Homemade Meat Sauce

My wife & I like to watch "Chopped" on Food Network. Sometimes since it's just the two of us, we can run pretty low on groceries in the house. On such a night, I looked around to see what I could make.

Aha. I can make a meat sauce. I think it's off to the left in the picture above, but we had a pound of ground turkey.  The key is to make that taste like Italian sausage. But I felt up to the task.

No onions, huh? No problem. I'll just use the bulb ends of some green onions.  I threw that into a sauce pan with some olive oil and garlic. 

Then I browned off the meat with crushed red peppers, oregano, minced garlic, basil, cracked black pepper, and a spinach & herb seasoning. And I decided to throw the green parts of the green onions as well. What the heck, right?

Next, I added a can of crush tomatoes and some chicken broth. I also added two bay leaves. Those are always fun to see if you can find them later. If not, someone is likely to end up with one in their mouth -- which is not a fun experience.  I would normally add some red wine; but we didn't have a bottle open. A little trick to get a similar flavor is to use some balsamic vinegar.  Then I added the tomato sauce that I had with the parmesan-garlic bread post before, and let it bubble away for a while.

The key is to taste your sauce. If you fee like something is missing, then add it. I got this pretty spot on. I knew because my wife walked in the door and announced, "Something smells good."

You could certainly just pour some sauce from Prego or Ragu right out of the jar. But there is quite a bit more satisfaction from making it yourself. And canned meat just doesn't sound that appealing to me.