The Faster, BETTER Way to make Spaghetti & Meat Sauce (25 Mins!)

Hey , what's up today ?

I'm gonna show you a spaghetti and meat sauce that requires only one pan .

Takes about 25 to 30 minutes to make and is actually better than any version that I've made with more time or more pots to get started .

I'll grab a large heavy bottom pot and drop it on the stove over medium high heat .

Once that's hot , it goes a little squiggle of olive oil .

Then £1 or 450 g of 80 20 ground chuck .

Next , I'll add in eight ounces of hot Italian pork sausage , eight ounces is roughly two links by the way .

And instead of buying bulk sausage , I cut open the casing of two links and popped out the meat .

I like adding sausage to meat sauce as a quick , easy way to bring some additional flavors like fennel seed and paprika into the mix .

Now , jump in with my meat smer and crumble this meat down as far as I can get it .

Since the cook time is gonna be short for this dish , we really need to physically break down the proteins in the meat instead of letting time and heat do all the work for us .

For example , in my classic bolognaise recipe , I basically break the ground meat in the oven for almost two hours that builds a lot of flavor .

But more importantly , makes the beef super soft and crumbly .

We don't have that kind of time here .

So I'll smush this meat while browning it for 5 to 10 minutes .

And once this meat is taken on some nice color and is crumbled down into pieces that are about the size of a lentil or smaller .

It's time to move on .

Next in goes 200 g of medium chopped onions , 20 g of garlic and then a strong pinch of salt .

By the way , the quickest way that I know to get an onion popped up for a dish like this is a method that I call the week night died for that .

I take a peeled halved onion and slice it 6 to 7 times from the North to the South Pole .

Then I'll turn it 90 degrees and chop every quarter inch or so .

When I get down to the end part , I'll fold the onion forward to keep it balanced and then finish chopping it .

This method is quite a bit easier and faster than the traditional three step way .

And the outcome is uniform enough .

Now , I'll give these onions and garlic a quick stir to get them combined with the meat and then I'll make sure to scrape the bottom a little bit with my wooden spoon .

As I go , there's a lot of beefiness starting to get stuck on the bottom of the pot here and the moisture from the onions is gonna help deglaze that so that it can become part of our sauce instead of burnt on the bottom of the pot .

Next , I'll pop a lid onto this pot so that the onions can steam down and soften up quickly and then I'll preheat my oven to 4 25 F so that I can finish this sauce in the oven .

And after five minutes of lid on cooking over medium heat , my onions are getting nice and tender and things are starting to glaze up the bottom of the pot one more time .

So from here , I'll add in 1 g of dried oregano , 1 g of chili flake and then 75 g of tomato paste .

Tomato paste is by far my favorite short cut to get deep tomato flavor in a sauce with way less time .

It's kind of like tomato .

Next , I'll stir to get everything combined and then I'll cook this until the tomato paste has had a chance to sizzle off and lose some of its tinny canned flavor .

And once it's looking orangey red and things are smelling spicy , it's time to move on .

The next thing in is actual , I've got 15 g of better than boon beef base going in because this is a meat based sauce after all .

And this little dose of boon is gonna help mimic the depth that we would get from a lower slower cooked meat sauce .

Next in goes 1 28 ounce can or about 800 g of nice tasting crushed tomatoes .

Then I'll take this empty can over to my sink and fill it up with water .

Normally , adding water to sauce would be antithetical to making it more flavorful , but this is setting us up for what's to .

Um , so the water goes in , then I'll add 6 to 8 g of salt , 7 to 8 g of sugar .

And then I'll give everything a stir and bring it up to a medium simmer .

Next , I'll add in 10 g of chopped fresh basil .

I prefer the sweet peppery , almost an flavor of fresh basil here too dried .

But if all you have is dried , no sweat .

1 g of that should go in with the oregano we added in earlier .

Now for the weird stuff into this simmering sauce , I'm gonna add in 12 ounces or 340 g of broken spaghetti .

And when I say broken specifically , I mean , broken in half .

By the way , I do not recommend breaking all 12 ounces at once for this reason .

Instead , I'd say snap down 10 to 15 noodles at a time .

