This homemade spaghetti sauce recipe is lightened up with ground turkey, but is so flavorful you’d never know it!
Homemade spaghetti sauce is one of my ultimate favorite things to make. Sure, you can go with the pre-made stuff in a pinch, but making it from scratch really isn’t that hard and the little bit of extra effort is totally worth it. Sure, you’ve got to let is simmer for a while, but that’s downtime where you don’t have to do anything except sit back and relax. With wine of course.
If you want to get really crazy, you can even add about half a cup of red wine to the turkey/veggie mix to add more depth of flavor. If you do this, let meat simmer in the wine for a minute or two before dumping the tomatoes in. This step isn’t necessary at all and I only do it if I have a bottle of wine already open… and feel like sharing.
I also use fresh herbs here, but you can sub in about 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of dried basil and oregano. If you do this, add the dried herbs in earlier with the tomatoes.
This recipe makes A LOT of pasta sauce. I make this recipe for company because its easy to make a huge amount or you can freeze and reheat for quick weeknight meals. You can even leave the turkey out and use this as meatless marinara sauce for recipes like these cabbage rolls. This spaghetti sauce recipe is flexible and pretty much foolproof so feel free to tweak things a bit based on what you have on hand.
We are (finally!) just getting back (and thawing out) from a long weekend trip to Toronto so fresh food around the house has been hard to come by. My mother-in-law also flew in earlier this week so with all the activity going on, I really haven’t been in the mood to cook.
Since cereal isn’t exactly an acceptable dinner option, I realized it was about time to do some rummaging through the pantry, freezer, and fridge. Luckily, when I made this tomato sauce last week, I froze half of it for an occasion like this. (Thank you past self.)
Having homemade spaghetti sauce on hand makes it easy to bust out a quick meal like baked ziti, stuffed peppers, or whatever your tomato-sauce based imagination can think up. The options are truly endless and you can pretty much guarantee it will be delicious since anything slathered in homemade spaghetti sauce usually is. Its a given.
This recipe is naturally dairy free on its own, and you can keep it that way by holding the parmesan. If you’re gluten free you can hold the Worcestershire and use brown rice pasta
to make it work for you. Slightly different texture, but coated in sauce, you can’t really tell the difference.
I saw quinoa pasta at the grocery store the other day though which sounds like it could be pretty amazing. If you’ve tried it already, save me the suspense and let me know how it is! Also, I’d love to hear how you like this spaghetti sauce so please leave a comment to let me know how it goes. We love this recipe and hope you will too!
- 1½ lbs.lean ground turkey
- 2 turkey sausage links, casing removed
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- 2 bell peppers, seeded and chopped
- 1 large onion, chopped (about 1½ cups)
- ½ Tbsp. minced garlic
- 2 large carrots, peeled and finely minced
- 1½ tsp. salt
- ½ tsp. black pepper
- 2 tsp. Worcestershire
- 1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp. fennel seed
- 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
- 1 28. oz. can stewed tomatoes
- 1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
- 2 6 oz. cans tomato paste
- 2 bay leaves
- ¼ cup fresh chopped basil
- 2 tsp. fresh chopped oregano (or 1 tsp. dried)
- ¼ cup fresh chopped parsley
- ½ Tbsp. sugar (optional)
- Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion and peppers and cook for 2 - 3 minutes to soften.
- Add carrots, garlic, ground turkey, and turkey sausage and cook while breaking into small pieces with a spatula. While turkey is browning, add salt, pepper, worcestershire, red pepper flakes, and fennel.
- Add crushed tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to low and let simmer uncovered for 45 minutes to 1 hour, stirring occasionally. During the last 15 minutes of cooking time, add chopped fresh herbs. If sauce is too acidic, add sugar to taste (normally about ½ Tbsp.).
- Garnish with additional chopped parsley and parmesan cheese if desired before serving over pasta.
*Sauce can be frozen for up to 3 months.
NOT A GLUTEN FREE RECIPE! This recipe says it’s “naturally” gluten-free yet one of the ingredients is Worcester sauce which is made from wheat and is widely known as containing gluten. Obviously those of us cooking gluten-free can skip the Worcester sauce if we are aware it contains gluten. When printing recipes online, please review ingredients and don’t tout them as something they aren’t.
Good to know, thanks Denise! I’ll add that clarification in the recipe.
I made this yesterday and my family absolutely LOVED it!!! This is a keeper and works within my Weight Watchers Freestyle program.
Thank you!
Lola
Oh good!!! Happy to hear it Lola! This is one of my all time favorites. And as an aside, I almost named my daughter Lola. 🙂
This was delicious! I was afraid of the fennel…but it gave the sauce the best flavor! I didn’t have fresh oregano…I’m sure it would have been even better! Thanks so much..it’s a keeper!
So glad you liked it Vicki! I have an oregano bush so I’m always looking for ways to use it. Dried works just fine too though if you use a little less than the recipe calls for.
Great idea to use turkey in a pasta sauce – healthier and probably tastes as good as beef covered in sauce.
I haven’t tried quinoa pasta either, but it’s definitely something I’ve been curious about and will buy when I run out of pasta reserves at home. By the way, isn’t it awesome when you find frozen sauce, or pre-portioned frozen food? It makes me feel so proud of myself and so responsible when I think ahead like that.
Funny you should say that – I know exactly what you mean! Just yesterday I found some leftover pulled pork in the freezer and felt like such a domestic diva.
In other news – my freezer *might* be in need of a deep clean…