Go Ahead and Put the Frozen Meat in the Spaghetti Sauce
Frozen ground beef should be a daily commodity, but it’s only convenient if you’re the type of person who might remember to transfer it from the freezer to the refrigerator overnight before you plan to use it. I gave up on being one of these people long ago, so this recent Instagram story from chef Mattie Matheson thrilled me to the core :
In his story, Matt adds ice cold beef with a can of marinara to a Dutch oven and then cooks it until it looks like this. This is an obscenely lazy, fatty and meaty sauce that – for me – is very sexy. There is lazy freedom in this, which appeals to the very essence of my soul, for what am I, myself, if not an apathetic and barely restrained mass of fatty meat?
Haters will say frozen beef sauce is bad because you can’t brown the beef, but – while browning does give flavor – I think we’ve all focused too much on the Maillard reaction . There are other ways to add flavor to your sauce, as well as other, different flavors that you may have forgotten in your myopic quest for a crust on every cut. Frozen beef sauce frees us from this cycle.
It is true that the meat in the frozen beef sauce does not taste browned , but it tastes as fleshy and meaty as the inside of a thick burger. Beef is tenderly fried in sauce; it gives the meat a flavor as the fat slowly comes out of it and mixes with the tomato juice. It’s actually quite luxurious. If you really want a browned tasting, simply fry the onions to hell . It’s faster than defrosting and browning meat, and the boy does it deeper.
Inspired by Matty and his sauce, I decided to try this method this weekend and feed the results to two of the harshest spaghetti critics I know: my boyfriend and my dad. I didn’t have a can of sauce, but I did have two cans of tomatoes, some onions and garlic, and about a cup of mediocre red wine, which is really all you need. The beauty of frozen beef is that it pairs well with any tomato-based sauce: simply bring the sauce to a boil, add the frozen beef, and cook until it looks like the sauce from Matty’s Instagram story. However, I would not use it with Marcella Hazan Butter Sauce – you get a lot of fat from beef. (I used a 73/27 blend, and wow.)
If you don’t have a sauce recipe for adding frozen beef, you can use mine. The spaghetti critics loved it. My father ate it in tense, concentrated silence, said it was “very good,” and took some with him. My boyfriend announced it was “a sauce for a good environment,” noting its expedient nature, and then added that it tasted “dirty in a good way.” I recommend serving this sauce with cheap powder – it absorbs excess fat very nicely. To make frozen beef sauce you will need:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 large white onion, diced
- 2 large pinches of table salt
- 3 cloves garlic, minced and minced
- 1 glass of red wine
- 2 28-ounce cans of whole peeled tomatoes
- About a pound of frozen ground beef (I used 1 1/4 pounds, but you can use up to 1 1/2 as well).
- Garlic salt to taste
Heat olive oil over medium to high heat and add onion. Sprinkle the onion with two large pinches of salt and simmer, stirring occasionally, until translucent. (If you want a deeper and darker sauce, you can brown it or even fire it .) Add the garlic and cook until it begins to brown.
Add wine, scrape off the browned pieces with a wooden spoon and let them shrink until you can see the bottom of the saucepan for at least a second as you spoon through the onions. (The onion should be moist, but there shouldn’t be much liquid build up around it.)
Add the tomatoes and their juices, bring everything to a boil, then add the beef, pulling it into the tomatoes until it is completely submerged in the water. Reduce heat to a low simmer and simmer for at least 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the beef is crumbly and the sauce is dark raspberry, with noticeable buttery flakes of beef fat on top. Try and add garlic salt, a pinch of sugar, or any of the above if needed. Add some spaghetti and serve with a green powdery cheese shaker.