My daughter Emily has been asking for this recipe for months. Here it is, finally!
As I have cooked Italian food over the years, I’ve found that the best dishes tend to be simple, so my recipes have gotten simpler. My Sunday sauce or “gravy” is one with few ingredients, but prepared in a way to coax all the goodness out of them.
I’ve tried to emulate the sauce served at Lena’s in Altoona, in my opinion, one of the best. Lena’s serves great home-made Italian. Nothing fancy, just good Italian food. Their veal is excellent and Lena’s is one of the few places where you can still get braciole. If an Italian restaurant serves braciole, you know it’s good home-made food.
Bucky’s Sunday Sauce
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 lbs yellow onions, roughly chopped
6 – 8 garlic cloves, mashed through a garlic press
1/2 bottle of pinot noir
1 106 oz can of plain tomato sauce or 4 28 oz cans
4 bay leaves
1 tsp. hot pepper flakes (optional)
Salt to taste
Caramelize the Onions
Caramelizing the onions brings out their natural sweetness and gives the sauce a depth of flavor that you can’t get otherwise. Caramelizing the onions takes time because they need to be sautéed slowly and stirred so that they don’t scorch or burn, which would cause them to be bitter.
These onions are about half-done.
Warm a large heavy-bottomed stock pot or Dutch oven ( 8-10 quart size) on the stove over medium low heat. When pot is warm, add the olive oil and swirl until it covers the bottom and becomes fragrant. Add the onions and sauté slowly, stirring to keep them from scorching. Constantly scrape any brown onions from the bottom. Don’t let the brown stay on the bottom of the pot to scorch.It may seem like you have too many onions in the pot at the start, but they will slowly reduce in size until, at the end, you may think you don’t have enough. Making this sauce is a step by step process of reducing the ingredients to concentrate the flavors.
After about half an hour or more, all the water from the onions will have evaporated and you’ll need to keep a close eye on them and stir constantly to keep them from scorching.
Add the Garlic
Add the garlic and continue to stir. They onions are done when the entire volume is reduced to about one quarter of what you started with and are golden brown. Taste them and you should get a rich, sweet, mild onion flavor. All the harsh flavor of a raw onion should be gone.
Deglaze with Wine
Deglaze the pot by adding the pinot noir. I like to use pinot noir because it doesn’t have a harsh oak/tannin flavor that can intensify when reduced. Stir and scrape all the onion residue from the bottom of the pot and turn the heat up to medium high and bring the wine, onions and garlic to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the wine is reduced in volume to about half.
Add the Tomato Sauce and Bay Leaves
Add the can(s) of tomato sauce to the onion, garlic and wine mixture and stir. Add the bay leaves. You may also add the hot pepper flakes at this point if you want a sauce with some kick. Bring the sauce to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Check the consistency and add water or vegetable broth if the sauce is too thick. Some tomato sauces can be very thick and may need thinning. Simmer for about an hour on low heat, stirring occasionally so the sauce doesn’t scorch.
Remove the Bay Leaves and Blend
At his point, I like to use my stick blender to smooth out the sauce and fully incorporate the onions and garlic. But first, remove the bay leaves and reserve if you are going to make meatballs and sausage. Blend until no onion chunks are visible. Try not to incorporate air into the sauce as you blend.
At this point, you can use the sauce as is, or move on to the next step: making meatballs and sausage for a real Italian Sunday dinner feast!
More on that later…