Sunday Sugo

Sunday Sugo by Linda Mastantuono Van Poperin (and countless other Italian women)

Summary

We love this recipe for may reasons.  One of which of course is the rich family history of smelling sauce cooking all day Sunday and begging for Pan e Sugo all day long. Now as an adult, I love it because while it's isn't quite "set it and forget it", all the work is up front.  Once you do the initial flurry of chopping, browning, and opening cans, all you have to do is stir occasionally for the rest of the day.   Make it with our Wine and Vinegar Green Salad and have your afternoon almost free of the kitchen for an epic family meal. 

I sat down with my mom today and made this together today.  I did my best to capture the little tips and tricks.  It is a simple and very flexible sauce if you follow the basic instructions.   The Tips and Tricks are longer than the instructions!

Ingredients:

¼ c Olive oil 

4 cloves of garlic, peeled, sliced in half

1 medium onion, yellow, chopped

Approx 8 Large Cans Tomato Sauce

1 small can of Tomato paste

Sauce Meat – mix beef and pork (notes above)

1 heaping tbsp. Crushed Red Pepper.  Adjust later to taste.

½ tsp salt.  Adjust later to taste.

Instructions:

Using a large sauce pan (stock pot), pour in 5 or 6 cans of sauce.  HEAT GENTLY on low.  Will take a while.  Stir occasionally.

While the sauce is heating….

Pour olive oil in large skillet.  Add garlic and brown GENTLY.  Flip, when all browned, discard for purposes of the sauce.  (Or save and eat spread on bread.)

Turn up the heat in the skillet, med high.  Brown the meat.  We’re not cooking it through, just a quick browning.  As it browns, put in the sauce pan.  Will probably have to work in batches depending on how much meat you use.

Once the meat is out of the skillet and into the sauce pot.  Put the diced onion in the now empty skillet.  Soften (do not brown) the onions over medium heat.  

Once the onions are soft, add the tomato paste gently scrape up the “goodies” from the pan.  Then scrape the whole thing into the sauce pot.

Add 2 or 3 more cans of sauce to the sauce pot.

Add crushed red pepper (pepperoncini) and salt.

Turn temperature up to just above low.  Sauce should gently pop bubbles - a very gentle simmer.  Stir all darn day here and there.  Every 20 minutes or so depending on you, on your pot, on how much patience you have.  This has been made for 100s of years and has a lot of flexibility once you do the basics. 

Cook about 5 hours. Remove the meat with a slotted spoon or spider and serve.

Tips and Tricks:

• 6 large cans tomato sauce TO START, in order to cover the meat.  Likely will use about 8 and you may as well b/c you can freeze or share the sauce.
• Use plain-ish tomato sauce.  (not Ragu, or Prego whatever.)  Star Cross, Cento, Dei Fratelli.  NOT Italian Sauce.  Better quality sauces start with tomatoes, not tomato puree. 
• Garlic.  Cut the hard part off the base, then bang it a little and the skin will come right off.  Leave the garlic in big pieces because it’s not going to stay in the sauce.  Brown it in the oil to flavor it, but then it comes out.  Garlic burns quickly, so do it gently.
• Save one of the cans to use as a spoon rest and to put the garlic in when it’s done.  Olive Oil should be cold pressed.
• Alternatively, use rendered salt pork instead of olive oil.  That creates quite a different flavor so if you’re going to try it, let me know!
• We use a mix of beef and pork.  Depends on what you like both for flavor and/or to eat as part of the meal.  Country style pork ribs with bone are good for flavor and to eat.  Plain spare ribs are GREAT for eating as well.  For beef flavor, just something with a bone in it like beef neck bones or short ribs.  Chuck roast, boneless or not, is good for both flavor and to eat.  Sometimes finding the meat is hard so try to make do.
• Yellow onions work great. Use sweet onions if you can’t find yellow.
• An alternative and even easier sauce that Mom likes….https://food52.com/recipes/13722-marcella-hazan-s-tomato-sauce-with-onion-butter.  Use as it, or add it to some browned ground beef and make “American Sauce.”
• We recommend indulging in Pan e Sugo (Bread and Sauce) to taste the sauce throughout the day.  You’ll be able to tell when the sauce starts tasting more cooked.  Also look for the sheen of olive oil on the top. 
• Pasta shapes are named after actual things.  For example, Farfale is Butterfly.  Vermicelli is Worm.  Linguini is tongue.  Capelli is hair!  Orecchiette are called Priest Ear’s in mom’s dialect,  “recchie d' privte.”