Holidailies 16: Food Friday: Pasta Sauce Recipe

Today a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. My favourite healthy pasta sauce recipe that I absolutely adore! If you’ve been following some of my Food Planning posts, you know that I like to cook in bulk, and this is a perfect recipe for that! This recipe is cheap, healthy and easy, but does require a little preparation. It also makes a great and chunky soup for cold or lazy days.

Jus look at that beautiful plate! This whole recipe is about 460 calories in total and makes 8 portions, that includes the pasta, and you’re getting a lot of important vitamins and other things!

I’ll post a recipe card at the bottom, as I’ve done with my Overnight Oatmeal previously, so if you’re just looking for the shortened recipe, click here. If you want to see the whole recipe, including pictures, just keep reading.

Ingredients:

• 250g of chorizo or other spicy sausage
• 3 bell peppers
• 3 large or 4 medium onions
• 2 500g boxes of tomato puree
• 1kg fresh tomatoes
• 1 jar of olives (these are black pitted and sliced olives, yes I’m lazy)

They’re very basic ingredients, I used to make this a lot when I lived in the UK and didn’t have as much money. Yes, you pay a little for the chorizo, and you don’t have to get the jar of olives. But other than that, as a student, this gave me dinners for over a week (I even split it into 12 portions, but used a little more pasta back then). You don’t need expensive brands for any of this, basic brands will work perfectly fine.

As a student, it isn’t always easy to eat cheap and healthily. This recipe was both for me. I got all my veggies (I think this is nearly 3 kg of veggies in total, so that’s quite a lot even in a single portion), I didn’t have to cook a full meal each day (I divided it into portions and froze them), and it meant I had more time to focus on other things. Plus, I love the taste of it!

On a single day, when you want to eat a frozen portion, you take the portion out of the freezer in the morning. And when it’s time for dinner, you measure and boil some pasta while you reheat the sauce in either a pan or the microwave. It’s simple and only takes a few minutes.

• Bowls to store your chopped food
• Knife and chopping board
• Big big pan. Preferably one that is non-stick as you’ll be baking in it too

bell peppers.

Chop half of them in small bits, these will go into the sauce like this. I prefer to do this with the green and yellow ones as they will give some colour to the sauce. Chop the other half into large chunks, these will go into the food processor later.

Onions

Same as the bell peppers, half into small bits to go into the sauce immediately, half in big chunks for the food processor.

Chorizo

Chop into halved slices, you don’t want them to be too big, but also not too small. You don’t want them to disappear into the sauce.

From left to right, large chunks of bell pepper and onion, small pieces of bell pepper and onion and the chorizo bits.

Tomatoes

Quarter them, then half those pieces lengthwise before halving them again width wise. This should give you good sized chunks.

Put the big chunks of bell pepper and onion into the food processor until you get a good sauce/puree. This allows for a much more sauce consistency than if you’d just make chunks from all the different veggies.

It’s also a possible way to hide a lot of veggies from picky eaters… But you didn’t hear that from me.

I’m missing a picture from the in between step, so I’ll just have to explain it.

Put the chorizo into the pan on a low heat for about 5 minutes, just warm enough that the fat from the chorizo can release some, then on a medium heat bake for another 5 minutes, then keep baking until the chorizo has let go of most of its fat content. You don’t want the chorizo to go black! But it can get a little brown, this is good. You’ll want to take your time for this and err on the side of caution, the fat from the chorizo is enough to bake in, but you will need to do this slowly or things will burn.

Add in the smaller pieces of bell pepper and onion and bake for 2 minutes.

Add the bell pepper and onion goo we made with the food processor. Bake this for 3 to 5 minutes, so all the veggies are nice and soft. This ensures that the bell peppers and the onions won’t be bitter.

Add in your fresh tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes, don’t forget to stir regularly!

Add in the tomato puree and boil the whole thing for 15 minutes.

In the last couple of minutes, add the olives and if you want, some spices.

This recipe doesn’t really need spices, but you can add some (smoked) paprika powder or (black) pepper. Try to keep to the same spices as the chorizo, as that is what will have flavoured most of the sauce anyway. You probably won’t need any salt as most sausages have a pretty high salt content anyway.

And that’s the final result, a nice big pan of sauce! Perfect for any time of the year as the tomato base doesn’t make it a specific winter or summer recipe.

We divided it into 8 portions, two to eat immediately, and 6 to go into the freezer (actually 4 in the freezer and 2 in the fridge, as they would have been eaten the next day).

The ingredients will allow for easy reheating and neither the flavour or the texture will be much influenced from freezing and reheating this.

The total calories of this recipe are about 2480 calories, you can see these are pretty good portion sizes at 8 portions of 310 calories. Previously I’d split it into 12 portions at just over 200 calories each and add some small meatballs at dinner (with small I mean the size of a marble almost) and some pasta. I’d also eat it as a soup with some bread if I didn’t feel like boiling any pasta.

The simplicity of the ingredients of the recipe allows for a lot of different ways to style it when you actually eat it, this makes 8 or 12 portions go a long way. But still allows you to not spend a lot of time actually standing in the kitchen cooking (apart from the first time).

Recipe

Chorizo and Tomato Pasta Sauce

• Servings: 8-12
• Time: 1hr 30mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

A cheap, healthy and easy pasta sauce.

Ingredients

• 250g of chorizo or other spicy sausage
• 3 bell peppers
• 3 large or 4 medium onions
• 2 500g boxes of tomato puree
• 1kg fresh tomatoes
• 1 jar of olives

Directions

1. Chop half the bell peppers and onions into small bits and half of them into large chunks. Slice the chorizo into half-slices. Chop the tomatoes.
2. Put big chunks of bell peppers and onions into food processor and use until they’ve got a sauce consistency.
2. Slowly bake the chorizo. 5 minutes at low heat to release some fat, then 5 minutes at medium heat to bake and another couple of minutes until they’ve released most of their fat content.
3. Add the small pieces of bell peppers and onions and bake for 2 minutes.
4. Add the bell pepper and onion goo and bake for another 3 minutes.
5. Add the fresh tomatoes and boil for 5 minutes.
6. Add tomato puree and boil everything for 15 minutes.
7. Add olives and spices (to taste) in the last few minutes.