Small Batch Spagetti Meat Sauce
If you have a small garden, chances are you need to small batch can! If you have 27 acres of tomato plants, lord almighty I bet you are tired!
I have a small garden that I pull A LOT of food out of. You don’t need anything enormous. I love the mantra “every little bit counts” when it comes to canning. Early in my canning journey, I would go to produce auctions or Amish produce stands and buy bushels of produce to do giant batches of different things because 4 quarts at one time simply wasn’t enough. But that was back in the day when I didn’t have kids and I had energy :’D
From my humble garden, I have about 20 tomato plants. I always fail to space them correctly and by this time in August, it is essentially a tomato jungle full of wildlife and a constant search for tomatoes. They thrive though, so I don’t fight the process. This year has been especially trying for growing tomatoes. The weather has either been unbelievably smoking hot, or getting down to the high 40s overnight. The tomatoes don’t know what to do. And the slugs and these stupid worms are destroying as many tomatoes as I’m picking. Sadly, the chickens are getting half of the tomatoes I pick some evenings. I started picking at first blush and allowing them to ripen in a bucket for 2 days before using them and that has mitigated losing them to pests quite a bit.
I digress. I’m currently picking about 10-12 lbs of tomatoes from my garden every other day right now. I am NOT a fan of tossing them in the freezer til I’m ready to can them. I feel like they lose flavor and texture and get all mushy and watery and I don’t like it. If you do, that’s absolutely fine and keep doing you!
Enter small batches. I made some really good spaghetti meat sauce today. I made it last year as well and we have already eaten all but 1 quart; I canned 60! My kids love spaghetti and I love convenience. I’m not claiming to be an Italian Nona here; I bet her sauce is 10003938429x better than mine, but it’s a recipe my family enjoys. My favorite way to use this is to cook spaghetti paste to al dente, drain and add them back to the pan, and toss a quart of this over them. The pasta soaks up the extra tomato juice and it gets thick and yummy. One pot meal, boom, done. I don’t have the patience to simmer a sauce by half and also don’t find it necessary when I use it this way.
You can make this recipe your own. Add more meat. Add less meat. Add more onions or peppers. I don’t care. This recipe is simply meant to be educational to inspire you to make your own sauce recipe! I will add that I do use the dehydrated mushrooms and tomato powder specifically to help soak up the tomato water and thicken the sauce quicker. I do enjoy the flavor they both add but they’re entirely optional.
Enjoy!
