I’ve always thought about making homemade spaghetti sauce. (Keyword: thought). The process of buying a bunch of tomatoes (expensive!), de-seeding them (tedious!), and finding the correct ratio of wine:seasonings: tomato juice (intimidating!) always seemed too overwhelming and time-consuming.
Enter the fantastic food blog Budget Bytes. I love this woman. (She doesn’t know me, but I love her anyway.) Her recipes are soooo good and friendly on the wallet, too. One day I came across her recipe for Slow Cooker Marinara. I looked at the list of ingredients and I was immediately sold. She uses canned tomatoes instead of fresh, so I thought, Okay, I might be able to do this!
Essentially, all you do is throw a bunch of ingredients in a crock pot and WAIT, while your kitchen fills up with the delicious smells of rich tomato sauce.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- 2 (28 oz.) cans crushed tomatoes
- 1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- ½ Tbsp minced garlic (more if you’re warding off vampires or if you just LOVE garlic, like me)
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 Tbsp dried basil ( I use crushed tomatoes with basil, instead; see photo below)
- ½ Tbsp dried oregano
- 1 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
- to taste salt & pepper
First, I added a layer of onions and frozen meatballs to the bottom of the crockpot, but you don’t need to add meat if you don’t want to.