It used to be that whenever I needed spaghetti sauce, I would buy a 24 oz jar of Ragu for a little over $1. That was the half off cost when Publix would put it on sale. Then one day, I was walking around Costco and noticed a 6 pound, 9 ounce can of tomato sauce cost $2.69. I thought to myself, "If I can make spaghetti sauce out of that, I could save SOOOO much money!" And I did. And it's better than Ragu. And I think you need to know how to make spaghetti sauce out of the 6 pound can of tomato sauce because you can and you don't need to be throwing dollars away on the jarred stuff.
(By the way, you can still save a ton of money if you buy the 20 cent cans of tomato sauce at Aldi. Just in general, I'm encouraging you to buy tomato sauce because it's cheaper than spaghetti sauce.) Here's the recipe...
Spaghetti Sauce (and meatballs)
18-24 Servings
Ingredients:
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Meatballs (optional)
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Instructions:
- In a large stock pot, heat the olive oil. Add the onion, garlic, celery, and peppers and saute until translucent. Carefully pour in the tomato sauce.
- Add salt, sugar, and other seasonings. Let everything simmer on medium low, covered.
- For meatballs: mix the beef, breadcrumbs, parsley, parmesan, pepper, and eggs together. Form into meatballs and drop them into the pot of simmering spaghetti sauce.
- Let everything simmer on low for about an hour.
Now unless you're feeding an army, you will have a ton of leftovers. For my family, we'll take this sauce, and divide it up into Zip lock bags, at 3 cups per bag, and freeze. Freeze the bags flat, so you can stand them upright in the freezer to save room and make everything look cleaner. Add in the noodles and meatballs to this recipe, and you have 18 to 24 hearty servings of spaghetti for less than $1 per plate!