Spaghetti Meat Sauce is an easy and tasty recipe that’s served over pasta in homes and restaurants all across Japan. Combining ground beef and pork for a Japanese twist, this homemade sauce on spaghetti was one of my favorite dishes growing up!
“What are your favorite foods?” When I was young, and an adult asked me this question, my default answer was, “Too many!” We were spoiled for choices in Japan, even when I was growing up in the ’80s. However, if anyone asked, “What do you like to eat at a Western-style restaurant?” I had a favorite dish to proclaim right away: Japanese-style Spaghetti Meat Sauce.
I’ve eaten it so many times during my childhood that I would even describe myself as a spaghetti meat sauce connoisseur. I bet you might say the same, as ground meat cooked in tomato sauce and served over pasta has an appeal to kids, regardless of where you’re growing up.
This Spaghetti Meat Sauce is the recipe I now cook for my kids, who, like all kids, absolutely love the dish. I prepare it the Japanese way by adding more vegetables to the mixture, making it a great way for kids to eat more veggies. Let me show you how!
Table of contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- It makes for an easy yet extremely satisfying meal for the family!
- Deeply flavorful as it is filled with Vegetables and Mushrooms. If you want your kids to eat more veggies and nutritious food, this recipe checks all the marks.
- The sauce stores well in the freezer, making it an ideal dish for big-batch cooking. It will be very handy during your busy months!
Ingredients You’ll Need
- Ground meat — I highly recommend using a mixture of ground beef and ground pork for the best texture.
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Aromatics: Garlic and bay leaf
- Vegetables: Onion, carrot, celery, and button mushrooms
- Red wine – A splash of red wine adds a robust taste and warm richness to the sauce. The alcohol evaporates after the food is cooked; however, if you don’t consume alcohol, I have a substitution tip for you below.
- Whole tomato in a can
- Vegetable stock/broth
- Seasonings: Unsalted butter, salt, and freshly ground black pepper
- For servings: Parsley (fresh or dried) and Parmigiano-Reggiano (or Parmesan cheese)
How to Cook Spaghetti Meat Sauce
- In a large skillet, heat the oil and cook the aromatics until fragrant. Add the onion, carrot, and chopped celery, and sauté until golden brown.
- Add the ground meat and break it into pieces. Pour in the red wine and let it simmer until the alcohol has evaporated.
- Add a can of whole tomatoes and break them up into small pieces. Then, add the vegetable stock/broth and sliced button mushrooms.
- Cook the sauce on medium-low heat until the liquid is almost evaporated, about 1 hour.
- Toward the end of cooking, boil a pot of water and cook the spaghetti (or pasta of your choice).
- Add unsalted butter to the mixture and season the sauce with salt and pepper.
- Serve the meat sauce over the spaghetti and top with parsley and grated cheese. Enjoy!
Japanese Meat Sauce vs American Meat Sauce
- We use soffritto (known as mirepoix in French), which is a fancy way of describing a mixture of vegetables sautéed with olive oil or butter until tender and golden. The standard vegetables are finely chopped onions, carrots, and celery. They add a refreshing texture and umami-rich flavor to the meat sauce.
- We commonly use two types of meat for the sauce (both with about 20% fat). Blending in pork makes the sauce more tender. You can find packages of ground beef and pork combined (see a picture below) in Japanese supermarkets. It’s very convenient (a little pricey, but the quality of the meat is excellent).
Substitution Tips
- Meat mixture. You can do all ground beef, Italian sausage, ground turkey or lamb, if that’s what you have.
- Use tomato paste and chicken/beef broth to replace red wine. The wine flavor adds complexity and a variety of tastes (acidity, sweetness, etc) to the dish that’s difficult to substitute, but if you don’t consume alcohol, you can use these instead.
How to Serve Spaghetti Meat Sauce
My kids love this meat sauce with short pasta, but I still prefer eating it with classic spaghetti. Sometimes I even boil spaghetti separately just for myself!
Another delicious way to enjoy the savory, saucy meat sauce? Serve it on top of fluffy rice in a hot bowl or cast-iron plate. You can even crisp up the rice until it is nice and crispy on the bottom, then pour the warmed sauce on top. Generously sprinkle the grated cheese, add extra grinds of black pepper, some chili flakes, or kimchi (if you’d like). Mix everything up and enjoy!
More Recipes You’ll Enjoy
- Pressure Cooker Spaghetti Bolognese
- Creamy Mushroom and Bacon Pasta
- Eggplant Parmesan Spaghetti Recipe
- Napolitan (Japanese Ketchup Spaghetti)
- Miso Butter Pasta with Tuna and Cabbage
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Spaghetti Meat Sauce
Ingredients
- ½ lb ground beef
- ¼ lb ground pork
- 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic (sliced)
- 1 bay leaf (cut in half)
- 1 onion (minced)
- 1 carrot (minced)
- 1 rib celery (minced)
- 1 cup red wine
- 1 can whole tomato (28 oz, 794 g, including juices)
- 2 cups vegetable stock/broth
- 8 button mushrooms (sliced)
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
- Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- freshly ground black pepper
For Serving
- parsley (finely chopped, for garnish)
- Parmigiano-Reggiano or Parmesan cheese (grated)
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
- In a large skillet, heat 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil on medium heat and cook 2 cloves garlic (sliced) and 1 bay leaf (cut in half) until fragrant.
