Any tips for making a really thick tomato sauce to go with meatballs?

[lucysmam]

Just that really, I fancy meatballs for tea with a really thick sauce but not sure how to make it thick

tia

Pasta on plate sauce on top, then add meat balls and sprinkle with Parmesan and freshly torn basil if you have it. I prefer my tomato sauce fresh and light without the taste of meat. It's just personal preference though, do it to suit yourself.
I wouldn't add dried herbs, they ruin many a meal, better to not bother adding them if you can't get fresh.

The Italians commonly do a mixture of beef and pork but you could add chicken, lamb or turkey, it's up to you! I think they mostly end up tasting of the sauce, the cheese and the liberal sprinkling of hit chilli they become smothered in.

Waitrose do beef and pork

In defence of dried herbs: intensity. I cook with passion. I use fresh herbs and I use dried herbs, but in a passata - always dried. Get off your high horses and think about the dreadful way some of your tone comes across. Seriously, I'm cross now.

Do you put egg/herbs/flour or anything else into the meatballs or just the mince?

I love a nice passionate tomato sauce, me.

Egg, thickener (could be oatmeal or breadcrumbs or flour). Helps stop them falling apart. My pref is for low fat pork rather than combo of beef/lamb. All according to taste isn't it? I also use finely chopped spinach in mine.

Pasta sauce recipe
Five sticks of celery
Two small red onions
Two large cloves garlic
Two large carrots
Four tins tomatoes
1.2 tubes tomato purée
Three bay leaves
Basil
Salt
Pepper
Pinch sugar
Pinch paprika
Teaspoon full tapenade

Sauté chopped celery, onion, garlic in small amount of olive/rape seed oil to begin. Add chopped carrots and red pepper. Toss and soften quickly. Add remaining ingredients EXCEPT TAPENADE and cook until carrot is softened. Remove bay leaves, liquidise, add tapenade and season to taste.

This will do plenty for 8 with meatballs made from 500g beef steak mince and 500g good quality pork sausage meat. Fry the meatballs just to brown and add to the liquidised sauce, cook through (half an hour?) and season at end.

It's such a success I've actually written it down despite my usual ad hoc approach to cooking!

Sorry, there should be a chopped red pepper in there!

waffts extravagant herbs under your nose

Half a red pepper good. Carrot too sweet for my family. That is the beautiful thing abour family recipes - they can be bespoked to taste. PS DrNick, currently enjoying wafts of aromatically tempting fresh thyme and rosemary growing in my kitchen......doesn't stop me having dried in the cupboard.

Aren't some herbs equally good dried- for instance oregano?

;)

Course. Well in theory. You can never taste them if cooked.

Def not shit mixed herbs

What about spices? Is it acceptable to use dried coriander seeds, or must they also be plucked fresh from the garden?

agree about horrid mixed dried herbs

DrNick. Goodbye.

We make tomato sauce with a mix of onion/carrot/celery, fried til soft then add garlic, stock, tomatoes (I'll use passatta if I want a smooth sauce), black pepper, (herbs) a little sugar and then cook gently and reduce by about 50%, then blend (or not if you like it chunkier) with a hand blender. I like it with fresh basil added at the end but my DD would not accept green stuff in her sauce
You can vary it by adding peppers (the grilled ones in jars are good for this) sun dried tomatoes, chilli etc.
I'd probably add egg to meatballs to get them to stick together.

(I'm using coriander seeds from my own garden)

I sometimes add a spoonful of pesto to a tomato sauce. Dreadfully gauche, I know, but delicious.

Delia does an amazing meatballs in tomato sauce recipe in her complete cookbook!!

I always do meatballs in the slow cooker. This is no use to you now as you'll have eaten ages ago.
I put a chopped onion, a tin of tomatoes, salt, pepper, tomato puree and the meatballs into the slow cooker and leave it on low while I go to work.
I add fresh herbs when I get in (basil or oregano) and serve with any pasta I have in the cupboard.
Just take the lid off to thicken the sauce.

I sometimes add a spoonful of freshly made pesto, I'm not keen on the jarred stuff. The only dried herb I use is oregano in a chilli. You can sometimes get away with using dried thyme and sage but it's very easy to be heavy handed and the taste of dried herbs is so distinctive and can be very overpowering.
We avoid most sausages because the taste of dried herbs ruins them - but given everyone else buys them - we are clearly in the minority.

no- one person likes them and shes gone so we are clear

The tomato sauce which I made this evening (to have with meatballs) contained olive oil, 1/2 red onion, 2 cloves garlic, 1 tin chopped tomatoes, dried oregano, fresh basil and salt and black pepper.

However, I prefer to make a sauce by slow roasting fresh plum tomatoes with onion, garlic, red pepper and oregano, and then adding fresh basil at the end. DH also likes to add chilli. (In the summer we can get all of the fresh ingredients from our allotment).

I like shit dried mixed herbs.

And I shop at Waitrose