Spaghetti and Meat Sauce

This easy spaghetti and meat sauce recipe can easily be adapted into a vegetarian spaghetti recipe.  Simply replace the ground turkey with frozen vegetables or omit it altogether.

For our spaghetti and meat sauce, we’re going to use ingredients (and a process) almost identical to the Lasagna Recipe we made on Monday.

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound of spaghetti
  • 1 can/jar of spaghetti sauce
  • 1 pound ground turkey
  • Oregano, Garlic, Sweet Basil, Marjoram, and Crushed Red Pepper (optional)

The process:

  1. Boil a pot of water on your stove top on the highest heat setting.
  2. Once the water is boiling, place your dry spaghetti noodles into the pot (break them in half to make them fit better).
  3. While your noodles boil, brown some defrosted ground turkey in a separate pot on the stove top on medium to medium-high heat.
  4. When the turkey is brown, pour in spaghetti sauce. Let it simmer on medium heat, stirring regularly.
  5. As the sauce simmers, stir in oregano, garlic, basil, and marjoram to taste.  I like to add crushed red pepper to spice up my sauce, but that’s up to you.
  6. When the noodles are soft and pliable, drain them into a colander in the sink (Tip: To tell if your spaghetti is done, eat a noodle; if it’s still crunchy, it’s not quite done boiling).
  7. Some people say it’s best to let your spaghetti sauce simmer in a covered pot for about 20 minutes.  That’s up to you.  Technically all you really need to do to prepare store-bought spaghetti sauce is warm it up. If you want your sauce to absorb a little more flavor from the spices, you can leave it on the stove top for another 5 or 10 minutes at this point, but if you’re hungry or in a hurry, you can skip this step altogether.
  8. Pull the sauce of the heat and serve with your spaghetti.

Start to finish, this easy spaghetti recipe is done in less than half an hour, and will feed 4 or more people.  It’s an easy dinner recipe that you can make on busy evenings or on those nights when you just don’t feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen.  Best of all, this meal only costs a few dollars to make, as opposed to the several dollars you would spend on one spaghetti plate at an Italian restaurant.

Goes great with Garlic Bread!