What are the basic ingredients for a good homemade spaghetti sauce?

Spaghetti sauce is one of those recipes that vary from home to home depending on personal taste preferences and old family favourites. Ask a thousand different people for their spaghetti sauce recipe and chances are you will get 1,000 different answers. There is often no actual recipe written down but it is taught by practice, one generation passed to the next. Fresh ingredients are one really prime factor in a good wholesome tomato based spaghetti sauce. For my red base sauce I don’t use chunks of tomato because I don’t like the texture so I use a smooth tomato sauce and paste. Basic ingredients for me include lots of minced onion and garlic saut�ed together with a whole head of minced fresh parsley. Fresh parsley smells phenomenal and helps to thicken the sauce naturally. The trick is to pick off all the nice leafy green heads from the stem and then mince them up. That way there are no tough stem pieces in the sauce. I add some minced bell pepper too, but not a ton of it. Then mushrooms are a must. I mince half of them and put them in the saut� mix and slice the other half into small bite sized pieces to add in the red sauce mixture directly without saut�ing first. For meat I use a lean ground beef or a lean ground beef and ground turkey mixture for less fat or a rich Italian sausage and cut into small bite sized pieces. The meat or meats should be cooked up separately and then added to the sauce. Then add all the saut�ed ingredients. They will thicken the sauce. This is a great way to sneak veggies into food for picky eaters too. Then you let the sauce simmer and add water to it as it cooks down. Top with fresh grated parmesan, not the packaged overgrated processed stuff. Eat hearty! Mama Nono