Manic Mondays – Meat Sauce for All

We are enjoying the last week of family time at the cottage before school starts. Sadly we have been stuck inside for the past 24 hours because of torrential rain. So in between playing house with the kids in our IKEA tent and catching up on the September issue of Vogue, I have kept myself busy making some big one-pot meals to get us thru the week.

Nothing says cozy and warms everyone up on a dreary day like a hearty meat sauce. It takes about 30 minutes of chopping but once that’s all done you just need to let it simmer down for a couple of hours while you catch up on emails and play with the kids

Charlie wishing he could be at the beach!

This is also an appropriate post for Manic Mondays because if you make a big enough pot you can serve this meat sauce a couple of different ways for a lot of the week – taking the stress of preparing meal after meal for the whole family….. making your Mondays a little less manic! This version of my meat sauce is fairly simple and can be prepared relatively quickly – its the perfect sauce for a busy mom or dad to make for the whole family.

Get everything together:

2 lbs of organic and hormone-free ground meat (or ideally grass-fed if you can find it!)
2 tablespoons olive oil
7 carrots
4 celery stalks
2 cloves of garlic
1 whole yellow onion
Thyme
Oregano
Bay Leaves
8 large tomatoes
Sea Salt
Pepper

Now let’s get all the hard work over with.

First dice up the onion and garlic. Put in a bowl off to the side.

Continue dicing up the carrots and the celery. Finely chop up a handful of Thyme and Oregano. I like to use lots of herbs but you can decide how much you want to put into your sauce. Try to keep to a ¼ cup once chopped up.

To complete the chopping process, take 8 large tomatoes and dice them all up. Place all the tomatoes into a separate bowl so you don’t lose all the juices on your cutting board. If you don’t have the time to dice up the tomatoes or simply don’t want to, you can definitely buy canned tomatoes. I prefer Eden Organics because of their BPA free cans.

Next I take my Le Creuset dutch oven and heat it up on low. I add in the two tablespoons of olive oil and the onions and garlic. Sauté this for approximately 10 minutes, waiting long enough for the onions to get soft. Add in the carrots and celery. Stir around for another 10 minutes.

Next I take my Le Creuset dutch oven and heat it up on low. I add in the two tablespoons of olive oil and the onions and garlic. Sauté this for approximately 10 minutes, waiting long enough for the onions to get soft. Add in the carrots and celery. Stir around for another 10 minutes.

Add in the herbs.

Now add in your meat. I find my organic, grass fed ground meat either at the Healthy Butcher in Toronto or else thru farms in the Ontario area. A great option if you live in Toronto is Grandview Farms. Their cows and pigs are pasture raised and have access to annually planted crops.

Cook the meat mostly thru. Should be around 10 minutes.

Finally add in your tomatoes, bay leaves and sea salt and pepper to taste. Stir everything around. Set your element to simmer and let the whole sauce bubble together for 1 to 2 hours. Check on the sauce every little bit to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom. After a while the mixture should be turning from a mush of vegetables to a nice liquid based sauce.

For the kids I keep the sea salt to a minimum but for the adult meal I add in a little extra sea salt, some chili flakes (or diced red chilies) for added spice and chopped up basil leaves.

This meal is a great for three different family members.

1. Infant that eats meat (mush up for him)
2. Toddler with some brown rice
3. Adults with Zucchini noodles (or pasta!)