Delicious Spaghetti

I think most of America know how to make this dish. Taking it to the next level so it is not boring canned sauce thrown on some noodles is a whole new animal though. I like to pump mine up with some special ingredients that I will share with you today. Here are my tips for the best spaghetti of your life.

1. You need to add fresh produce to cut through the canned tomato sauce taste of the jarred sauce. 
I always add onion, garlic and basil to mine. I use one entire yellow onion, four garlic cloves and a half a handful of basil. I grow my own basil and freeze it to use year round. If you do not do that then pick some up from the store.

2. Use decent meat. 
What do I mean by that you ask? You do not have to use boring hamburger when you make spaghetti all the time. This time my grocery store had hot sausage on sale. It was fantastic!

I had browned the onion/garlic/basil mixture and then added the meat to brown.

3. The sauce is key!
As a short cut I use 1 can of original whatever is on sale jar sauce. I add this to the meat/veggie mixture and shimmer it down. After about 5 minutes I add my secret weapon......

This jarred tomato juice we canned as a family this year. This is my secret weapon. I am sure you do not have a bunch of this laying around so you can buy canned tomato juice to add. I always add half of a mason jar to the sauce.





4. Have you been seasoning as you go? 
I know I stress this in a lot of my blog posts but I cannot stress seasoning things enough. I cannot tell you how having bland food is the WORST. In this recipe here is the times and what I used to season.
In step one I seasoned the veggies while they cooked down with (onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper)
In step two I seasoned with (Worcester sauce, fennel, parsley flakes, dried oregano and Mrs. Dash)
In step three I tasted the mix and decided it needed more salt and pepper.

Always make sure you taste what you are cooking to make sure it is balanced. We like our sauce a little spicy and I did not have to  add anything due to the hot sausage. Usually I add red pepper flakes or cayenne to heat things up a bit.


5. Noodle are important too!
Everyone always buys some boring old noodles that are cheap and frankly most of the time gross. Why not try a specialty pasta or something fresh?  This time I made carrot/tomato noodles and they were amazing.(Random FYI in case you are wondering what is with that fish-- Ryan bought that to add iron to our lives. Find out more information on this little guy HERE).

As you can see the pasta is really orange from the carrot and tomatoes added to the pasta. It was really good. I am also a fan of wheat pasta.

Yum!

Have to add some cheese.

Getting fogging from all that steam.

I hope these tips are helpful to you the next time you are making "boring" old spaghetti and you turn it into something truly delicious.

Until next time~
XoXo Emily