Weeknight spaghetti with meat sauce from The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science (page 705) by J. Kenji López-Alt

Where’s the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?

Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

  • SpatulaCity on March 24, 2025

    Was craving the old school spaghetti from my childhood (browned ground beef simmered in jarred marinara sauce) so gave this a shot. Delicious and way better than the childhood version. Kenji makes it whole and rich, a nice improvement over the acidic sweet stuff we had as kids. I did add a full 16oz of beef, and had to use rehydrated dried shiitake mushrooms in place of the buttons. Great flavor and super easy. My sauce was definitely not too thin - I needed to use the reserved pasta water when dressing the spaghetti.

  • e_ballad on April 13, 2021

    A really good pasta sauce that is very quick to pull together, provided that you have the requisite food processor. I didn’t run into any issues this the sauce being too thin, as noted by another reviewer, in fact it was almost the opposite!

  • jenmacgregor18 on August 15, 2018

    I liked his methodology of using a food processor to blitz the veg (carrots, onions, celery, garlic). And then mushrooms with the meat. It's a lot quicker than me chopping everything finely & the texture is good. I did use the anchovy; but replaced fish sauce with soy sauce. The taste of the sauce is very good; but it is not a clingy, tomatoey sauce, which I prefer. It's probably a lot closer to a traditional bolognese than I am used to. This is primarily where I deviated from the recipe--adding extra tomato paste, etc, to thicken the sauce.

You must Create an Account or Sign In to add a note to this book.

Reviews about this recipe

This recipe does not currently have any reviews.

You are reporting a broken online recipe link to EYB. Please confirm that you want the report submitted. Please also suggest the correct URL for this online recipe to the below textbox.