I do most of my grocery shopping at ALDI if you have been following me for a while now you already know this. To this day, I am really glad I made the switch from Wal-Mart to Aldi. I love the quality of their produce and their prices on just about everything.
ALDI is different than Wal-Mart or any of your chain grocery stores. If you don’t shop there, you might not realize this but most things are not name brand. Off brands and name brand foods can taste different to some people. I haven’t found many things that taste different to me, but that is probably because I spruce up most things that I make.
I had a friend say to me a couple weeks ago that she didn’t like the spaghetti sauce from ALDI. This was shocking to me at first but after I thought about it, most people probably pour the sauce into a pot and warm it up.
I have ALWAYS, no matter what kind of jar sauce I buy, added extra stuff to the sauce. We LOVE flavor in this house, we like to have our taste-buds go crazy over the food we eat. Me being some Italian, I am all about some good sauce.
Now, of course if a person made the sauce homemade, it would be WAY better. But sometimes we just don’t have that time, so we use the jar stuff to get by. But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring tasting by any means. Below, I have a quick preview of pictures of how I make my sauce taste BETTER from the jar.
I start with seasoning the meat. I prefer to use pork sausage over hamburger, but either one I season the same way. Don’t be afraid to be generous with your seasonings. I use Italian seasoning, Oregano, Salt, Pepper, and Garlic Salt.
I don’t measure anything, which makes writing these blogs extremely hard. So I apologize for that. I usually season my food until it looks like its too much and its usually the perfect amount.
So season up the meat, especially before its cooked so it get incorporated into the meat real nice.
Add some minced garlic and mushrooms (If you like them) before the meats completely done cooking. This allows them to cook up the perfect amount while the meat finishes cooking. You can most certainly skip this step if you wish.
Here is where it gets fun with the sauce. Here you can see this is a fairly plain sauce. It does have some flavor added to it, but its never enough for us.
I add just about the same seasonings to the sauce as I do to the meat, with a couple of extras. Italian seasoning, oregano, little salt, black pepper and some garlic salt. I again don’t measure, I just add until I think its enough to give it the extra boost it needs.
This step is fun, most Italians add a dash of sugar to their spaghetti sauce to cut the acidic-ness down. I have heard of people putting a lot more, but I just like a little in my sauce. You can skip this step also, but it does make the sauce taste delicious.
I really enjoy a creamier sauce than a tomato-y sauce. So I add probably a half a cup of grated parmesan cheese to the sauce. Sometimes I add shredded parmesan as well. Either one works just as well.
I really enjoy a little crunch in my sauce from fresh onions. You can skip this step if you don’t like onions, or you can cook the onions down some with the meat. But there is something about that crunch that I just love.
I also add a little extra minced garlic to the sauce too. I just happened to have extra from the meat, so I thought I would throw it into the sauce too. We can never have too much garlic around here.
Once both the meat and the sauce are seasoned and cooked, I mix the 2 together and get the plates ready for dinner.
This really is the BEST way to spruce up your jarred spaghetti sauce. Its so simple, all seasonings can be found at your local grocery store. Plus who doesn’t love spaghetti leftover? THE BEST! I hope you give this a try and give those tastebuds something good!!
Thanks for reading and checking this blog post out.
Much Love & Honey,
Megan