White or red? Pick a spaghetti sauce that will impress your guests

I was cooking for a potluck the other day and I wanted to make a really flavorful spaghetti. I didn’t want to make just a regular sauce, nor did I only want to make one sauce.

WHITE SAUCE SPAGHETTI

1 quart heavy cream

1 1/2 teaspoons chicken stock base

1 1/2 teaspoons oyster sauce

1 tablespoon cornstarch (optional)

1/4 cup cold water (optional)

Cooked spaghetti

In a large pot, pour in cream, base, and sauce and bring to a simmer over medium-low. Allow to reduce by half, stirring frequently, as the cream can easily boil over. Continue to simmer until thick, or mix up the cornstarch into the cold water and stir into the simmering cream. Continue to stir until thickened. Adjust seasonings. Serve over spaghetti.

RED SAUCE SPAGHETTI

1 pound ground beef

1/2 large onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup sliced mushrooms

3 roma tomatoes, chopped

1 can tomatoes, chopped

1 (12 ounces) can tomato paste

1 cup beef broth

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried basil leaves

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Cooked spaghetti

Break up ground beef with fork. In a large pot, brown ground beef and onion. Then add garlic, tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and beef broth. Cover and barely simmer for one hour. Adjust seasonings with fresh parsley, brown sugar, dried oregano, dried basil, salt, and pepper. Serve over spaghetti.

How would you make it more flavorful? I would start with the beef. Either “grind” a few chuck steaks in your food processor, or find store trim ground beef. Chuck is a good compromise between cost and quality. Store trim ground beef is a mix of many types of beef muscles, and so will provide a very flavorful meat.

The best way to cook up the beef is to brown it well in a 400-degree oven. Use a 9x13 baking pan, break up the beef into the pan, add the onion, and bake. Check it every 5 to 10 minutes. Stir to ensure even browning. Continue to bake until the meat is very dark, but not burnt. This extra browning somewhat crisps up the meat and intensifies the beefiness of the flavor. Browning in the oven also gives a more even brown than a frying pan can. The onion gets well cooked too, and not just sweated. It provides intense flavor this way as well.

Should you add the garlic with the beef? It depends. Do you want intense garlicky flavor? If so, mince a fresh clove and add it after browning. Do you want the caramelized garlic flavor that browning would provide? Add whole cloves to the browning meat, make sure they are off to the edge of the pan until darkened, then mash into the beef.

Browning the mushrooms in a frying pan before adding to the sauce ramps up the umami flavor. Slice them thin for quicker cooking.

I’ll add the fresh tomato to the beef in the baking pan, allowing it to brown as well.

Canned tomato is not a bad product for spaghetti, but different brands can provide different flavors. How do you know for sure short of having a taste testing of your own? Stick to your favorite brand, but drain the can in a colander, reserving the juice. Add the drained tomato to the beef and brown as well. This will intensify the tomato flavor, and you can use the juice to partially slacken the paste.

A small can of tomato paste helps add tomato flavor and color throughout the sauce. Add a little bit of water, if needed, to help slacken it in the sauce.

I rarely have beef broth handy. Instead I use the pan that had the browned beef in it, and deglaze it with the reserved tomato juice and a little water if needed. A little scraping of the brown spot left in the pan with a spoon soon provides a very flavorful broth. If I really want to intensify this flavor, I will sometimes add a finely chopped stalk of celery to the beef to be browned, knowing this will add depth to the needed broth.

Seek out fresh parsley, basil, oregano, and also thyme instead of using the dried herbs. You will be very satisfied with choosing fresh for the much more green flavor they provide.

I’m not a big fan of salt and pepper out of hand. They have their place, but I prefer gray sea salt, and fresh ground pepper, or a seasoning blend I am fond of. Either way, I don’t just blindly dump in these items without tasting the sauce first to see where it is sitting flavor wise. Then I add small amounts, knowing I can add more if needed.

There are two ways of dealing with cooking the spaghetti; salted boiling water and non-salted boiling water. I add a tablespoon of salt my water, knowing the spaghetti will absorb some of it, giving it some extra flavor.

I also use angel hair spaghetti, as it cooks faster and is easier to eat.

I prefer to not overcook the pasta, stopping it at a point where there is still some bite left to the noodle. This is a harder spot to find with angel hair pasta.

The best topping is Parmesan cheese. I do prefer grating my own Parmigiano-Reggiano, as opposed to the stuff in the green can, which also contains “cellulose powder to prevent caking, potassium sorbate to protect flavor.”