Spaghetti with red meat-sauce recipe

Last Edited: 2025-04-05

Ingredients

Measure with your heart, this isn’t baking!

• One bag of your preferred pasta. We like Linguine… But it’s your life; Live it!
• Tomato Sauce. How much you need depends on how many people you’re cooking for / if you want leftovers. You can also crush some tomatoes yourself if you’re looking for a slightly higher quality (and effort) meal.
• Tomato Paste. Combos nicely with the “fresher” sauce above.
• Meat of your choice. We use mostly ground Deer at this point, but ground Beef is a solid default. Beef won’t require much (if any) extra fat to cook depending on your fat ratio, but Deer requires a heavier hand with Olive Oil or butter or what have you.
• Onion
• Garlic
• Cooking Oil
  • Olive Oil
  • Ghee
• Spices (Go wild here, lots to discover!)
  • Standard
    • Oregano
    • Basil
    • Garlic Powder
    • Onion Powder
    • Red Pepper Flakes
    • Cayenne Powder
    • Salt
    • Pepper
    • Bay Leaf
    • Red Wine
  • “Experimental”
    • Cumin (little bit goes a long way)
    • Gochujang
    • Chili Crisp
    • Harissa
    • Za’atar

Cooking Process

1. Mise en Place
2. Preheat skillet on medium heat, at least 5 minutes.
3. Start heating up pot of water for pasta.
4. Sweat the chopped onions in the skillet, with whatever cooking oil you’re using.
5. When they’re (Onions) almost done (to your preference) add the minced garlic, and saute for another minute or so.
6. Remove onion and garlic from pan, keep in a bowl nearby.
7. Turn heat up to high for the skillet, wait another 2 to 3 minutes for it to get to temp.
8. Place meat in the pre-heated skillet. My preference is to get a nice brown on the meat. To do that you’ll want to keep the same side down in the pan for a while.
9. Add pasta to preheated pot of water. Add good amount of salt, more than you think is needed.
10. Once the meat is browned, break it up into a crumbly texture.
11. Remove meat from pan, let pan come back to temperature over medium-high to high heat.
12. Once pan at temp, add tomato sauce to the pan.
13. Reduce tomato sauce slightly, half-to-full minute.
14. Add all other ingredients that you have on hand. (Including other ingredients you previously cooked.)
15. Reduce the meat sauce to desired consistency while pasta cooks.
16. When pasta is done, reserve a cup or so of pasta water.
17. Strain pasta.
18. Add pasta water to meat sauce if you want a slightly thicker, silkier sauce, or if you need to water it down. Don’t be afraid to add a bunch of water, you can always reduce it down again.
19. Serve.