Cheater Sketti Recipe

Sketti (Seriously? This seems way too connected to Honey Boo Boo's mother?)
S'ghetti
P'sghetti
Sghetti (ok, that one doesn't really refer to food)...

No matter how your refer to it, spaghetti (pasta with sauce in any form really) is popular!

Since I have been super busy lately I have not been writing or cooking much. Not an excuse really....

Anyhow, I did make Cheater Sketti the other night.  How do I make Cheater Sketti you ask?  'cause I know you asked! Enquiring minds want to know....

I doctor up Hunts Spaghetti Sauce.  The meat sauce version...

I know...  The shock of it all!!!!!

THE HORROR!!!!










Calm down, calm down!  It can turn out really good.  As a matter of fact, it is hard to screw it up....

As with most (I said MOST) of my recipe posts, this is not rocket science. No exact measurements or critical ingredients here. You can futz with this recipe as much or as little as your 'creative-mind/time-limitations/finances/ingredient-availability/garden-haul' will allow.  Below is just how I made it  - this time!

Ingredients:

• Jar or can prepared pasta sauce of your choice
• I use Hunts because it is super cheap
• 1 pound (+/-) ground beef, cooked well
• 1 each onion, diced
• 1 small hot bell pepper, chopped
• it was growing in my garden, no clue of name/variety!
• 1 fresh banana pepper, diced
• I raided my garden
• Perciatelli Pasta, boiled
• cooked a little softer than al dente for me

Open the sauce, pour it in a pot, put a little *water in the can and swish around - pour that into the pot and start heating on medium-low heat.
Stir as needed.
Clean, cut/dice the peppers and onions and stir them into the sauce.
Heat the sauce to almost bubbly then cut heat down to simmer - with the lid on if you want to leave it heating for awhile.
Stir occasionally.
Cook up the ground beef as well as you prefer. I like it really cooked well.
Add meat to sauce.
Cook pasta when the sauce is 'close' to where you want it. You can cook the sauce a little or for hours with a lid on.

Suggested ingredients:

• Jar or can prepared pasta sauce of your choice
• I use Hunts because it is super cheap
• 1 pound (+/-) ground beef, cooked
• 1/2-1 each onion, diced
• 1-3 cloves of galic, minced
• 1/2 - 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 can petite diced tomatoes
• A few shakes of "italian" seasoning if you wish

*By the way, the extra water just cooks down once you take the lid off the pot. If you use a larger pan, the sauce will 'cook down' faster because of the amount of 'surface' for steaming. You can add more water to allow the veggies to cook longer and develop the sauce flavor further.

I have been known to add any or all of the following:

• a few shakes of hot sauce
• spice it up
• 1/4 cup milk
• softens the flavor
• diced carrot
• cuts tartness/acid flavor
• cooked ground italian sausage
• a few strips of cooked bacon - broken up
• not cooked to the point of being hard/crunchy