Red Sauce Pasta — The First-Sunday-of-the-Year Recipe from a Pantry Jar

New Year’s Day passed Monday January first quietly. Mama made black-eyed peas (Grandma Carol’s rule, the third year running). Cody is on day three hundred and sixty-one of his sentence. He turns eighteen on Wednesday January tenth, in the same week as the one-year anniversary of his sentencing. Mama and I have been planning a small Saturday-visit cake for him — the unit allows a small unfrosted plain sheet cake (no candles, no decorative frosting that could conceal anything) to be brought in for inmate birthdays. I am baking the cake Friday night and bringing it Saturday morning. The cake is going to be a yellow box-cake-improved with my Kathy box-cake-improvement trick from last Valentine’s Day — one extra egg, less oil, milk instead of water, a tablespoon of vinegar.

And the recipe Sunday was red sauce pasta from the Cookie and Kate roundup. The recipe is the simplest Italian comfort — a pound of dried pasta, a jar of homemade canned marinara, browned ground beef, garlic, basil, parmesan. The recipe assumes you will use store-bought marinara. I used one of my pint jars from last March’s canning project. The pantry shelf has eight jars left, eight months after the canning. The math is holding up.

The math: a pound of spaghetti $0.89, a pound of ground beef from the markdown rack $1.99, a pint jar of canned marinara from the pantry shelf (free, made in March), garlic free, fresh basil from the windowsill plant free, parmesan from the wedge in the fridge $0.30 worth. Total: about $3.20 for a dinner that fed Mama and me Sunday and Monday.

The technique is the simple build I have written about before. Brown the ground beef in a large skillet. Drain the fat. Add four cloves of minced garlic for thirty seconds. Add the pint jar of marinara. Simmer ten minutes. Toss the cooked drained pasta with the sauce. Tear in fresh basil at the end.

The bowl was simple. Mama said, eating, baby, your sauce holds. The annual repetition of this sentence has become a small tradition. The pantry jar from March was as good in January as it had been in April. The canning math is real.

The recipe is below. If you have your own canned marinara, use it. If you do not, the Aldi house-brand marinara at $1.79 a jar is a workable substitute. The trick I want to keep emphasizing is the canning project for next August — a flat of Roma seconds at the farmers market and a Saturday afternoon will give you a year of pantry pasta sauces.

Red Sauce Pasta

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 12 oz pasta (rigatoni, penne, or broken lasagna noodles)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 lb Italian sausage, casings removed (or ground beef)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 cup water or pasta water
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp dried basil
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup whole-milk ricotta
• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
• Fresh basil or parsley for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook pasta until just shy of al dente, about 1–2 minutes less than package directions. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta water before draining. Set aside.
2. Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook, breaking it apart with a spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 5–6 minutes. Drain excess fat if needed.
3. Build the sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add garlic and red pepper flakes to the skillet and cook 1 minute until fragrant. Pour in crushed tomatoes and water. Stir in oregano, basil, and sugar. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Simmer. Let the sauce simmer uncovered for 10–12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it thickens slightly.
5. Combine. Add the drained pasta to the skillet and toss to coat, adding a splash of reserved pasta water if the sauce is too thick. Simmer together for 2 minutes so the pasta finishes cooking in the sauce.
6. Add cheese and melt. Drop spoonfuls of ricotta over the top and scatter mozzarella evenly across the surface. Place a lid on the skillet and cook on low heat for 3–4 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbly.
7. Serve. Garnish with fresh basil or parsley if desired. Serve directly from the skillet.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 520 | Protein: 26g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 62g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 780mg