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This elevated Mom-style spaghetti sauce captures all the comforting, nostalgic flavors of the jarred Prego you grew up with, but delivers a massive payoff with only 30 minutes of effort.
Table of Contents
Why This Spaghetti Recipe Delivers
By leaning on a few simple techniques and key ingredients, we bring the humble building blocks of this fan favorite sauce into the big leagues. That means even in a short cook time, the sauce can develop a rich, slow-simmered depth that tastes like there were no shortcuts. It’s the perfect, hearty staple to keep in your weeknight rotation.
Brian’s Pro Tips
Finer meat texture: Using a meat “musher” to break down the beef and sausage into pea-sized particles ensures the meat integrates completely into the sauce, rather than sitting in dry tough clumps.
Caramelizing the tomato paste: Cooking the tomato paste down until it turns a deep, rusty color caramelizes the sugars and removes the tinny canned tomato flavor while adding depth.
Meat Maxing: Adding Beef flavored Better Than Bouillon gives this dish a healthy dose of extra beef flavor with no extra effort.
Fresh over dried: Stirring in fresh basil right at the end (instead of relying entirely on dried Italian seasoning) adds a sweet, vibrant freshness that perfectly offsets the heavy, rich meatiness.
Key Ingredient Notes & Substitutions
These are a few of the important ingredients that are worth calling out in this recipe. A full list of all ingredients and amounts can be found in the recipe card below.
- 80/20 Ground Chuck & Hot Italian Pork Sausage: The 80/20 beef provides the ideal fat ratio for flavor without making the sauce overly greasy. Don’t skip the Italian sausage. It brings delicious perkiness, along with a subtle fennel/anise note that beautifully perfumes the entire dish. Sub in extra ground beef if you dont eat pork
- Beef Better Than Bouillon: This is the secret weapon for a 30-minute sauce. It brings a massive hit of concentrated, slow-cooked beef flavor that standard boxed stock just can’t compete with.
- High-Quality Crushed Tomatoes: Since this is a quick sauce, the quality of your tomatoes matters. Use a brand you trust that tastes naturally sweet and balanced straight out of the can. Avoid cheap acidic brands. I recommend Bianco Di Napoli or Cento.
- Fresh Basil: This brings a small upgrade from the standard “Mom” recipe. But fresh basil can be pricey, so don’t be ashamed of subbing dried basil or Italian seasoning, I suggest starting with 2 grams and tasting before adding more.
How To Make Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce
Below, you’ll find the detailed, step-by-step instructions with photos and lots of tips. For a more condensed version of the recipe, check the recipe card below.
- Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a large dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef and Italian sausage. Cook, crushing constantly with a meat musher or sturdy spatula, until the meat is fully browned and broken down into pea-sized pieces.
2. Add the diced onion, minced garlic, and a pinch of salt to the meat. Sweat for 3-5 minutes until the onions are translucent and soft.
3. Add the tomato paste. Cook, stirring frequently, until the tomato paste begins to slightly caramelize and turns a dark, rusty red color. This should take about 2 minutes.
Keep an eye on the bottom of the pot, if it starts to get dark, add a small splash of water and scrape up with wooden spoon to prevent burning.
4. Pour in the crushed tomatoes, sugar, beef bouillon, chile flake, oregano and water. Stir until everything is well incorporated and bring the mixture to a simmer.
5. Once the sauce is simmering, drop the heat to medium-low. Partially cover with a lid, leaving a gap for steam to escape, and let it reduce for about 20 minutes until significantly thickened. Stir every 5 minutes to keep the tomatoes from gripping the bottom of the pot and scorching.
This sauce is ploppy AF. Use a lid or spend 20 minutes wiping tomato slop off your counter/floor and possibly ceiling.
6. While the sauce is simmering, drop your spaghetti into a large pot of boiling water and cook for 10-12 minutes (or according to package directions for al dente).
7. When finished, the sauce should have thickened significantly, I like to call it done when a spoon or spatula leaves a lazy trail that holds. Reduce more than you think here.
8. Drain the noodles very well, shaking out all excess water, and toss them with a small splash of olive oil to prevent sticking. Let them steam off for 3-4 minutes to prevent excess water from thinning out the spaghetti sauce. We really want to avoid having the noodles swim in the dreaded “orange tomato water.”
9. Stir the fresh chopped basil into the finished sauce off heat and taste for seasoning. Add more salt if needed.
10. To serve, place a portion of noodles in a bowl and top with a generous scoop of the meat sauce. Finish with plenty of grated Parmesan cheese.
