I seriously should have been born in Italy.
I love the pasta, the gelato, the coffee, the pastries, the pizza…
Ahh…
I still need to travel there…to Europe in general, but I want to go to Italy and Greece first. Ahh, dream…I digress.
Well, I’m almost positive that we have at least two italian dishes per week at our house.
See, I’m Italian. So good.
Anyway. My mother-in-law makes an excellent spaghetti sauce. She uses it to make her famous lasagna every year. Oh my gosh…I can’t even explain it to you.
So, basically she free hands the sauce every time she makes it, not following a specific recipe. Luckily I got her to tell me the ingredients she uses and I just went to experimenting! 😀
And let me tell you, it tasted pretty similar to her sauce.
Make it and it’ll taste amazing and your house will smell like heavenly Italy all day long.
Seriously.
Crock Pot Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 pounds extra lean ground sirloin
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 large onion, diced
- 1 large green pepper, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 (14 ounce) can no salt added diced tomatoes
- 1 (14 ounce) can no salt added tomato sauce
- 2 (14 ounce) cans no salt added crushed tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon chocolate syrup
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
- dash of red pepper flakes
- salt, to taste
How-To
- In a pan, brown the ground beef and add it to the crock pot.
- In the same pan, sauté the onion, green pepper, and garlic until tender. Add to the crock pot.
- Put the remaining ingredients into the crock pot and stir together.
- Cook on low for 8 hours, stirring occasionally.
- Serve with your favorite whole wheat noodles!
Please keep the crockpot recipes coming, this one looks delicious!
This is a great idea and I’m definitely putting it to use. The sauce looks heavenly!
Love how simple this is! Yum!
Great idea to cook it up in a crockpot! J and i dream of going to italy one day!
I love Crock Pot recipes but for some reason never thought to make spaghetti sauce with it. This is brilliant! I’ll be trying this soon, so thank you for sharing. Also, I have a Crock Pot chili recipe up today that I think you would like!
Chocolate syrup??? That’s really interesting!
Yep! That’s her secret to a rich spaghetti sauce! Shh…don’t tell! 😉
It’s always the surprise ingredients like chocolate syrup that bring everything together. I know a lot of people add a small amount of sugar to their red pasta sauces, so it makes complete sense. The green bell pepper in the sauce caught my eye – I love the flavor that comes out of slow-cooked bell pepper; I bet this gives the sauce a wonderful touch. Hope you had a fun weekend. 🙂
I went to Greece and Italy for my honeymoon! You have got to go! Rome smells like basil. And chocolate syrup? That’s crazy. I put bbq sauce 🙂
Mmm…looks so good! I had some amazing pasta bolognese last night, and your post just reminded me I have left overs. Off to heat it up right now 🙂
This was a big hit tonight! My family loved it! I loved how it cooked in the crock pot all day and made the house smell wonderful every time I came in and out! The only change I made was adding 2 T. of Italian Seasonings. After taste testing late in the afternoon, I realized I needed to add more salt and herbs. But other than than, it was wonderful and will become a staple in our home, for sure!
I will be making this meat sauce for sure.. This sounds a little like bolognese!