TOMATO SAUCE with ITALIAN SAUSAGE

An Italian sauce with only 4 ingredients

This tomato sauce with Italian sausage is another one of my cooking buddy Ricky’s go to recipes. It takes less than 5 minutes to prepare, has only 4 basic ingredients and is an unbelievable second best to an authentic homemade “gravy” found in many Italian kitchens. Yes, honestly that good!

Ricky’s adaptation of an Italian gravy saves a lot of prep and simmer time but has the flavor of the real thing. I was sold on this recipe from my first scrumptious forkful.

Some people have asked me which pasta sauce I would recommend if they were only going to make one of our recipes. I usually suggest they try this one or our AMERICAN CHOP SUEY. That is another one of Ricky’s makeover meals that has next to no prep and only a few ingredients. Both rely on a long simmer time for the best taste ever!

Gravy vs Sauce

The question of why many Italians call their red tomato sauce “gravy” instead of sauce is one that has countless answers. Some are as simple as the answer Ricky’s cousin Debbie gave when he asked her why they call it gravy. “Because we are Italian” was her answer.

In my humble opinion it can be thought of as a gravy because meat fat (from the sausages in this case) flavors and thickens the gravy just as it does in other meat or poultry gravies.

Marinara “sauce” on the other hand is not made with meat. No meat or meat fat, not a gravy. That is my personal take on this very pressing issue. 😊

More about marinara

Speaking of a MARINARA SAUCE, we have a really delicious, quick and easy marinara recipe. Give it a try when you want to make a quick meal that doesn’t taste like fast food. You can have a delicious pasta dinner in less than a half hour. Our marinara is great on pasta and it’s perfect for making a “parmesan” dish like eggplant, or chicken parmesan.

Marinara is surely one of the quickest tomato sauces you can make. You only need to simmer it on the stove for 15-20 minutes so you meld the flavors and rehydrate any dried herbs you have added.

You don’t have to be Italian to cook like one

Ricky and his sister Maureen have been life long friends of mine. Both are great cooks. They are 100% Sicilian. When we were young their mother, Tess taught me a lot about Mediterranean cooking and that included how to make a traditional Italian gravy. Tess was a fantastic cook and cranked out one good meal after another. She loved cooking for her family and friends and was almost always at the stove.

I learned things from Tess that have nothing to do with “cooking know how” but left a lasting impression on me. On a daily basis she demonstrated that cooking for your family is a very loving act. Cooking was her way of caring for you. Following in her footsteps has taught me what a rewarding experience cooking at home can be.

One of the secrets

One of the reasons a rich Italian gravy has such depth of flavor is because the meat is added to the seasoned tomato sauce without pre-cooking it. A great Italian gravy can simmer on the stove for hours. It gets richer and thicker as it cooks.

Cooking the sausages in the tomato sauce is the secret to this recipe too. The sauce for this recipe takes less than 5 minutes to put together but because we are cooking the sausages in the sauce you need to let it simmer for 90 minutes (1 hour and 1/2). It takes time to slow cook meat in a tomato sauce but the reward is that the meat turns out tender and soaked with the flavors of a well seasoned sauce. Some things can’t be rushed.

If you have never made a tomato sauce using uncooked meat you are in for a taste treat delight when you taste this sauce. The sausages come out fork tender and so so good! It’s worth the wait.

A no work recipe

There is next to no preparation when making this sauce. There’s no cutting or chopping. You open a can and peel garlic cloves, measure out some olive oil, salt, pepper and basil, add it all to a cold pan or skillet and simmer.

Once the sauce is simmering the stovetop is doing all the work, except for a stir now and again.

I make this recipe often and I consider it one of the quickest and easiest dinner recipes to make because there’s no work to it. I don’t care how long it takes to cook as long as I am not hostage to the stove. There’s a million things I can do to kill an hour and a half.

And after the wait I get one of my very favorite meals.

This recipe is not just for sausages

Feel free to swap the sausages for a pound or a pound and a half of another meat that you have on hand. You can use ribs, pork chops and of course meatballs. Just put the meat in with the tomato, olive oil, garlic and basil and simmer just as you would if you used sausages.

You can’t fully appreciate how good this sauce is until you try it yourself 😋.

