Onions. I haz em.
I'm making spaghetti sauce this week, and possibly lasagna.
My spaghetti sauce is my take on a family favorite, which is my Dad's recipe. All three of us kids (and at least one grandkid) all make this sauce. And we all say the same thing: we can't get it to taste/look quite like Dad's.
My guess is that, in part, we all got the recipe at a certain point in time, about thirty years ago. Because Dad makes his sauce more or less by eye/feel/taste, "getting the recipe" was more a case of "writing down the ingredients and approximating amounts." So we have this basic recipe that we all work with, and we may have modified it a bit to suit ourselves a touch, and we've been working off in our own directions for thirty years, not necessarily making it as frequently as my Dad did. Meanwhile, Dad continued to make his sauce, which we ate and considered the canon, and he continued to tinker with it and so the darn thing evolved over time.
But it is the standard. It changed, but it never stopped being the standard. And we don't know quite how it changed. As far as I can tell you, it is the same sauce Dad made when I was a kid.
There are other possible reasons why my sauce, at least, doesn't turn out "right". I probably use less oil and a leaner cut of meat. I'm using a different kind of pot, and because of that I'm probably using a lower heat. The onions I get here in Texas are different from the ones my Dad buys in Ontario. They really are. They are usually bigger, wetter, and caramelizing them in a pan takes for freaking ever.
Dad tells us (all of us, right down to the grandkid) that the onions are the key. We need more onions and we need to cook them longer and hotter. My Dad gets downright brutal with his onions (and the pans he cooks them in): lots of oil, lots of time, and as high a heat as he can manage. And he gets these lovely onions as a result.
I can't quite seem to manage that when I'm making this sauce. So this week I'm trying an experiment: making my sauce with roasted onions. I bought small onions for a change, as one of those rare moments of small onion availability occurred this week and have sliced and oven-roasted ten onions. Today I will use those onions as the base for my sauce, adding the meat and other ingredients and *trying* to get the proportions "right."
I'll let you know how it goes.
My spaghetti sauce is my take on a family favorite, which is my Dad's recipe. All three of us kids (and at least one grandkid) all make this sauce. And we all say the same thing: we can't get it to taste/look quite like Dad's.
My guess is that, in part, we all got the recipe at a certain point in time, about thirty years ago. Because Dad makes his sauce more or less by eye/feel/taste, "getting the recipe" was more a case of "writing down the ingredients and approximating amounts." So we have this basic recipe that we all work with, and we may have modified it a bit to suit ourselves a touch, and we've been working off in our own directions for thirty years, not necessarily making it as frequently as my Dad did. Meanwhile, Dad continued to make his sauce, which we ate and considered the canon, and he continued to tinker with it and so the darn thing evolved over time.
But it is the standard. It changed, but it never stopped being the standard. And we don't know quite how it changed. As far as I can tell you, it is the same sauce Dad made when I was a kid.
There are other possible reasons why my sauce, at least, doesn't turn out "right". I probably use less oil and a leaner cut of meat. I'm using a different kind of pot, and because of that I'm probably using a lower heat. The onions I get here in Texas are different from the ones my Dad buys in Ontario. They really are. They are usually bigger, wetter, and caramelizing them in a pan takes for freaking ever.
Dad tells us (all of us, right down to the grandkid) that the onions are the key. We need more onions and we need to cook them longer and hotter. My Dad gets downright brutal with his onions (and the pans he cooks them in): lots of oil, lots of time, and as high a heat as he can manage. And he gets these lovely onions as a result.
I can't quite seem to manage that when I'm making this sauce. So this week I'm trying an experiment: making my sauce with roasted onions. I bought small onions for a change, as one of those rare moments of small onion availability occurred this week and have sliced and oven-roasted ten onions. Today I will use those onions as the base for my sauce, adding the meat and other ingredients and *trying* to get the proportions "right."
I'll let you know how it goes.