The other day I was browsing the slowcooking subreddit when the beautiful sight of a slowcooker filled to the brim with marinara sauce and meatballs caught my eye. I immediately scrolled down to the comments to check if there was a recipe. There was, but no measurements. Drat. However, I was so hungry and it looked so appetizing that I decided to wing it and just sort of guess the amounts.

I’m so glad I did! The sauce turned out AMAZE-BALLS (pun intended), and using the meatball recipe from this post, plus some oven-baked potatoes, I made one of my tastiest SundayMealPreps yet.

To make sure I never forget this recipe, and also to give others the chance to enjoy it as well, here it is for your cooking pleasure:

Ingredients:

8 shallots

1 onion

A small bush (15gr) of fresh oregano

A small bush (15gr) of fresh parsley

A small bush (20gr) of basil

100 gr hard Pecorino Romano cheese

1,2 kg (aka 3 400gr cans) of whole, peeled, canned tomatoes

210 gr (or 3 70gr cans) of tomato paste

4 cloves of garlic

Salt

Pepper

What to do:

Begin by dicing the garlic, shallots, and onion, and fry them in a pan until soft. (I used a food processor for speed.) Dice your fresh herbs, and add to the shallot/onion/garlic mix. Blend the canned tomatoes and tomato paste together in either a food processor or using a hand-blender, and also add this to the mix (preferably around the same time as the herbs). Add salt and pepper to taste. Let this cook for about 10 minutes, then grate the romano cheese over it/add the grated romano cheese.

Your sauce is now done!

For the meatball marinara, create your meatballs as described in this recipe, and real quickly pan fry them for the maillard reaction. Don’t cook them all the way though, it’s just to give them a nice brown color/crust.

Once done, grab your slowcooker (or a large cast-iron pan like this) and start layering your sauce and meatballs, beginning and ending with sauce. Cook on high (slowcooker) or medium-low heat (pan, just keep it simmering, and put a lid on!) for 2,5 hours, and enjoy!

I made some oven-baked potatoes to go with mine (30 min on 180 degrees Celsius, and another 15 min on 190 degrees Celsius), and they turned out super yummy! (coated them in olive oil and some potato seasoning and garlic powder).

Excuse the messiness of the display – delicious sauce has a mind of its own

I hope you’ll enjoy this recipe as much as I did!