Roger's Easy Spaghetti Sauce
This one is great for pot lucks and could be doubled if you want a spaghetti feed.
1 lb ground meat. (I use turkey, you can use beef, goat, your preference, or for you vegetable types, leave it out)
1 small onion
1 can (15oz) diced tomato
1 can (15oz) tomato sauce
1 envelope dry spaghetti sauce mix
1 lb package dry spaghetti or other pasta. ( I prefer angel hair)
The entire batch of sauce, without the meat is 325 calories.
The 1 lb of ground turkey adds 640 calories
1 lb of angel hair pasta 1680 calories total
In a large saucepan, brown the meat and the onion. Drain off the liquid. Add the tomato sauce, sauce mix, diced tomato and your choice of additions. Simmer for an hour.
In a large pan, (spaghetti cooker) boil the pasta of your choice until done to your taste. (I like to add a Tbs of olive oil to keep the noodles from sticking together) Combine the cooked pasta and sauce all at once or individual portions. Sauce also works great over rice, macaroni, green beans, bread, use your imagination. Some additions to the sauce could be, whole kernel corn, black olives, mushrooms, bell pepper. Use your imagination for whatever else you have on hand.
Let the pasta water cool down and save it for flushing your RV toilet.
Extra sauce and pasta can be stored in the fridge for a few days. It also freezes well, (yes even the pasta) Could be up to three meals for two campers. Freeze some for later if you don't want spaghetti three days in a row.
How Hot Is It Anyway?
It is very important to know the temperature of your oven to get good, consistent results. Same goes for covered barbecuing and smoking. Regular oven thermometers that hang or sit on the rack inside, are hard to read and you must open the oven door to see them. I searched for some time for a remote read oven thermometer, preferably like this one, (I use in the fridge). Not many for the oven, and no wireless, but the few I did find had a lot of negative comments about probe life. I experienced probe problems in several remote read meat thermometers, both wired and wireless. I am pretty sure most of this is caused by the heat sensor cable being exposed to heat of the oven, especially where it goes out the door. It is particularly critical on the Traeger Barbecue as there is a gap between the flame tamer under the grate and the door edge. This area is open to the heat of the firebox. I think I have cured this problem by wrapping the sensor wire (not the probe end) in aluminum foil as an insulator from the probe/wire connection, to outside of the grill/oven.
BTW, speaking of fridge thermometers, this one caught my eye: Wireless Fridge Thermometer with two sensors. You can read the fridge AND the freezer and you can move the readout to the cab while driving and mount in the kitchen when parked.
I have been using this model with the barbecue with the foil wrap. So far so good.
Acurite
IGrill
My son got me this one. It is Bluetooth and can be monitored on my IPhone. It has two probes for two different meats/dishes. It has an optional probe for grill temperature to be used in place of one of the food probes. I ordered the oven temp probe, so now I can monitor the meat and the inside temp at the same time on my IPhone. The oven temp probe, however only reads up to 400F. Couldn't be used for grilling but will be useful for monitoring grill temp for low temp smoking and baking. (tri-tip, ribs, meat loaf) Still testing this one. Probe wires are metal braid shielded. Both probe wires wrapped in foil. (not the probe tip)
IGrill
For the inside oven, I found this Bakers Thermometer. Metal shielded sensor wire and I wrapped it in foil for good measure. So far it works great and it showed 360F when the oven is set for 350F.
Readout for remote oven thermometer velcroed to the wall
Temperature probe in oven wrapped in foil
I created this post on the oven thermometer and pictures earlier. Since then, I have used this oven thermometer and discovered some BIG errors. Remember, my motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to" The first one is that you cannot put the digital readout next to the stove like I did in the first picture. The heat distorts the readout. The cord is long enough to move it away to a cooler spot. If you look closely at the above picture of the probe placement, you can see that it is right over the vent holes in the bottom of the oven. This exposes the probe to the oven burner which is just inches away. My inclination is to move the tile over the holes under the probe to see if that protects it better and gives a more accurate temp. It was reading about 75F high compared to the oven control. I will try this and report back
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