- Add 1 onion (minced), 1 carrot (minced), and 1 rib celery (minced). Sauté until golden brown.
- Add ½ lb ground beef and ¼ lb ground pork. Break into pieces with wooden spoon.
- Add 1 cup red wine and let it simmer until the alcohol is evaporated (no longer a strong wine smell).
- Add 1 can whole tomato and break up into small pieces with a wooden spoon. Add 2 cups vegetable stock/broth and 8 button mushrooms (sliced).
- Using a fine-mesh strainer, skim off the scum and foam on the surface. This process is important to achieve a refined taste. Prepare a bowl or measuring cup filled with water to clean the sieve as you skim.
- Cook the sauce, uncovered, on medium-low heat until the liquid is almost evaporated, about for 1 hour. Stir once in a while to make sure the ingredients do not stick to the bottom of the skillet. When you can draw a line on the bottom of the pan with a spatula, it‘s done. Toward the end of cooking, boil a pot of water and cook the spaghetti (or pasta of your choice).
- Add 2 Tbsp unsalted butter and stir to combine. Season the sauce with Diamond Crystal kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (make sure you taste it. Don‘t be shy on salt as you will serve the sauce with pasta). Serve the meat sauce on spaghetti and garnish with chopped parsley. Top the dish with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Parmesan cheese at the table. Enjoy!
To Store
- You can keep the leftovers in an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 3–4 days or in the freezer for 2 months.
I love, love, love this recipe! I’ve made it countless times and it’s always a hit. I REALLY appreciate the pics too. I’m not a strong cook so the pics help me understand how much to cook it down, etc.
Hi Jennifer! So happy to hear you enjoy this recipe! I liked following along with step-by-step pics when I was learning to cook myself, too! Thanks for your kind feedback! 🙂
I really miss the meat sauce spaghetti from convinience stores in Japan. It is sweeter and different than regular bolognese sauce. Your recipe looks great but it is pretty much how I make bolognese sauce. Should I just add sugar or ketchup? Any secret missing ingredients?
Hi Eti, Thank you for trying Nami’s recipe.
Adding sugar, mirin, and ketchup will make a sweeter version of this recipe.
We hope you find this inspiring.🙂
I just wanted to say how much I love this recipe. My mother used to make this for me all the time and this recipe is the closest I’ve come to recreating the flavor. I’ve changed to a plant-based diet and this recipe was very easy to veganize. I initially substituted the ground meat with lentils and later tried using TVP. Even without meat, it’s still just as tasty.
Hello, Susan! We are delighted to hear you discovered a recipe similar to your mother’s sauce.
Thank you so much for trying Nami’s recipe and sharing your cooking experience and story. It made us happy. 💞
Happy cooking!
I have made this recipe a couple of times and followed the ingredients and directions exactly as listed. But both times the sauce is too watery. I even let it simmer at med-low for almost 2 hours but the liquid never evaporates to the consistency of a sauce. What could I be doing wrong? Should I use less vegetable broth and/or wine? I made this recipe for 3-4 servings and also just made another bigger batch by doubling the recipe. Both times the sauce is more of a soup with too much liquid. We still enjoy the spaghetti sauce still but really want to get it not as watery. Thank you!
Hi Sarita, Thank you very much for trying this recipe! We would like to check with you if you cooked this sauce uncovered, as Nami mentioned in this recipe. Nami cooked this in a large skillet uncovered so it might evaporate faster than your size of the pan. We recommend cooking with a larger pan or pot. We hope this helps!
Yes, I used a large pot and it was uncovered the whole time. Very strange that it didn’t evaporate but the recipe is so good I will keep trying again. Do you think I should also try to reduce the amount of wine or vegetable broth?
Hi Sarita, I see… This could be the fat content of the ground meat. Maybe it has more fat than Nami’s ground meat, and the liquid/oil did not evaporate. In this case, yes, you can try reducing the amount of wine and vegetable broth as much as you like to cook for 1 hour. We hope this helps!
I have the same problem. The sauce is good but there is so much liquid and I also let it cook for two hours uncovered.
Hi Betty, Thank you very much for trying this recipe!
It depends on how much liquid in the canned tomato might change the sauce’s amount of liquid. Please feel free to adjust the broth amount for your liking if you prefer. Happy Cooking!
I’ve made this recipe a few time and have found that 1 can of tomatoes (400g in my country) and 1 cup of vegetable stock works well for me. It reduces to the perfect amount in about 45min to 1 hr.
Just made this today. Followed to the T. Excellent! Will definitely make again.
Hi Jennifer! Thank you so much for your kind feedback. I’m so glad you enjoyed it! It’s my favorite meat sauce recipe. 🙂 Thank you!!!