Red Wine Sauce by Food Lovers Primal Palate

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  I don't cook for Thanksgiving, so I don't have any special Thanksgiving posts ready.  Sorry.  So, when you're tired of turkey, come on by, I've got you covered!  

I love pasta.  Unfortunately, pasta does not love me. Luckily, I've learned to live without it.  Today's recipe is a Red Wine Sauce from Food Lovers Kitchen, a.k.a. Food Lovers Primal Palate.  I'm really not certain what Hayley Mason and Bill Staley wish to be referred to as generally, but it's their recipe.  It is not found in their book, Make it Paleo: Over 200 Grain Free Recipes For Any Occasion.  

I first gathered my ingredients.  

After cutting up my onion, I put some coconut oil in my 5 quart dutch oven.

Once the pot had heated up, I put my onion in and used my trusty garlic press to mince my garlic directly into the pan.

While the onion and garlic softened, I chopped up my fresh basil and then added it to the pan.  

The next step is to add the ground beef.  I have two recommendations.  The first is to use the largest pot you have to efficiently brown your meat.  I thought my 5 quart dutch oven would be large enough and it was not.  I really don't have a pan that is larger with respect to bottom of the pan surface area, so if you don't either, my second suggestion is to brown the meat in batches.  

Of course, I suppose you could use a separate pan with a larger bottom diameter to brown the meat, but I hate using more pans than I can get away with.  

Once the meat was browned, I added my tomato sauce, wine and seasoning.













Here is my completed sauce.

Accessibility and Cost of Ingredients: Everything you need should be available at your "big box" grocery store.

Preparation & Cook Time:  The stated preparation time given is 10 minutes.  The stated cook time is 1 hour.  I forgot my timer again.  I use my phone to take pictures and I also use my phone's stopwatch and have found lately I've gotten bad about forgetting the timer in the midst of taking pictures and cooking.  I'm ordering a separate stopwatch to hang around my neck.

I believe 10 minutes was a fair estimate of my preparation time before starting to brown the meat.  It took me a bit longer than 15 minutes to brown my meat due to my pot size.  Unless you have a huge pot, you're going to want to brown the meat in batches, which will still take you longer than 15 minutes.  I'd say 20-25 minutes is a fair estimate of the time for browning the meat.  After that you have 45 minutes of simmering time.  I didn't make the zucchini noodles.

Clean Up:  Other than my knife and pot, I was able to put everything in the dish washer.  The next time I make this dish, I'll likely use a second saute pan to cook the beef and then add to my dutch oven which will add more to hand wash.  When will my cats learn to wash pots and pans?

The Paleo Review:  Thumbs Up!  After simmering on the stove for 45 minutes, your house will be filled with a wonderful wine and basil aroma.  The night I made this, I served it over some spaghetti squash I had steamed the night before.

If you are looking for a tomato dominant meat sauce, this is not your recipe.  This recipe, as the name implies, is about the flavor of the wine.  Now that I've made this with fresh and dried basil, I'm of the opinion that either will give you equally good results.

I recommend using a very lean ground beef when you make this recipe or take the extra time to drain the fat off of the meat before you proceed with the rest of the recipe.  The beef that I used this time was about 20% and it seemed a little on the greasy side.  This recipe freezes well.