[olug] OT: bacon s'getti sauce

[Will Langford]

Bwahaha, bacon lives!
Anyhoo, tried the sauce after a day of rest (ie: s'getti makes excellent
leftovers), and while it was a bit better, I still couldn't bare it by the
end of the plate.

For the record, the sauce recipe I have is something I saw on food network,
then went about going on their site and digging it up in their awful recipe
search stuff.  From there, modified to suit my needs... and ... improved it
IMHO.  Its included here so there's more of an idea of quantity and
pre-existing ingredients.

For the meat browning:
1-1.5lbs of ground cow of some sort
1-1.5lbs of ground pork
1 tbs oregano
1 tbs thyme 'flakes' (standard 99c lil 1oz red/tan can)
1 tbs rosemary leaves (broken)
1 tbs fennel seeds (cracked)
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper (fresh plz)

The original food network recipe also called for... venison I think
(0.75-1.0 pounds of each kind of meat).  Being near 39th and Q, local
grocery store options are No Frills and Hyvee, neither of which would carry
such a beast.

I bought a $10 coffee grinder for breaking up the rosemary leaves and
'cracking' the fennel seeds.  All it's used for is the spice pulverization.
 I find the 80% pre-ground stuff does better than the leaner cow.  I have
yet to try grinding my own (i lack a grinder, or a decent food processor).
 Prep all spices, mix'em in a condiment bowl or something.  Brown all the
meat together, breaking up with wooden spoon as usual with this kind of
thing.  Add the spices in 3-5 installments throughout cooking process (seems
to balance it out more throughout meat).  At first, seemed odd to spice the
meat given you'll drain the juice away... but... I guess you're effectively
making cooked sausage or something.

For onions/tomato in a separate pot:
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 onion, chopped to preference
5-7 cloves garlic, tiny chop (minced ? diced ? meh)
4 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes
1 or 2 tsp kosher salt (1 req, more is preference)
1 or 2 tsp black pepper (1 req, more is preference, fresh ground plz!)
1 tbs (sweet) basil leaves flake/powdery goodness (again, typical 99c 1oz
things)
1/2 tbs brown sugar (or regular sugar) (optional!)
2 bay leaves (optional)
1 tsp accent/msg (optional)
1 shot of a sweet wine (rose in my case, optional)

I've not done too much experimentation with fresh onion vs typical
white/red... seems about the same to me. Nor have I done a proper red vs
white onion test.  For the garlic, I hate the thought of losing juice to a
press :(.  The original recipe called for 4 cans of whole tomatoes, hand
squished, and ... I forgot an initial amount of paste.  Funny story, more on
that later.  Rosemary is strong, and if you want something a bit more tame,
I think savory is a suggested substitute.

Medium heat for the olive oil.  After heated, add the red pepper flakes.
 Wait 10-20 secs, add onion.  Cook as per typical onion-ness (until
translucent or slightly changing colors afterwards).  Add garlic, cook
'until fragrant', about 45-75 secs.  Add tomato and meat (holding back
grease or else flavor will suffer).  Salt and pepper, more to taste.  Simmer
on low for 1.5-2.0 hrs.  I've noted that sometimes the meat will clump in
big chunks, if this is not a preference -- a potato masher gently being
pressed in the sauce will break things up just fine.

The basil and brown sugar are my own additions to help offset the acidic
'blech' tomato has when left unchecked.  While optional, I really do suggest
the basil as a very minimum.  And accent does a sauce good, just ignore the
fast food MSG cancer scare of the 1980's :).  And the shot of wine is to
help the tomato release it's nice hidden flavor, and perhaps also combat the
blech.

I really need to run a proper experiment with white vs red onion, to see if
red's sweetness helps the anti-tomato-blech.  And I really need to fiddle
with the bay leaf thing, although time is usually not my friend so timing
insertion and extraction is... difficult usually.