Add more to your meal with cheese filled pasta

This sauce is great with any kind of pasta, but I really like serving it over a cheese filled pasta such as ravioli, tortellini, manicotti or stuffed shells. The cheese pasta adds a little something extra.

You can buy fresh or frozen cheese pastas at most any grocery store in the refrigerated fresh pasta section or the freezer section. Buying frozen cheese pastas to have on hand is a great idea, particularly if you buy them on sale. If you have never cooked cheese filled pasta, or if you have had the frustrating experience of losing the cheese filling while boiling it check out our post Cooking Cheese Filled Pasta.

Consider adding some grated parmesan

Adding some freshly grated Parmesan cheese to your plate adds another layer of goodness. The flavor combination of tomato sauce and parmesan cheese is unbeatable.

Here’s what YOU WILL NEED:

About the ingredients

Canned tomatoes

We are using a can of whole peeled plum tomatoes and crushing them by hand. By doing this there will be some chunks of tomato in the finished sauce. You can use canned crushed tomatoes instead if you want. Both whole peeled plum tomatoes and crushed tomatoes are commonly found in 28 ounce cans and that is what you need for this recipe.

Garlic

We are using whole fresh cloves of garlic that have had the skin peeled off. It may seem contrary to reason, but if you leave a garlic clove whole while it cooks, it has a milder flavor than it does when it is sliced, minced or chopped.

Do you usually use fresh garlic in your cooking? Do you know the difference between a clove of garlic and head of garlic? We have a post with some basic information about cooking with fresh garlic in All About Garlic.

This is WHAT TO DO:

Quick and easy = Add to pan

There is no reason to warm up the pan or oil before adding the other ingredients.

Add olive oil and canned tomatoes

Add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil to a 10 inch skillet or a saucepan. Pour the whole can of canned plum tomatoes in with the olive oil. Crush the tomatoes by hand, to squeeze out the juice and break up the tomatoes.

Add whole cloves of garlic, basil, salt and pepper

Add your whole peeled garlic cloves, basil, salt, pepper.

There’s really no substitute for whole garlic cloves in this recipe. Using whole cloves gives just a touch of garlic flavor.

Most of your flavor is going to come from the tomatoes and the Italian sausages.

Give the sauce a stir before you add the sausages

Add Italian sausages (hot or sweet)

Add your sausages (or another meat of your choice). Do NOT brown the sausages (or other meat) before adding them. The sausages/meats need to slow cook in the sauce to get the best flavor and tenderness.

Time to cook

Heat the sauce on medium high heat until boiling, then turn the heat down to maintain a simmer. Cook for 90 minutes (one hour and a half). Stir the sauce 3 or 4 times while simmering. Whether to use a cover while simmering or not depends on the consistency you want your sauce to be.

You decide the consistency you want

It’s all about timing

Due to evaporation, the consistency of the sauce depends on the cooking vessel you use and the length of time you keep it covered during cooking. The longer it is left to simmer uncovered, the thicker the sauce will be.

Ricky likes his sauce on the thinner side. To get that consistency he cooks this in a saucepan, covered for the whole 90 minutes it is cooking. I like mine pretty thick so I let it simmer in a skillet uncovered. The wider open area of the skillet allows more moisture to evaporate than it would in a saucepan, even if it were left uncovered.

The sauce pictured in this post was cooked for the full 90 minutes with a splash screen on it. A splash screen lets air in but prevents boil bubbles from splattering over the stovetop.

A good middle ground to start with is to leave it covered for 30 minutes and let let it simmer for an hour uncovered.

This sauce/gravy is delicious no matter what the consistency. But don’t shorten the the 90 minute ( 1 and 1/2 hour) cooking time. You need the full cook time to get the sausages perfectly cooked.

Do you know the difference between boiling and simmering? Look at our TERMS AND TIPS page to answer that and other questions you may have about terms commonly used in our recipes.

When to cook the pasta

Plan when to cook your pasta so it’s done when your sauce is. Boil your choice of pasta according to package directions and drain. Mix a good amount of sauce into the drained pasta to prevent it from sticking together. Spoon the remaining sauce over the pasta when served, along with the sausages.

Or make a sandwich

Italian sausages cooked in this tomato sauce are EXCELLENT in a roll or on bread as a sandwich! This is my grandson Matt’s favorite way enjoy this sauce.

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