Serve It With…
I like to serve this classic mom’s spaghetti and meat sauce with what 90s moms served this dish with – cheesy garlic bread. Regular garlic bread is also acceptable. Add a side salad if you must.
Storage and Make-Ahead
This meat sauce is the ultimate make-ahead meal because the flavors actually deepen and improve after a day in the fridge. Store the cooled sauce in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Also this recipe is EASILY doubled for feeding large groups or for freezing, just make sure your pot can hold at least 6 quarts.
Mom’s 30 Minute Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 lb (450g) ground chuck, 80/20
- 8 oz hot Italian pork sausage, approx. 2 links, casings removed, 225g
- 200 g onion, medium diced, 1 med-lrg
- 20 g garlic, minced or pressed, 4 cloves
- coarse salt, to taste
- 1 g dried oregano, 1/2 tsp
- 1 g red chili flake, 1/2 tsp
- 75 g tomato paste, 1/3 cup
- 15 g Beef Better Than Bouillon, 1 Tbsp
- 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, 800g
- 600 g water, or enough to fill the empty tomato can ¾ of the way
- 7-8 g granulated sugar, 2 tsp
- 10 g fresh basil, chopped, 3 Tbsp
- 450 g dry spaghetti
- olive oil, for tossing pasta
- Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Instructions
- In a large heavy-bottomed pot, cook ground beef and sausage in oil over med-high heat, breaking apart constantly until the meat is fully browned and broken down into pea-sized pieces.
- Add the diced onion, minced garlic, and a pinch of salt to the meat. Sweat for 3-5 minutes until the onions are translucent and soft.
- Stir in the tomato paste. Cook, stirring frequently, until the tomato paste begins to slightly caramelize and turns a dark, rusty red color, about 2 minutes.
- Add crushed tomatoes, sugar, bouillon, chile flake, oregano and water. Stir until everything is well incorporated.
- Bring the sauce to a simmer, then drop the heat to medium-low. Partially cover with a lid, leaving a gap for steam to escape, and let it reduce for about 20 minutes until significantly thickened. Stir every 5 minutes to keep the bottom of the pot and scorching.
- While the sauce is simmering, drop your spaghetti into a pot of boiling water and cook per package instructions.
- Drain the noodles well, shaking off excess water, and toss them with a small splash of olive oil to prevent sticking. Let them steam off for 3-4 minutes to prevent excess water from thinning out the spaghetti sauce.
- Stir the fresh chopped basil into the finished sauce off heat and taste for seasoning. Add more salt if needed.
- To serve, place a portion of noodles in a bowl, top with a generous scoop of the meat sauce, and finish with plenty of grated Parmesan cheese.
Like this? Leave a comment below!My Go To Gear For Mom’s Spaghetti
Whey I first bought this thing, I had no idea how much I would end up using it. It’s almost always in hand when cooking and breaking down meat.
My go-to brand is Le Creuset, but any large dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot (that’s not aluminum) will work here.
This is my brand of choice, but any good wooden spoon for stirring and scraping will work. Silicon are harder to scrape up any fond sticking to the bottom of the pot.
Serve it with…
The Easiest Actually Good Bread (1 Dough 3 Loaves)
This is an updated and much easier to execute version of my original 1 dough 3 loaves recipe. It focuses on one beginner bread dough that can be used to make three different loaves of bread of increasing (but still simple) complexity. This version 2.0 recipe makes a few tweaks that will be easier for beginner bakers to execute and produces a fool proof result!
Frequently asked questions
This recipe is MADE for batch cooking and scales perfectly. If you want to make a massive batch for meal prep, you can do all the sautéing steps on the stove, then transfer everything into a slow cooker and let it rip on low for 3-4 hours to really develop those flavors.
If you want to switch it up, dried tagliatelle or fusilli are fantastic options. The robust meat sauce clings perfectly to the wide ribbons of tagliatelle or gets trapped in the spirals of the fusilli. Avoid fresh pasta for this dish; you want a sturdy dried pasta that can hold up to the heavy sauce.
It actually does the opposite! Adding water gives the sauce the necessary liquid volume it needs to actively simmer and reduce for 15-20 minutes. As that water cooks off, it allows the flavors from the beef, tomatoes, and aromatics to meld and concentrate beautifully without scorching the bottom of your pot.