Now for the hand squished tomato story.  Original recipe called for hand
squishing the tomatoes after adding the paste to the onions... and also
emptying remaining juice into the sauce.  I like the idea ... more on the
fresh side of things since the sauce is 'home made' and all.  So I tried it.
 I one handed squished things with vigor... noting it was still kinda
stringy.  After adding the meat, salt and pepper.. stirred it a bit and
noted how extremely stringy it was.  Guess my squishing skills are 'the
suck' more or less.  So.... I had a bright idea.  Picked up a standard
two-paddle hand held mixer, put in the cake batter / egg beater / etc
paddles... and proceeded to 'mix' my sauce.  Sauce was.... EVERYWHERE.  All
over the mixer, all over the wall, all over the counter, all over me.  I was
nearly rolling on the floor and had to call my mom (florida) to relate the
story :).  It... broke up the stringy tomato, and kinda left the meat in a
puree kind of thing.  Nothing bigger than a pea in the whole sauce hehehehe.
 Needless to say, until I come up with a better solution for fresh/whole
tomatoes... I'll stick to pre-crushed :).

----

But, on to the bacony reply.

feel you must add bacon to your spaghetti sauce, cook it separately from all
> the other ingredients and try to get as much grease off of it as possible,
> even pat it with a paper towel. That might help reduce the slimy feeling,


I pre-cooked the bacon in standard pan.  Did a soft cook in fear of having
hard bits in the sauce... clearly that would fubar the texture.  I thought
with an onion-sized dice-up, texture again, wouldn't suffer.  Didn't
consider the grease ramifications at the time... lest I would have tried the
paper towel thing.  I figured with the amount of grease from the meat
already being present... the bacon wouldn't really add much.  How wrong I
was :).


> but I wouldn't omit anything but meat from the sauce recipe to do it. Salt
> is pretty important to the taste, and leaving it out will make the sauce
>

Yeah, and I was thinking the salty bacon would make for an interesting
substitute.  Kinda like a parmasean cheese rind can add salt to the sauce as
well :).  Or my initial white sugar -> basil leaves substitute (more subtle
and seemingly as good for tomato blech) was the inspiration.  I figured the
sauce would suck the salt out of the bacon.


> You can substitute other seasonings to make the sauce more flavorful, like
> garlic, cilantro, oregano, bay leaves, etc, but I still would recommend


I've used cilantro in something else, can't recall.  And don't have much to
frame a 'it adds *this* to a recipe'.  I also desperately need to try the
bay leaves.


> adding a bit of salt. Bacon is going to make the whole thing heavy, and I
> don't know a way around that besides using less. 2-3 strips is kind of a
> lot, especially with all the other meat. I assume you're using ground beef,
> but bacon is much heavier than ground beef, so I do think it could have a
> large impact. Did you reduce the amount of meat when adding the bacon? I'd
> recommend adjusting the amount of meat down to compensate, even reducing it
> more than just by the amount of bacon you are adding. You might also try
>

Yes, the sauce has indeed sat in my stomach like a rock :).  Another
unforeseen consequence heh.  Given the amount of sauce produced, I didn't
think 2-3 strips was going to have that much of an impact.  Should have
listened to addage 'vegetables cooked with pork still counts as pork!'.  I
didn't reduce any of the other meats.. and given the outcome, I don't think
it would have improved matters any.  It wasn't a matter of 'heavy', it was a
matter of 'eww'.


> making the sauce as usual, then tossing the bacon in right at the end when
> you're throwing the sauce and pasta together. In concept, bacon and
> tomatoes
> should work together, or we wouldn't have the BLT, but bacon and spaghetti
> sounds gross to me. Good luck.


Being mildly lazy, cooking bacon every time I wanted to reheat s'getti would
be... tedious.  And I don't think it'd have the desired affect.  You'd then
be garnishing the s'getti with bacon rather than having bacon sauce :).

The only way I can see to degrease the bacon would be to include it in the
meat browning process.  That way it might cook fuller / meltier ... and the
grease would be held back with the rest of the grease when adding the meat
to the sauce for simmer.  But... I'm doubtful how much of an effect that
will have... given that the two plates of s'getti I've eaten, all the bacon
looks like onion at first glance... fatty!

And, for the record, this wasn't a "this has to be awesome" idea -- it was
an attempt to incorporate bacon into yet another facet of life :).

-Will