Lazy Man’s Healthy Tomato Sauce

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Are you the type of person who goes to the store and grabs a jar of Ragu and puts it in your cart? I used to do that. Week after week, I would grab whatever cheapest without regard to the nutritional label. What can I say, I’m Lazy? One day, I looked at a label and was shocked by what I saw. It was sugar… and lots of it. That isn’t the way to a healthy diet.

Today my wife and I make our own tomato sauce. It sounds like it is a lot of work, but it takes me around ten minutes. The key to the sauce is to have a can of regular cheap tomato sauce and a can of diced tomatoes. I generally buy the cheapest, but we recently found that Costco has a very good price on both - and they are organic too.

Much to my wife’s disappointment, I’ve never been one to follow a recipe. I will look at recipes to get an idea of what I’m making, but I’m too Lazy to measure out things to the last ounce - or to measure many things at all. The best part of this recipe is that you don’t need to measure anything.

Here’s how we make our Lazy Man’s healthy tomato sauce:

Brown some ground beef or ground turkey on a stove top at high in a pot/skillet, whatever is available. Drain out the excess fat. Skip this step if you are vegetarian or simply want a meatless sauce
While browning the meat, open up your cans of tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. Pour them into another pot and put that on the stove at medium heat
Add your spices… we like oregano, and basil. Trader Joe’s has frozen concentrate garlic which we love, but you could substitute garlic powder if it suits you. Add a dash of olive oil (or not it’s all up to you!)
Have some fun with it. I tried to do a red wine reduction with some $2 Charles Shaw wine from Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t tell the difference in the final sauce, but it was good to try once.
Mix the meat into the sauce, give it a couple minutes at medium to low stirring occasionally. Serve

The biggest problem that I have with this sauce is that it’s so good that we want to have it often. What goes with tomato sauce? That’s right - pasta. It’s high carb and not as healthy as I’d like. If we ran marathons that would be different, but we don’t. If anyone has suggestions for what we could have this sauce with, let me know in the comments.

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Posted by Lazy Man on March 26, 2008 in Food Choice.

8 Responses to “Lazy Man’s Healthy Tomato Sauce”

Dr. CJ Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
If you’d like to have pasta, try a whole wheat pasta - lower glycemic index, actually has a more substantive taste than starchy white pasta. My wife and I actually prefer the taste of whole wheat pasta now.
Susan Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Sounds delicious!
I usually don’t follow a recipe when I cook either. I sometimes get an idea in my head and just go with it!

You could put the tomato sauce on chicken, like a chicken cacciatore. Add some other vegetables to it as well.
You could make Sloppy Joes, soups, and stews.
How about vegetarian dishes? You could use portobello mushrooms, eggplant, or spaghetti squash.
Debbie M Says:
March 27th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I do almost the same thing, except
* I also use a can of tomato paste - this makes the sauce seem thicker and richer
* I brown the meat in a large pot, then add the contents of the cans to the same pot. (I have no dishwasher, so this leaves one less pot to wash.) (I get 96% lean ground beef so I don’t have to drain it.)
* I also use rosemary, thyme, and onion powder and I always use garlic or garlic powder.
* I sometimes substitute that soy protein stuff for half the hamburger
* I never “have fun” with it

Instead of pasta, I’ve heard you can pour it over spaghetti squash.

Also, some people add a lot of vegetables so that they’re pouring it over maybe half vegetables and half pasta.

I think spaghetti sauce is so healthy that even after pouring it over pasta and putting parmesan cheese all over it, it’s still good for you. And maybe some whole wheat garlic toast and a salad.

The whole wheat pastas I’ve tried are easy to cook the wrong amount of time. I’ve come to prefer spinach pasta which at least has more fiber than regular but is easier to cook properly and tastes better to me. If you find the jerusalem artichoke pasta, that stuff is awesome, too.
deepali Says:
March 31st, 2008 at 11:45 am
chicken or eggplant parmesan? a base for a hearty stew? i love making my own sauce - i get lots of tomatoes during the summer and stew and freeze them. then i use them throughout the fall and winter for sauce.
Mags Says:
April 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Trader Joes has an excellent Sprouted Wheat Papparadelle pasta with a very high fiber content (13% daily requirement). Regular white pasta just seems so boring now in comparison.
Blaine Moore Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:15 am
I do the same thing with recipes - I’ll look it over to get a general idea, and then I’ll wing it and turn it into something of my own.

For the sauce, I also recommend at least mixing in wheat pasta on occasion, quite tasty. You could also have it as a snack on pita, make chicken or eggplant parmesan, pizza or calzones, use it as a salad dressing.

I do run marathons, and pasta is a regular part of my diet, so I never have trouble finding things to do with it.
Steve Kirk Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:01 am
I do most of the cooking at home and I don’t stick to recipes either. They are just a suggestion and it drives my wife wild. However, for the very same reason, I do not do much cake baking because it IS all about the recipe, the measurements and the science. Too much trouble.

I like to make a ragout with zucchini, mushrooms and onions and home made sauce, like yours. Cook the veggies first in some olive oil and salt as they cook to draw out some of the moisture or your sauce will become watery. We put this into individual heat proof ramekins and cover with Italian cheese and back until the cheese melts.

I also add some red pepper flakes to my sauce when my wife is not looking.
Sarah Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Normally, I can’t stand wheat pastas… they usually taste too weird to go well with my already existing sauce recipes. But Trader Joe’s has this amazing wheat pasta with flax (in red paper packages) that tastes just like regular pasta, if not better.

Try that next time.