like ours was!  Once it has reached a boil you can continue adding seasoning to taste (I have approximated our usage for someone making a single pound of turkey meat for their sauce in the recipe below).  Reduce the heat to low or medium-low so the sauce can get thicker.

The sauce simmers over low/medium-low for about 25 minutes per pound of meat to thicken.

I normally would have let ours thicken a little longer, but we were extremely hungry by this point, so we made some rigatoni from a box (one of my favorite pasta shapes my mom makes with her sauce because it holds the sauce so well!) and were finally able to enjoy it!  Alright, so each of us had already had several tasting spoonfuls to "check the seasoning"/we just wanted to eat it!

I topped mine with some (part skim!) shredded mozzarella.
In a few weeks we will be able to add homegrown basil!

Again, we made A LOT of sauce and will be sharing a few more uses for this sauce soon!

The rest of the sauce ready for the fridge and freezer until we make
pizza, eggplant pizza, zucchini lasagna, and more pasta!

Here is the recipe for this amazing sauce:

Baxim Family Pasta Meat Sauce

(Recipe for one pound of meat, we recommend multiplying and saving for other recipes!)

Ingredients:
- 1 pound of lean ground turkey (we used 99% fat free)
- 14 oz can of tomato sauce
- 14 oz can of crushed tomatoes (or whole peeled) 
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 green pepper, diced
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
- olive oil 
- 1-2 tbsp dried oregano
- 1-2 tbsp dried thyme
- crushed red pepper flakes (decide how spicy you want it to be)
- ground pepper
- salt 
- (basil, if available) 

Directions:
1.  Chop the onion and green pepper, and cook with olive oil over medium heat for one to two minutes.  Add minced garlic and salt.  
2.  When the onion is translucent, the green pepper soft, and the garlic fragrant, add the turkey and some more salt.  Combine and cook through until it is no longer pink.  
3.  Add the tomato sauce and tomatoes and stir well to combine.  
4.  Add oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes, ground pepper, salt, and basil (if you have it).  Combine and bring to a boil.
5.  You may want to add a second round of the same seasonings after tasting using a clean spoon.  If so, do it now.  (I season multiple times throughout the process.)
6.  After the sauce reaches a boil, reduce the heat to low/medium-low and allow to simmer.  The sauce should begin to thicken. 
7.  After simmering for about 15-25 minutes (per pound of meat - if you multiplied it like us it will take about 70 minutes for four pounds and it is totally worth being able to use it for multiple recipes!), do a final seasoning taste test using another clean spoon.  
8.  If you are satisfied, prepare pasta to package directions and top with sauce.  (Or check back later to see how else we use this sauce!)
9.  Enjoy!