Canned Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

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Making spaghetti sauce is one of the best and easiest things to can. In fact, it’s just a couple steps further than processing tomato sauce. Also, I may be a bit biased but I will tell you I think our spaghetti sauce is the best. We don’t like sauce with lots of veggies or chunks in it, so this recipe has none of those. We don’t like seeds in our sauce, so this also doesn’t contain any of that. You will want to start with our tomato sauce recipe because that is the base of this recipe. We put that sauce into roasters and add some spices to make the best canned spaghetti sauce recipe ever! 

The Rest of the Recipe

Just like Paul Harvey, there is a little bit more to this story. Or more to the recipe of the recipe, I should say.

This sauce recipe actually comes straight from Italy, straight from my grandma Papparella. I feel it’s only fair to tell you that there is more to this recipe though. The sauce itself is fantastic. It’s the best on a big bowl of noodles or baked into a lasagna. The flavor is just incredible. 

However, it can get better. The rest of the recipe tells you how to cook down the meat into the sauce and give it even more flavor. Typically, this sauce is cooked over a period of a couple of days and will make your house smell incredible. (The smell is also incredible when you are making it for canning, to be quite honest.) Someday, with the permission of my family, I may share our full spaghetti recipe. For now, I’ll share this portion of the sauce and I’m going to have to leave you hanging for the rest of it. 

Canned Spaghetti Sauce Ingredients

• 12 cups tomato sauce
• 1 6oz can tomato paste
• 3 tsp salt
• 3 tsp garlic powder
• 1 ½ to 2 cups onion 

Directions

Before you start you will want to make sure that you have processed your tomato sauce per this guide.

Once you do that, you can proceed to the next part. 

Chop the onion and saute it in a frying pan with a little bit of oil. Add to the tomato sauce.

Add in the remaining ingredients to the tomato sauce.

Cook down the sauce until it is the thickness that you want. We prefer to do this in a roaster- We love this Nesco one (my mom has two of them!) Mine (shown below) was a $15 score at our local Goodwill, also a great option!

Once the sauce is the perfect thickness, it’s time to process it. From this point, it follows the same process of tomato sauce again.

Add ½ tsp citric acid per quart or ¼ tsp citric acid per pint of sauce. You can also use lemon juice if you prefer. The ratio for that is 2 Tbsp per quart of sauce or 1 Tbsp per pint of sauce.

Using your water bath, you will process quarts for 40 minutes and pints for 35 minutes. 

In Summary: Canned Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

I don’t often tell you that our way is the best way, but for this one I’m going to tell you that our way is the best way. There are way too many sauces that have chunks or seeds and don’t follow a process to get the sauce smooth. We want it to be pretty much as close to store bought as we can and this definitely fits that bill. This is the number one recipe that has been handed down amongst our family and it’s one of our all time favorites. We make spaghetti for almost all of our occasions- birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, you name it- and we hope that you enjoy this canned spaghetti sauce recipe just as much as we do! 

What recipes have been passed down in your family? Please share them with us in the comments!