The best homemade meat sauce is a hearty blend of beef and Italian sausage, bursting with rich tomato flavor. It’s perfect for lasagna or spaghetti and can be made quickly with simple ingredients, ideally ready without any complicated or exotic additions.
I’m thrilled to share my favorite homemade meat sauce recipe, which has everything you need to ditch jarred sauce for good.
This recipe was inspired by my search for the perfect lasagna, since you really can’t have one without the other. Plus, my make-ahead lasagna recipe makes a big batch of meat sauce, giving you at least a quart to enjoy on its own or plenty to use in the lasagna.
I like using both beef and ground sausage here as well as fennel seeds (for extra sausage flavor). Everything else is straight out of your pantry including a tiny bit of sugar for sweetness.
Make lasagna with it, pour it on spaghetti, or eat it with a spoon.
In fact, if you want to eat zoodles? Eat them with this sauce. It makes everything better. Leave the zucchini noodles raw, pile on the meat sauce, and let the hot sauce soften the zoodles just a little. (I added mushrooms to my sauce in this photo).
Homemade Meat Sauce – a photo of red meat sauce with mushrooms over zucchini zoodles in a white bowl – click photo for full written recipe
Is it a good replacement for pasta? No.
Is it a good replacement for a salad? Yes.
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homemade meat sauce recipe
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 16 servings 1x
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 pound ground Italian sausage
- 1 medium onion chopped (about 1 cup)
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
- 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
- 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1½ teaspoons dried basil
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- ½ teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1 bay leaf
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, brown the beef, sausage, and onion over medium heat for about 5 minutes, draining the fat if you prefer, then add the garlic and cook until it’s fragrant, which should take around 30 seconds.
- Next, mix in the crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, sugar, basil, Italian seasoning, fennel, bay leaf, a teaspoon of salt, and a quarter teaspoon of pepper, and let everything simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally; once it’s done, take out the bay leaf and taste, adding more salt and pepper if needed—I usually like to add another teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper, but you can adjust it to your liking.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Category: Main course
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Calories: 211 kcal