Italian gravy (tomato pasta sauce that is at least 20% pork fat) and leftover large elbow macaroni. Bread with homemade butter.
Traditionally I’d use pork neck bones to make the gravy but I live in an area with no Italians so they are hard to find so instead I use country pork ribs. And instead of cooking for six hours hours I can large batches of it using a cold pack method that allows me to be done in three hours. But this is my last jar. I’ll have to restock at some point.
Cost is about $2 per person. If you find the ribs on sale and get a BOGO or better on canned tomato products it can be even less.
Pasta plus bread has always wondered me. Bread fills you up and is cheap, pasta fills you up and is cheap.
I get the bread with all other small meals, but with pasta bwoah eh.
Nice looking noodles though!
I completely understand. In this case I only had exactly 8 oz of pasta and needed something extra since this was going to be our only meal for the day.
okay first off, italian food is the food of the gods to me. that looks like a meal that i’d love for 15 minutes and then regret for about 2 days. i don’t know what you look like, i don’t know where you live, and yet i feel an overwhelming urge to ask you to marry me.
but where’s the gravy? is that just an ignorant question? is the gravy the scoops of red? i don’t know if i’ve ever felt more north american.
i don’t know if i’ve ever felt more north american.
Then you should feel at home, because this gravy business is strictly an American thing, which haven’t really anything to do with Italy.
that sounds so poetic that i almost believe you
wait… is this is about the sauce?
The red sauce is the gravy. The “scoops” are chunks of pork.
Italian gravy is a touchy subject amongst Italian Americans. But generally we are looking at a slow cooked tomato sauce with a lot of pork in it.
This is my family’s recipe. When I’m canning it I use a very modified version of this.
- Tomato Gravy
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large onion diced
- 2 pounds pork neck bones
- 2 (6 oz) cans tomato paste
- 6 (6 oz) cans of water
- 28 oz tomato sauce
- sugar or honey to adjust flavor if it’s bitter
- heat large stock pot to medium high
- add olive oil
- add onions
- add pork neck bones
- stir mixture occasionally until pork and onions are browned
- move pork to the edges of pot so there is a pork free zone in the center
- add the tomato paste to the pork free zone
- do not stir for two minutes (you want some of the paste to caramelize)
- add the water and stir it all together
- add the tomato sauce
- start stirring so that you don’t burn the sauce to the bottom of the pot
- bring it to a boil
- keep stirring
- bring it down to a simmer
- simmer for 2-3 or 6 hours. or “until the pork falls of the bone and the onions disappear”
- remove all the meat and bones from the sauce and place on a cutting board
- separate the bones and fatty bits
- discard bones and fatty bits
- return the meat to the pot
- bring it back to a simmer
- simmer 5+ minutes
- taste it and if it is too bitter add sugar or honey needed to tone down bitterness and cause the whole thing to become an ode to umami ! be careful when eating. Some bone bits may still be in there.
oh wow, thank you so much. i don’t think i’ve ever needed to try something more than this!
Italian gravy here or just calling it gravy is tomato sauce and its funny because I was taught gravy is well, like drippings and flour, what you’d put on biscuits. But not British biscuits, southern American biscuits.
It was wild when my mother’s husband’s sister said “oh you can gravy!” And we’re like “no we don’t???” And she pointed at the sauce and said we do and then we learned people here call tomato sauce gravy. And I’ve lived here forever. Wild.
