Slow cooker spaghetti sauce

Spaghetti sauce is one of those things where suddenly, everyone's an expert. God help you if you confess that you usually just open a jar and call it done. People who typically eat Cheetos for dinner will suddenly be crawling out of the woodwork to tell you alllll about how you're doing it wrong.

Well let me tell you, it's just food. And while there are plenty of ways you can make it better, if you just want a good, hearty, basic spaghetti sauce with ground beef (a.k.a. Bolognese sauce) it's as easy as can be.

At heart, you only need four things to make a yummy Bolognese sauce in the slow cooker:

1. Meat
For the most basic kind of sauce, ground beef works great. Or you can get fancy and use a mixture of ground meats like beef and pork. For the best flavor, use Italian sausage, either ground or chopped up into chunks.

2. Tomatoes
Canned tomatoes work fine. Heck, you can even use a jar of plain spaghetti sauce if you want. But you will get better results by using a big can (28 oz) of crushed tomatoes, a medium sized can (14.5 oz) of diced tomatoes, and a small can (6 oz) of tomato paste.

If you decide to go the "fresh tomatoes" route, use Roma tomatoes not the standard sandwich tomato.

3. Flavorings
Note that I don't use the term "spices." Flavorings include any combination of the following: Italian spice mixture, basil, oregano, minced garlic, minced onion, minced carrot, salt and ground pepper. This is the most flexible part of the recipe.

INSTRUCTIONS
Brown the meat and drain off the fat. Put it and all of your other ingredients into your slow cooker. Cook on low for 6-12 hours. Serve over pasta, bread, steamed potatoes, rice, or in guilty spoonfuls directly from the pot.

Image courtesy of Flickr/su-lin