Beef Dishes, Slow Cooker/Crockpot Dishes

Slow Cooker Meat Sauce

Posted by koolaidmoms on

Yes, you can make sauce quickly or you can spend all day stirring and watching your pot of sauce. I chose to make it in the slow cooker and I am so glad I did! I didn’t have to touch the sauce all day (I cooked the ground beef, onion, and garlic early in the day and used an immersion blender on the tomatoes, because I don’t like chunks of tomato in my sauce, while the ground beef was cooking). We were home at 9:00 pm ish for dinner and had an amazing sauce all ready for us.

Verdict:

I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out because by the time we ate it had been cooking about 10 hours. I was hoping it wasn’t burnt at the bottom or overly bland. We tasted it and added a bit more spice but it was REALLY good! My son it said it was the best sauce I ever made. From my biggest critic that is a HUGE compliment.

Serve this dish with pasta, green salad, and a green vegetable to complete the meal. This sauce can also be cooled, frozen and used up to three months later.  This would be delicious in a lasagna or with manicotti.

As you can see my children love grated cheese with the sauce!

Slow Cooker Meat Sauce

  • Servings: 8-10
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

A slow cooker meat sauce with lots of flavor.

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 1/2 – 2 pounds ground beef (or 1 lb. ground beef and 1 lb. Italian Sausage, casings removed)
  • 1 medium onion, minced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 (28 oz) cans diced tomatoes
  • 1 (6 oz) can tomato paste
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1  heaping teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 heaping teaspoon dried basil
  • salt and black pepper, to taste

Directions:

  1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add ground beef, onion and garlic. Cook until browned, making sure to break up the beef into small pieces as it cooks. Drain well when done.
  2. Place ground beef mixture in slow cooker. Stir in diced tomatoes, tomato  paste, bay leaves, oregano, basil, salt and pepper, to taste. Cover and cook on low heat for 8 hours.
  3. Stir well. Taste sauce and adjust spices to liking adding more basil, oregano, garlic powder, or salt and pepper as needed.  Serve over pasta if desired.

5 Comments Add yours

  1. Gail’s Snapshotsincursive says:
    February 25, 2019 at 5:30 pm

    Sounds like a winner. 🍃🍅

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. koolaidmoms says:
      February 25, 2019 at 8:27 pm

      Thank you!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. Erika Kind says:
    February 25, 2019 at 8:01 pm

    Haha, my son doesn’t like tomato chunks either. So this sauce sounds very tasty in general but also perfect for him in particular.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. koolaidmoms says:
      February 25, 2019 at 8:27 pm

      Yes, I cannot eat raw tomatoes or chunks. Totally a texture thing for me. I get him!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. Erika Kind says:
        February 25, 2019 at 8:38 pm

        Same with my son. He puts ketchup on everything, loves tomato soup, and tomatoe sauce. But he cannot eat raw tomatoes or chunks in the sauce.

        Like

        Reply

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