Well hey there. It’s been a while, how’s everything been going? The kids are good? Let’s see, what’s happened in the world since we last talked? Umm, Travis Kelce got a new girlfriend…that Chappell Roan sure is something…Great Britain had a head of lettuce that lasted longer than a prime minister…the guy that got killed by The Mountain is everyone’s favorite person in the world…and that’s it, nothing else has happened outside of those things…nope, nothing else…

So since we’ve last spoken, I’ve watched Goodfellas probably about 972 times. And pretty much the most memorable scene to me (outside of the reveal of Frankie Carbone’s frozen body with an icicle booger hanging off his nose) is the one where they make their nightly dinners in jail. Now, I have so many questions about this setup, and the one where they give prisoners access to an open flame is pretty far down the list (even though it should be #1 in about every normal circumstance).

(I originally used a hyphen instead of parentheses in that last sentence, but that could have been interpreted as an emdash, which might have made you think this was AI-generated. Oh yeah, that’s another thing since we last talked…)

(Also, I’ve probably watched A Few Good Men more than Goodfellas, but the only food scene they have is Daniel and Jo’s awkward crab night out, so I strenuously object to doing anything from that film.)

But, that sauce they make looks absolutely delicious, and since last week was my birthday (back to prime numbers again, have fun guessing which one…ok it’s 29) I decided to make a big pot of it for me and my lady to enjoy. And it definitely makes a big pot, but if you’re going to do it right, might as well go big.

(I would say go big or go home, but I’m a homebody. You have no idea of my desire to want to go home.)

Most of the sauce I winged it on, except for the meatballs. For those, I always use the recipe from Stephen at Not Another Cooking Show. In my opinion, of all the food Youtubers, Stephen is the most underrated and deserves much more exposure than he gets. He makes great food, and has resisted the Mr. Beastification that most other sites have given in to.

(I sometimes imagine what a food Youtuber party would be like. This is my best guess:

• Joshua Weissman is hosting (of course), and he’s made Pigs in a Blanket with homemade sausages and Wagyu queso dip
• Claire Saffitz baked some triple dulce de leche brownies, which nobody told her she had to, but she’s awesome like that
• Stephen and Babish are drinking single malt scotch and debating whether Nebraska or Born To Run is the quintessential Springsteen album (spoiler: this is what all white guys from New York/New Jersey do)
• Emmymade and Nisha are playing rock-paper-scissors to see which one of them has to put one of those black bro-latex gloves over their heads and blow them up like a balloon
• Everyone wishes Ethan Chlebowski could have made it, but he had to get a second workout in, because those abs aren’t going to shred themselves
• Sohla and Adam Witt introduce The Preppy Kitchen guy to Jello shots, and after 2 he starts saying really nasty stuff about Gemma the Bigger Bolder Baking chef, who seems lovely, but alcohol + competitive nature = potty mouth
• Gemma can’t hear them though, because Matty Matheson is enthusiastically telling her about the time when he and the other cooks at his first restaurant got lit up on some questionably sourced coke and almost hit a moose driving at 120 km/h, and she’s politely listening to him and deciding not to remind him that she was the one driving the car
• They’re all relieved that everyone followed one rule: no one tell Adam Ragusea about it)

Where was I…oh yes, sauce. Here’s a couple things to keep in mind:

• You need a big pot for this. I used a 12 quart stockpot, and at its peak the sauce was over halfway up the sides.
• There’s a reason why it’s typically called Sunday Sauce, and not weeknight sauce. This thing is going to cook for hours, so make sure you plan accordingly.

All good? Let’s make this thing.

The first thing you’ll do is get your olive oil infused with some garlic and basil flavors. You’ll want to pour enough oil into the pot to cover the bottom. Then, place a few sprigs of basil in the pot, and smash a few cloves of garlic and throw them in there. Something like this:

(I finally learned to take pictures at each step of the process! You’ll see that there’s a point in the process where I forgot to keep doing this!)

