Simple Italian-Style Meat Sauce

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Appears in Cook's Illustrated March/April 2008, America's Test Kitchen TV

In this country, meat sauce usually means a hastily made dish with rubbery ground beef and no flavor. We wanted something simple—but a lot better.

SERVES 8 to 12 (Makes about 6 cups sauce, enough for 2 lbs pasta)

TIME 1¼ hours

has video

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS

For a quick meat sauce recipe that tasted as if it had simmered for a good portion of the day, we discovered a few tricks: Instead of browning the meat, we browned mushrooms to give the sauce browned flavor without drying it out; we used a ...

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