Italian meat sauce simmered for several hours with sweet tomatoes, red wine, ground beef, and spicy Italian sausage. It’s a hearty and rich sauce with a robust flavor perfect for serving with pasta, layering into lasagnas, or adding to your favorite Italian dishes!

Red Italian meat sauce in a Dutch Oven pot on a wooden background.

Italian meat sauce is an essential part of many Italian dishes!

This Italian meat sauce is not to be confused with our Ragu Alla Bolognese (a classic Bolognese Italian meat sauce). This recipe is more tomato-y and versatile for layering into almost any baked Italian dish.

In this red sauce, you’ll find sweet Italian tomatoes, ground beef, sausage, red wine, and some aromatics to flavor the sauce. The tomatoes and meat are simmered for several hours to achieve a rich and naturally sweet tomato sauce with deep flavor. The meat adds protein, making it perfect for your favorite dishes that need more heartiness!

Add this to your favorite Italian dishes, such as lasagna or baked ziti (my favorites!), or toss with your favorite pasta! It’s truly a delicious sauce that my family absolutely loves.

Recipe Highlights

SIMMERED LOW AND SLOW. The best method for a richly developed sauce is to simmer the tomatoes and ingredients low and slow. This is also how we cook our San Marzano tomato sauce. Cooking the sauce longer gives more time to develop a robust flavor! This also gives the carrot time to absorb acidity and sweeten the sauce naturally.

SIMPLE ITALIAN COOKING. This sauce is simple Italian cooking at its finest. It’s nothing complicated or fancy, but the result is an intensely flavored meat sauce to enjoy with your favorite Italian meals. Add everything to the pot and let the heat do all the work while it simmers away!

Ingredients

The ingredients for an Italian meat sauce are simple. A blend of pantry staples mixed with some meat, aromatics, and fresh herbs! Let’s go over all the details.

See the recipe card below for the full list of ingredients and exact measurements.

Meat – I used ground beef and spicy Italian sausage for the meat in the sauce. You can also replace the spicy sausage with sweet or mild sausage or ground pork!

Aromatics – for the base to add flavor to the sauce, you’ll need a large yellow onion and a handful of fresh garlic cloves. And you’ll need quality olive oil to saute both in!

Tomatoes – We like to use quality Italian tomatoes or San Marzano’s if you have them on hand and tomato paste to thicken the sauce.

Wine – for robust flavor, you’ll need a little red wine. I like to use a dry red such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, or you could use a dry red blend.

Parmigiano Reggiano rind – a secret Italian ingredient for any Italian sauce or stew. This rind is hard and will only soften while it simmers with the sauce, but it will infuse delicious parm flavor into the sauce!

How to Make Italian Meat Sauce

1

Break up the tomatoes. Transfer the tomatoes and juices to a large bowl, then use your hands to break up the whole plum tomatoes into pieces.
2

Sauté the onions and garlic. In a large heavy pot, sauté the diced onions in olive oil for 3-4 minutes until soft (not brown), then add the minced garlic and sauté 30-60 seconds.
3

Cook the sausage and beef. Then add the ground beef and sausage, season with a generous pinch of salt, and cook until completely browned and no longer pink. Then add the tomato paste and cook for about 3 minutes.

4

Add the wine. Then add the wine to the meat and cook for another 3 minutes.
5

Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Then add the crushed tomatoes and stir together with the meat. Season with another pinch of salt and pepper.
6

Add the parm rind and simmer. Then add the Parmigiano rind, and cover the pot partially. Let it simmer on the lowest heat setting for 4 hours, stirring occasionally (about every 20-30 minutes). Once it’s done, taste it, season with any salt and pepper then serve with your favorite dishes!

A collage of three photos show step by step how to make Italian meat sauce. The first photo is step 4 showing red wine being poured into beef and sausage that's been browned in a pot. The second image is step 5 showing crushed tomatoes added to the same pot. The third photo step 6 is showing a parm rind in with the tomatoes and meat sauce while it cooks in a large pot.

The Best Tomatoes For Any Italian Sauce (DOP and non-DOP)

D.O.P certified – Quality Italian tomatoes are key in making a marinara or a meat sauce such as this one. We recommend using D.O.P-certified San Marzano Tomatoes grown in southern Italy for an authentic sauce. These tomatoes are really tender, sweet, and lower in acidity. We like Rega, La Fede, or Strianese (you might also find other DOP brands at your local grocery store).

To ensure you are using certified San Marzano tomatoes, the can should say “Pomodoro San Marzano dell’Agro Sarnese Necorino D.O.P.” This ensures the tomatoes are grown in the authentic region.

Quality Non-D.O.P – If you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on San Marzanos, a quality Italian tomato will be delicious, and some might not even notice the difference in the taste of tomatoes. We like to use Cento, Organico Bello, and Bianco Dinapoli for non-DOP tomatoes.

Five cans of San Marzano tomatoes stacked on top of each other in front of a dark background.

Extra Recipe Notes

Best pot to use for meat sauce – I recommend using a heavier enamel pot for best results. I have always used stainless steel pots for sauce, which you can use. However, I have found that a heavy cast iron pot produces more heat, perfect for cooking a meat sauce like this one. Using a cast iron pot with an enamel lining is very important. The enamel coats the inside of the pot, allowing you to cook anything in it – including acidic tomato sauces such as this one.

Meats to use in Italian meat sauce – aside from ground beef and Italian sausage, you can add ground pork, ground veal, or mild or sweet Italian sausage. You can also balance out the sausage by using 1/2 pound each of sweet and spicy sausage!

Add fresh herbs if you like – I typically add fresh herbs to every Italian dish, so if you’d like a pop of brightness you can add 2 Tablespoons of fresh basil to the finished meat sauce.

A white bowl of small shaped pasta mixed with Italian meat sauce and topped with fresh basil. The plate is arranged on a wooden background with fresh herbs around the plate.

What to Serve with Italian Meat Sauce

Pasta. Of course, pasta is the most popular item to serve with Italian meat sauce! You can serve it with any shape you like, but I like shapes that can catch all the meat and sauce in its shapes. Such as reginetti, radiatori, fussili, rotini, or rigatoni.

Baked pasta. This sauce is perfect for baked pasta such as our three-cheese baked rigatoni or baked ziti or lasagna such as our spinach lasagna, zucchini, or eggplant lasagna for added protein.

Toppings. To add to the sauce, such as toppings, we love serving this sauce with lots of freshly chopped basil or oregano and lots of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

Make it Ahead

Of course this sauce tastes delicious and rich once it’s cooked, but the secret that most Italians will tell you is meat sauce tastes even better the longer it sits. While the sauce is refrigerated the flavors marinate and deepen even more! I recommend making it no more than 3 days ahead of time to maintain the freshness of the ingredients.

A close up of red Italian meat sauce in a pot with a wooden spoon.

More Italian Tomato Sauce Recipes to Try

If you love cooking homemade tomato sauce, we have a handful of recipes that our readers love! Such as our San Marzano Tomato Sauce, Arrabbiata sauce, roasted cherry tomato sauce, or fresh tomato sauce.

Freeze or Refrigerate Leftovers

Leftover meat sauce can be refrigerated no longer than 5-7 days. This sauce also freezes great! I like to keep it in a freezer-friendly ziplock bag (air removed) and lay it flat. You can freeze it for 2-3 months.