Turn the burner on to medium-low. You’re not wanting to fry them, you just want to extract the flavors gently from them. While this is heating up, chop yourself some onions.

Again, almost forgot to take the picture, but look, those are real onions! I bought two, but only ended up using one. It was pretty big, and you don’t want to use too many onions.

Let the garlic and basil go until the garlic starts to brown ever so slightly. Once the cloves start turning a little golden, they’re done. Pull them out, and then dump in your onion, and turn the heat up to medium.

See, it’s a good amount, but not too much when you see how much else we’re going to add to the sauce.

Let those onions cook, stirring every couple of minutes or so, until they soften but before they turn brown.

While they’re cooking, it’s time to start talking tomatoes. And you’re going to need a lot of them.

See that! I only used one of the jars of tomato puree before I remembered to take a picture! I’m getting better at this, I might start doing this for a living…no, no I won’t please don’t tell my boss about that…love you Mr. Vandelay!

I used a combination of whole tomatoes and tomato puree – I like some texture to my sauce, but do however you want. I dumped the puree into a large bowl, then added the whole tomatoes and crushed them with my hands in the puree. If you do it when they’re submerged, it keeps them from exploding on you. Plus, when you pull your hands out they’re covered in red stuff, and it looks like you just roughed up a deadbeat. You know, like you’re in the mafia or something.

Once the onions are softened, go ahead and dump all the tomatoes in to the pot. Also, rinse out the cans and bottles and pour them in as well. I mean, don’t fill the entire can up, just use as much as you need to loosen everything up. But even if you go a little overboard, it’s going to be cooking for a long time, so the water should cook out. Then, get the pot up to a simmer, and let it go while you start working on the meats.

And ohhh, will there be meats. You’re gonna be like Arby’s, except good.

I decided to kick mine off with spare ribs. I was planning on buying a full rack and cutting off what I needed, but H-E-B knew I was coming so they stocked packages of individual ribs cut up.

Get these in to a saute/frying pan of some sort with a good hit of oil, and brown them until they look something like this.

Getting that color is probably going to take about 5 minutes a side. Once they’re ready, add them to the tomato bath, and then let them simmer for a couple of hours. Also, that brown stuff at the bottom of the pan, that’s delicious stuff. Add a little wine, or stock, or water to it and scrape up the goodness and add it to the pot.

Once you get this settled at a simmer, you’re going to let it go for at least 2 hours. Yep, you read that right, not a thing. Just go over and stir it every so often, rewrite the Constitution, play hide and go seek with your dog, whatever you want.

One small caveat: you will want to watch the consistency of the sauce. If it gets too thick, add a cup of water to thin everything out. Again, this is going for a very long time, so even if you end up adding a lot, that’s going to all cook out over time. Early on, err on the side of caution.

Second small caveat: WHO’S A GOOD PUPPY???

So I am hardly an expert in Italian cuisine (and trust me, if I was, you’d know, because they’re not a subtle group), but my understanding is that the Sunday sauce needs to have at least 3 meats. However, I’m pretty certain that there are laws against you not using sausage and meatballs, so those 2 are locked in. I prefer pork ribs because they’re not as heavy as beef chuck or short ribs, which a lot of people like. But if that’s your thing, knock yourself out. Just make sure you bump the cook time from 2 to 4 hours, and expect to add a little water during the process.

Now, once a couple hours has gone by, grab yourself a few sausage links and cook them up in the same pan you cooked the ribs in. Get ‘em good and browned up, like so:

Once they’re browned up, add them to the sauce, and let them go for another hour.

While those are going, it’s time to make the meatballs. You could have made those earlier, but admit it, you liked having that 2 hour breather.

I made a few mistakes along the way, which I’ll point out so you can avoid them. They still turned out good though, and the worst case scenario is that you end up having chunks of meatballs in the sauce instead of meatballs, so don’t sweat it too much if something is a little off.

