Authentic Homemade Italian Sauce with Sausage

Everyone loves Italian cooking, it’s hearty, wholesome and filling, and always tastes better the next day. It’s easier to buy a jar of sauce and pour it over the sausage and serve over pasta. There are some really good sauces available on the market. But with a little extra work you can create this beautiful sauce that tastes absolutely amazing. This is a recipe that started with the idea that we could create a thicker, richer more flavorful sauce. With input from my wife and sons, it developed over time, taste trials and ingredient revisions and lots of family discussions. But ended up as a wholesome recipe. It can be used for a multitude of purposes from pairing with sausage, meatballs or anything.

So, starting with the basic ingredient, tomatoes. There are a few different ways to approach this. Roast fresh tomatoes on the barbecue to get a little char on them, for this you’d need about 2 pounds. This is actually how we started the sauce. If a barbecue is not available then a couple of cans of fire roasted tomatoes will do.

Next for the flavor enhancements. For this we’ll use garlic, bell pepper, poblano pepper and an onion. So, with the garlic, just leave the globe whole and cut the top off to access all the cloves. Cut the bell pepper and poblano in half, remove the seeds. Same with the onion, cut in half and remove the skin. Rub olive oil all over the cut vegetables, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put pepper flakes on the peppers. How much will depend on your taste. Bake these in the oven at 400 degrees till the peppers are wilted and have a little char, and the onion is cooked.

Now the ingredients are ready and cooked, we move to the next step. Pop the individual cloves of garlic from the globe, I’ve found a toothpick works well to do this. We’ll pass everything through the food processor to turn it into a sauce. It’ll probably require about 4 “loads” to puree everything, add the tomato paste now. Pop the garlic out of the globe, leaving the skin behind. Cut the rest of the vegetables into more manageable size for processing. You’re going to want to run the processor for about 30-45 seconds for each load to ensure that it’s purified enough.

As each load comes out of the food processor dump the contents of the processor directly into a large sieve that you can put over a saucepan. Using the back of a large spoon to pass it through. This is the part that requires most of the work. You’ll see that you’re separating out the seeds and unprocessed bits of vegetables. This is where the time in the processor is important, the longer it’s in there the easier it is to pass through the strainer. Keep pressing the vegetables through the strainer till you’re just left with the pulp. This is labor intensive, but definitely worth the work

Once everything is strained into a large saucepan with a tight fitting lid, add the basil, stir well to mix. Put on the stove over a low heat with the lid on. Once it starts to bubble let simmer to allow the flavors to come together. Usually about 20 mins to 1/2 hour, but as with anything Italian, simmering it longer won’t hurt, just don’t burn it

While the sauce is coming together, we will prepare the sausage to cook. When it comes to Italian sausage, we have choices. Original or chicken, well this is a dietary choice, if pork sausage isn’t in your diet, then chicken works. Hot or mild, well, that’s a personal preference, and they both taste just as good. Finally casing on or off, again, it’s your personal preference. There is a lot of opportunity to make this “your’ dish, feel free to play with the recipe as you like

When I cook Italian sausage I always remove the casing. It is very important to follow food prep safety protocols when working with raw meat, please follow this Link to my food prep safety post. I prefer to cook the sausage in my cast iron skillet. Please follow this Link for more information about cast iron. If you don’t have one, use a regular skillet and deglaze after cooking the sausage. To deglaze is to add some liquid, maybe a little chicken stock, or some wine really adds flavor depth. 1/4 cup should do. Add to the pan after the contents have been removed to get the bits off that have stuck to the pan. Then add them back to the sauce.

We just want to brown off the sausage on both sides, 10 minutes cook time and flip after 5. After browning them, remove from the pan, cut each sausage into slices on the bias (diagonally) and add to the sauce. Let cook at least an hour before serving over pasta of your choice. I’m not a huge fan of spaghetti. I personally prefer Penne or Rotini, but again it’s your personal preference, garnish with Parmesan and fresh Basil