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

A cast iron pot with red Italian meat sauce in it. The pot is on a wooden background with fresh herbs and a small bowl of red pepper flakes placed around the pot.

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

It’s a red sauce made with San Marzano tomatoes, ground beef, and sausage (you can also use pork or veal), 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!

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 – for the meat in the sauce, I used ground beef and sweet Italian sausage (pictured is bulk sausage, but you can also use sausage links with the casing removed).

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 San Marzano Tomatoes for any sauce and tomato paste to thicken the sauce.

Seasonings – for flavoring the sauce, we like to use a little bit of red pepper flakes and fresh basil. You’ll also need salt and black pepper to draw out the flavor of the sauce ingredients!

Wine – for robust flavor, you’ll need a little red wine that’s dry and good quality.

How to Make Italian Meat Sauce

1

Break up the tomatoes. 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, then add the minced garlic and sauté another minute.
3

Cook the sausage and beef. Then add the ground beef and sausage, and cook until completely browned and no longer pink. Then add the tomato paste, red wine, and red pepper flakes and cook with the meat for about 3-4 minutes. Until the alcohol has cooked off.

4

Add the tomatoes and carrot. Next, add the crushed tomatoes and whole peeled carrot with the cooked beef. Sprinkle with a generous pinch of salt.
5

Simmer low and slow. Partly cover the pot and simmer on low for 4 hours, stirring occasionally.
6

Add the basil and season to taste. When the sauce is finished, add the chopped basil and season with salt and black pepper until the flavor is just right. Then serve and enjoy!

A collage of images showing how to make Italian meat sauce. The first image, step four, is showing canned tomatoes being added to cooked beef in a large black pot. The second image, step five, is showing all the tomatoes in the same black pot with a whole carrot in it. The third image, step six, is showing fresh chopped herbs being added to the finished sauce in the black pot.

The Best Tomatoes For Any Italian Sauce

We recommend using D.O.P-certified San Marzano Tomatoes grown in southern Italy for the best-tasting sauce. What sets these tomatoes apart from others is that they are sweeter in flavor, less acidic, and extremely tender, so they break down beautifully. The one key factor contributing to San Marzano tomatoes’ famous taste is the potassium-rich volcanic soil they’re grown in.

They are not only a staple in my family’s recipes but are considered to be the best tomatoes in the world!

To know 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.

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

Tips for Success

Always use fresh herbs for tomato sauce – Not many meat sauces have herbs, but I think it’s necessary for a pop of bright basil flavor. I never recommend using dried herbs for sauce. Only fresh for the best flavor!

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.

Salt to taste at the end – Because the sauce isn’t cooked when you add the tomatoes, it’s hard to know how much salt needs to be added. I like to add most of the salt at the end when I can taste the sauce. Salting is essential for a really flavorful result! You can always add more salt later, so it’s best to under-season it at the beginning rather than over-season it.

How long it keeps – This leftover sauce can be refrigerated for up to 5 days. Or freeze it in a ziplock freezer-bag or soup cube trays for 2-3 months.

Recipe Variations

Meats to use in Italian meat sauce – aside from ground beef and Italian sausage, you can add ground pork, ground veal, or spicy Italian sauce to meat sauce.

Simmer with a parmesan rind – to add a rich, umami flavor, simmer this sauce with a small-to-medium-sized parmesan cheese rind. This is the harder outer shell that the cheese is aged in. The rind won’t melt but will infuse the sauce with delicious flavor!

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 wooden spoon stirring a pot of red tomato sauce with meat in it in a black pot.

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.