To get started, get a big bowl and dump your ground meats into it. I used a pound each of ground beef and ground pork. You can mix it up, go all beef if you want, even a little lamb if you have some. But no lean meats here (i.e. chicken, turkey breast, Chris Christie – ok I gotta update that joke, no one remembers who he is anymore) – this is not healthy cooking, and you’re going to need the fat to keep the meatballs juicy and mois…nope, not using that word.

Anyways, break the ground beef strands up so they don’t get too clumpy. Then crack some eggs into the bowl. This was my first mistake – I went with 4 eggs, but probably should have used 3. You can learn from my mistake, and use 3, unless yours are really small I suppose. But once you’ve cracked the eggs in, mix everything together so the eggs coat the meats.

Then in another bowl, let’s mix together the “dry” ingredients. First thing you’ll do is take 1/4 cup of that delicious tomato sauce you’re cooking up and add it to the bowl. Chuck in some milk – cream, half and half, whole milk, maybe even 2%. No skim milk, that’s just cloudy water. Oat/almond/soy milk…I mean, if that’s what you have around, I guess…no…stop it, go get some cow milk…

Snapping back to reality, chop up a good handful of Italian parsley and add that to the bowl. Then toss in some panko bread crumbs (if all you have is the Italian bread crumbs in the blue cardboard tube, those will be fine, but probably cut back to 1 cup since they’re more dense). Add in some grated Pecorino Romano cheese – whether you grate it yourself or buy it pre-grated is your call. Then mince up 3 cloves of garlic really finely and add those in, and then finish with a strong pinch of salt. Once everything’s in, mix all of the dry’s together and give it a taste. It should be really salty, since this is going to do all the seasoning work for the balls.

Now add the dry’s to the meats, and mix them together. Make sure you get them well combined, but don’t overwork them. If they get too overworked, the meatballs will be springy and compacted, which isn’t what you’re going for. So, don’t use this as your opportunity to work out your anger over Taylor Dearden on The Pitt getting snubbed for an Emmy nomination but they found room for four of the White Lotus actresses. No, definitely suppress that rage and be gentler, so it comes together like this.

(Ok I’ve spent the last 10 minutes cracking myself up over how Victoria Ratliff would react to this recipe. “Tiy-umm, you cain’t go too prisonnn, I have to make Sunday saouce for yoooou, like you used to have at Dooke!”)

This is where I made my next mistake, which was not adding a few breadcrumbs to offset the excessive egg-age. Again, just a lesson that you need to be flexible.

Now, it’s time to make the balls. How big you make them is up to you.

I prefer them smaller, around golf ball sized. Whatever size you make them, just be as consistent as possible. You don’t have to go all anal-retentive chef and measure them out, just make sure that you don’t have golf and tennis ball sized ones.

Once you’ve got them all made, get your trusty meat skillet out one final time, and pour in some neutral oil (vegetable, sunflower, corn, baby). You’ll be shallow frying the meatballs so you’re going to need a good amount, maybe 1/4 inch or so. Then turn the heat up to medium-high.

(This is where I stopped remembering to take pictures of each step.)

When the oil is warmed, start putting the meatballs in the pan. You’ll need to do this in two batches, so space them out accordingly – it’s key to leave enough space so you can flip one without smashing the others near it. You want to get them browned on each side, which will probably take 5 minutes per side.

Once they’re all browned up, add them to the sauce. Be gentle adding them in, so you don’t break up the balls.

Then you just have one final cook for the sauce. If you made golf ball sized balls, you only need another 30 minutes or so to get them cooked through. If you did tennis ball sized ones, figure on an hour. Stir every so often, but try not to be too vigorous – again, not the worst thing in the world if the balls break up, but you worked really hard to make them, so give the balls a fighting chance.

While the sauce is finishing up, get a pot of water boiling and cook your pasta.

Now, is this authentic? My god no, I’d get shanked in the back of the head like Morrie for even suggesting it (actually it’d be more like Alan King in Casino). But, it’s still a pretty tasty sauce that will make you and a bunch of your family or friends pretty happy.