You also get more uniform pieces that way .

Next , I'll come back and stir to get this pasta fully submerged in the liquid .

But don't worry about stirring to fully combined because at this point , the noodles are pretty brittle and too much force will snap them into much smaller pieces .

So once they are more or less emerged , I'll simmer them for about 60 seconds to soften them .

That's the literal perfect amount of time to thank seed for sponsoring this video .

Over the last couple of years , I've really learned the importance of not just taking a high quality probiotic every day , but a scientifically proven high quality probiotic .

The one that I take is seed , DS 01 daily synbiotics .

Seed has worked with leading scientists and researchers to develop DS 01 , which is their two in one prebiotic and probiotic .

It's made with 24 clinic and scientifically studied strains of bacteria that have benefits well beyond gut health .

Yes , supporting regularity is very important , but also this probiotic supports heart and skin health .

And you guys have heard me talk about this before , but it's really important that if you're taking a probiotic , it actually makes it all the way to your gut .

So seed uses a via cap capsule within a capsule system to protect the bacteria from heat , moisture , stomach acid and enzymes to make sure it ends up where it's actually supposed to your colon .

So if you've been meaning to try seed now is actually a really good time from March 14th through the 25th , 2023 seed is offering 30% off your first month supply .

That's actually the best deal that I've ever seen them offer .

So to get it , go to seed dot com slash Brian and use code Brian to get 30% off your first month supply of DS 01 daily symbiotic .

After 60 seconds of simmering , these noodles have simmered just enough to allow us to stir them a full into the sauce .

So I'll do that by carefully pushing from the bottom to bring some of that sauce up to the top .

And then I'll carefully use the back of my spoon to smooth and layer those noodles within that sauce .

And once everything is tucked in here , I'll kill the heat and then move this pot over to the oven to finish cooking for 16 to 18 minutes .

And if you're thinking , hey , bra this whole one pot noodle situation is outrageous .

I agree with you .

But in my recent lasagna video , I figured out that plain old no noodles don't need to be cooked so long as there is enough hot liquid around them .

In fact , somehow the texture is better like it's more evenly cooked since we're hydrating the spaghetti or lasagna noodles slower than we would be in boiling water .

And after five minutes of bake time here , I'll come back and slide this pot out carefully and then stir everything up .

Inevitably , there's gonna be spots with more or less sauce and redistributing that moisture is essential for getting things cooked properly .

I'll do my best to make sure the noodles are submerged and then I'll load this back in and check back in five more minutes , five minutes later or at the 10 minute mark .

I'll repeat the stirring one more time .

You can already see that the noodles are getting quite bendy and tender at this point .

But the sauce is still pretty loose .

This whole setup means another 6 to 8 minutes in the oven so that the noodles can soak that up again .

I'll do my best here to make sure as many of these noodles are sitting below the sauce line as possible .

Then I'll load it back in and keep on cooking and , and after 16 to 18 minutes of baked time , it's time to pull this out and take a look as you can see , it looks dope and cooking the sauce in the oven gave us quite a bit of roasty browning that we would have missed out on , on the stovetop .

The last step here is to determine pasta doneness by giving a couple noodles a bite and wow , that's delicious .

It's got a really great texture and it's maybe just past Al Dente , which is where I want it .

Lastly , I'll add in 50 g of grated Parmesan cheese and stir that in my Aunt Karen who is a great cook , taught me not to fear adding cheese right into meat sauce .

It makes things rounder more umami and soften some of the acidity from the tomatoes .

You guys , this dish has the perfect ratio of meat sauce to noodle .

And the two are seamlessly integrated into a delicious and dynamic hole in a way that I've never had before .

And like I said in the intro of this video , this version of spaghetti and meat sauce is not just a fast one , but , but now , in my opinion , it's the best version that I could make at home and it'll definitely be replacing the more labor intensive one that I've used in the past .

It's meaty , deeply robust , a tiny touch sweet .

It's umami .

It's really the full package you guys and I really hope you try it soon .

Let's eat this thing .

Oh By the way , here's a link to that lasagna video that I mentioned earlier .

The noodles also don't get boiled .

What a world you guys .