Bindings

Pasta sauce that keeps until it is used up is a little tricky if only one person is using it once or twice a week. This is the technique I have developed over several decades. It uses a microwave and a large covered Corningware casserole: the kind that are about a foot by a foot by a couple of inches.

I went through a phase where I used a heavy pot on the stove for the first phase, and transferred the sauce to the casserole for the later steps. It prevented boil-overs in the microwave but honestly did not keep as well and I ended up throwing some partial batches out. So I have reverted to my older method, with a tweak to avoid spillovers.

Put your pasta pot on the stove.

Get out the casserole and put some Extra Virgin Olive oil in the bottom. Use more oil if you will be using lean ground beef or bison (or chicken or turkey, I suppose) and less oil if you will be using something fattier like sausages.

Add onions (dried are fine) and garlic (dried granules are fine for this) and fresh or dried herbs. Any or all of:

parsley
sage
rosemary
thyme
marjoram
oregano
bay leaves
basil
fennel seeds*
more rosemary (I like rosemary...)

add a pound of ground meat, break it up into small bits and and stir things around so that the herbs are stuck to the bits of meat, not laying in a layer at the bottom.

Nuke for 5-ish minutes on high. Put the water to cook the pasta in your pot while the meat is cooking.

If some of the meat is still red, stir things around and break up larger chunks and renuke for a minute.

Add 2 small cans or one large can of tomato paste to the casserole and stir until the paste is coating the bits of meat, not sitting in big lumps.

Optional: Add a few ounces of red wine if you have some handy. And/or a tiny bit of anchovy paste.
Add some mushrooms, fresh or drained canned ones, if you like mushrooms and have some available..

Add a 15 ounce can of plain tomato sauce (leave another can ready on the counter). Stir everything together well.

Turn on the burner under the pot of water and put the covered casserole in the microwave. Choose a time and power level that will heat the suce mixture pretty thoroughly, but not completely, by the time the water boils.

When the microwave finishes, add salt and pasta to the boiling water. Turn on the microwave again for the amount of time the pasta will take to cook, at a lower power level than you previously used.

When the microwave finishes, serve the pasta, spooning some of the sauce over it.

Add grated cheese if you can have it. (I miss cheese... but I've turned very allergic to dairy.)

Add the second can of plain sauce to the casserole, stir it in, and shove the covered sauce back in the microwave at half power for a few minutes.

After you finish eating, and it has had time to cool a little move the covered casserole to the fridge without opening it.

For the future times you want pasta:

Move the covered casserole to the microwave and heat it while you are heating the water and some more while the pasta itself is cooking. Adjust the power levels as the level of sauce in the Corningware drops. Add a scoop of pasta water if the sauce starts getting too thick.

I can't recommend power levels and cooking times: I live at 6000 feet above sea level and pasta that the box says should take 11 minutes takes 19 for me... the goal is for the sauce and its container to be boiling hot each time it is reheated. If you do that, and wipe up any spills on the outsides or rim of the casserole when they happen, the sauce will last until it used up, which will be several weeks for one person eating pasta once or twice a week.

This sauce gets REALLY good about the third time it is used, when it has had more than an hour of cumulative simmering and a week or two of the flavors blending while it sits in the fridge between uses.

* I put fennel in my pasta sauce because 40 years ago I lived near an Italian deli that made their own wonderful sausage, and the fennel sausage was especially wonderful.I got used to having that flavor note in my sauce.