Cooking for an Army of Two - Part 1 - Pasta Sauce

sweet paprika parsley oregano bay leaves pepper garlic

Pasta Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 large onions
• 2 small carrots
• 1 purple carrot
• salt to taste
• sunflower oil for frying
• 1-2 cups of celery
• 1 kg beef mince
• 750 grams of pork mince
• sweet paprika, parsley, oregano, bay leaves, pepper, garlic to taste
• 300 grams of tomato paste 
• 2 1/2 kgs of tinned tomatoes (or 6 normal sized cans)
• worcestershire sauce to taste
• vegies - green beans, mushrooms, peas - whatever takes your fancy (or needs to be used up)
• light soy sauce
• 3 caddy spoons of raw sugar (somewhere between a tablespoon and large teaspoon - it's the spoon that lives in my sugar bowl)
• 1 cup of port

Add diced onion and carrots to your pot with a splash of oil, a sprinkle of salt and fry.

Add celery to the flavour base fry up. Mine was frozen because I find freezing celery is a good way to keep it. This was maybe a cup and half. Sorry about the steamy image.

 Once the pot is back up to temperature and frying again add the meat a bit at a time so the pot stays hot. 

 Fry the meat until cooked.

Throw the herbs in. 

 And the tomato paste. Give the tomato paste a chance to cook a bit. 

  Add the biggest tin of tomatoes you have ever seen - or 6 normal tins.

 Let it cook for a few minutes.

 Check the flavour.

Find it's really bland and add the worcestershire sauce you forgot to add after the meat had finished frying.

About that much.

Add the vegies - fresh green beans is what I had in the fridge.

 Add more worcestershire sauce because it still doesn't taste right.

Yes, I realise this is the third photo, but I didn't measure so this is the only reference I can offer you for how much I used. 

And more oregano - fresh from the garden.

 And more dried oregano.

I also added a splash of soy sauce (Chinese) and a splash of light soy sauce (Japanese) - usually I just use the light soy sauce but this was such a big pot I used the stronger soy sauce first. It adds depth of flavour and saltiness.

Correct any twangyness with a bit of sugar a spoon at a time - there's some scientific whats-it-ness to adding sugar when cooking with onion and tomato, it works, I don't care what the reason is.

Oh yeah, I added some port at some point because I was out of red wine, which meant I probably didn't need to use as much sugar as I might have otherwise.

Simmer for 10-15 minutes or whatever to let all the flavours develop, check it tastes good and your done.

Make lasagne.

Freeze the rest. I got 5 meals to freeze and the lasagne will feed the 2 of us at least another 3 huge meals. That's 16 very generous serves all up and 7 nights I'm not going have to do any real cooking.
What's your favourite freezer meal?