Homemade Spaghetti Sauce
Spaghetti is a staple at our house. We eat it often. I’ve perfected a recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce over the last 15 years or so. I used to use canned tomato sauce (not the jar Prego type stuff, just strait tomato sauce that I added seasonings to) in the past. But the amount of sodium and additive / preservatives started to bother me. Plus, a can of tomato sauce only has a shelf life of a year or two. So I’ve switched to the sodium free, additive free 8 year shelf life tomato powder.
Normally, when I make this recipe I still use fresh sausage and mushrooms. But for the purpose of this experiment, I used 100% shelf stable ingredients! And my family didn’t notice the difference! They ate it for a good 10 minutes before my son asked why there were no REALLY BIG bites of sausage (the freeze dried sausage is all of a smaller uniform size). Otherwise, they noticed no difference!
Making the Spaghetti:
Gather all your ingredients:
Add 1 Tablespoon olive oil to a large saute pan over medium high heat. When oil is hot, add sausage crumbles, onion, and mushrooms if you like mushroom. (-: Saute for about 30 seconds.
Add water to the pan. It will de-glaze it and create a nice rich aroma (and flavor): 
Slowly whisk in tomato powder until smooth. Turn heat down to simmer. Give it 5 minutes or so to thicken and then, if you like your sauce a bit thicker and 1-2 T more tomato powder.
Mix spices, garlic powder and 2 tsp salt into sauce:
If you don’t want tomato dices in your sauce, you are done!
If you do like chucks of tomato in your sauce, add some tomato dices. These are extremely delicate, so add them last, add them slowly and fold them in gently: 
You’re done!
Plate it up over spaghetti noodles and enjoy!
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Looking for more 100% food storage / shelf stable recipes? Checkout my recipe book HERE.
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- 1 T. Olive Oil
- 1 Cup freeze dried sausage crumbles
- 1 T. freeze dried onion
- 1/ 2 Cup freeze dried mushrooms (optional)
- 4 Cups Water
- ½ Cup tomato powder
- 1.5 tsp freeze dried parsley
- 1.5 tsp freeze dried basil
- 1.5 tsp freeze dried oregano
- 1.5 tsp freeze dried Italian seasoning
- 1.5 - 2 tsp salt
- 1.5 T garlic powder
- ¼ Cup brown sugar
- ½ Cup freeze dried tomato dices
- Add olive oil to a large saute pan over medium high heat. When oil is hot, add dry freeze dried sausage crumbles, dry onion, and dry freeze dried mushrooms. Saute for about 30 seconds.
- Add water to the pan.
- Add tomato powder and whisk until smooth. Turn heat down to simmer.
- Add freeze dried parsley, oregano, basil and Italian seasoning, dill, salt, garlic powder, and packed brown sugar. Let simmer for 5 minutes or so.
- Slowly add freeze dried tomato dices and fold them in gently.
If using dehydrated spices instead, reduce amount by half.
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Misty, thank you for this recipe! I only used 1T brown sugar per our less sweet preference. I also added 2 T dehydrated carrots and 1 T FD celery just to add a few more vegetables. Thank you for sharing such a good recipe. We love it. It will be a regular on the food rotation now. You are a genius with food storage!
Yay! I’m so glad it worked for you Betty! Thanks for taking the time to let me know!
As I was reading the ingredients for your spaghetti sauce, tomato powder was listed. I read on a you tube or a blog that the home canner keeps her tomato peelings and then dehydrates themn and then runs them thru her spice mill or food processor, turning the dried tomato skins into tomato powder. I blanch tomatoes in boiling water for about a minute, the skins slide right off and then I lay them on the dehydrator trays and dry them. I either store them in vacuum sealed bags or in airtight containers if I plan on using them pretty quickly. I was making a stew the other day and used some of the tomato skins, broken up and the stew got thick, using my “homemade” tomato powder. The only thing not used when i canned tomatoes was the core.
Great tip Kathy. Thanks!
I have a book called Meals in Jars and have decided that instead of putting the “mixture” in jars and using up my canning jars; I’ll make up the mixture and put it in vacum sealed bags. Putting the recipe on a card inside the vacummed bag and then being able to make the “meal” at a moments notice with just wet ingredients. Or better yet using margaring/butter powder and anything else dehydrated that I can buy or make myself.
Yvonne..your emergency is why I am trying my best to keep my freezer(s) /refigerator as empty as I can. I buy when things are on sale and then either dehydrate or can/preserve..Canning seems the best for me as then I have liquid already in the jar and don’t need to worry about water shortage. I love your site, Misty, because I learn so much and at 65 that’s a blessing :0)
Glad to have you and your experience here Kathy!
Misty,
I am using this recipe tonight for supper! We have had an emergency at our house. We have lost not one but TWO refrigerators in the last two weeks! One fridge is 9 months old and the other is 28 months old. One fridge is in our new house and the other is in our 5th wheel camper (which we actually live and travel in). I don’t know if you are aware of warranty situations with appliances, but at least with the brands that we own, if you have a warranty situation they will get to you when they can. The 9 month old fridge took 5 days before they could get one of their “approved technicians” to come out and it is still not fixed. The 28 month old fridge went out on a Saturday evening so we were unable to get a repairman out until Monday (we had the extended warranty) but they came right out. Unfortunately, the compressor went out and had to be ordered which took about 5 days to arrive and then another 3 days to get the appointment for them to come out to install it. Needless to say, we lost everything in the fridges (actually we didn’t notice the fridges were out until most of it was spoiled but that’s a whole other story!) So, being without refrigeration, I am using this emergency to try out my 100% food storage cooking. This would be similar to an emergency situation without electricity. So far, so good! I am so glad that I had already been cooking with my food storage for a couple of years and I am familiar with using it, though I don’t usually use 100% food storage–I usually use a combination of food storage and fresh. This has been a good time to work with cutting down on the amount that I cook so that there is no waste for just two people since we cannot save the leftovers–which would also be true in most emergency situations. Thank you for all of the help and recipes and to Thrive for the excellent foods that we have been using. It is a blessing! Especially now! 😀
Yvonne! Thank you so much for your kind comment! WOW! What a mess with your fridges. Goodness. I’m so glad you are finding your Thrive helpful! (-:
Thank you Misty! It has also pointed out that I need to look at my recipes and adjust them for 2 people for times when refrigeration is not available so that I don’t have a lot of wasted food. 🙂
Just a question for you Misty…if you were to make this recipe with Sausage TVP instead of the Sausage Crumbles would you do anything differently? I’ve got TVP in my home store, but not any of the REAL stuff yet. 🙂
Tiffany, I honestly don’t know. I don’t use the TVP. Try it and let me know!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Misty, for this 100% Food Storage Recipe. It surely sounds delicious and the photos alone make me want to try this recipe. Since we are preparing long term storage for catastrophic events, such as those where there would likely not be fresh ingredients readily available, we treasure the recipes you provide that focus on ingredients found in our storage. This one is already saved for future use.
I’m glad you will use it Deb!