Pasta meat sauce

 

This past weekend, as noted in a previous post, I made three separate pasta meat sauces.  I love doing comparison cooking -- making multiple batches of the same food with different recipes at the same time.  In this case, I worked with three significantly different meat sauce recipes with the hope of seeing a significant difference in the end result.

I cooked each of them identically, using the same stainless steel skillet, using the same type and amount of beef, and using the same order of ingredient addition, etc.  The differences were in the seasonings and in the amounts and types of tomatoes (crushed, diced, paste, etc.), and in other added ingredients such as onions and garlic or green bell peppers, etc.

I cooked them in as identical a fashion as I could.  And then each batch was set aside while I cooked pasta, specifically spaghetti.  Then I added the pasta to the three meat sauces and put them all in the fridge to chill until the next day.

I love to make spaghetti and meat sauce this way.  Chilling the pasta overnight in the sauce means some of the sauce is absorbed and I love that texture and flavor the next day when I pull it out and cook it again with another infusion of sauce in either a saucepan on the stovetop or in the oven.  This twice-cooked spaghetti is really hard to resist, at least for me.  I always prefer spaghetti prepared this way.

After the spaghetti with the sauce was cooked the second time, I added generous amounts of finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese.  Is is possible to add too much cheese to pasta?  I don't think so!

One of the sauces wasn't to my liking.  It didn't have a flavor balance that I was happy with, and it seemed to have an unusual taste that wasn't really working with the pasta and cheese, undoubtedly from the seasonings chosen.  But the other two were very good.  One was a little sweeter and milder, and the other was a little darker with a little heat.  I finished the sweeter sauce with pasta more quickly than I finished the darker one.  But both were very good.  And I'm going to have to try them again, maybe with an extra spice or two added just to see what happens.  

This means that I've had a lot of pasta this week.  But I didn't mind that at all.  It all made for good meals, even breakfast.  Did you ever have pasta for breakfast?  It's a great way to start the day, I assure you.

So in the next week, hopefully, I'll do another batch of these two sauces, maybe tweaked just a little bit, and I'll see what I think when comparing one to the other again.  

Some people like a sweeter pasta sauce, and some don't.  Anyone care to offer their opinion on that?  

No matter what, though, I'm looking forward to another round of twice-cooked spaghetti and perhaps I'll send some out to be taste-tested by some of the regular eaters here at Bruce Bakery and Bistro.