A Complete Guide to Making a Classic Italian ‘Sunday Sauce’

It wasn’t every Sunday, but on those special Sundays growing up, the smell hits you sometimes before you’re out of bed. Aromatics sautéing, meats loudly searing, crunchy bread being sliced into with serrated knives: You knew it was going to be a Sunday Sauce Sunday. 

Known for a supremely long simmer, torturing folks with the smells until it’s dining time, Sunday sauce is one of the most fragrant sauces you can make. The pungent scent of seared meat permeates the tomatoes and makes a richer, deeper-colored sauce than your typical tomato-based offerings, like marinara. 

A lot of these “red sauce” dishes come from Southern Italian roots, though Sunday sauce is not practiced too widely in Italy. One food blogger, Rockin’ Kitchen Sicily, says his mom always made a similar sausage and meat sauce growing up in Palermo, though, so while it’s not all over Italy, it has really taken off in America.

Because of its long cooking time, starting the sauce in the morning is the usual strategy, and a late lunch/early dinner around two or three o’clock was the vibe in many families. While it takes time to simmer, this sauce is very quick to assemble, freezes like a charm, and, despite what “Italians Mad at Food” have to say about it, is customizable to your personal tastes. 

Some Sunday sauces choose one meat, others pile on up to four cuts, but the one I grew up with had just two. The meats vary, depending on who you ask—publications use all four of the popular additions to cover their bases, avoiding being yelled at by said Italians mad at food. 

General wisdom has meatballs made with pork and beef, pork country ribs, sweet pork sausage, and braciole—thin rolls of beef with seasonings stuffed inside. Both braciole and meatballs are labor-intensive, so my theory is that many families chose one, while others, like mine, booted them both outright. These two have a lot of similar seasonings like breadcrumbs, parsley, garlic, and lemon, so it’s up to you how meaty you want to go. 

Literal Pasta Heiress Sarah Raffetto, COO of New York staple Raffettos and co-0wner of Petite Pasta Joint, and her family have been providing the other main ingredient of this tradition for almost 120 years at their shop. They were too busy making pasta for the rest of us to have their own Sunday meals, but Raffetto’s serves up their own traditions, and we asked her for some expert tips for making this one your own.

“Spending each day in our Italian environment as a family has provided me with a feeling of closeness that never had me questioning the lack of a weekly tradition,” she told me via email. “While I can be a stickler for recipes (learning in a recipe book environment that requires consistency for retail), tasting along the way and adding your own spin to the classics has helped me enjoy the process so much more and make me a better and more confident cook.”

Sauce is subjective. There, I said it, but Raffetto, a vet of Food Network’s Ciao House, and also a food rule bender, has plenty of wisdom to infuse into your own recipes. “I’ve found that using herbs and spices that aren’t necessarily in the typical Italian pantry can make for a really fun and memorable sauce,” she said. If you want to use a pinch of Georgian Adjika or a heavy dose of Thai chili, that’s your prerogative.

Raffetto has some tips to spice up your sauce: “Ask yourself, what are your favorite flavors? Do you like heat, particular spices, a touch of sweetness? There are no rules, just have fun and slowly figure out what brings you to that moment of sheer gratification and pride in your work.” 

While sauce is interpreted, pasta is not considered subjective. Most Italians, American or otherwise, agree that it should be al dente, and it should be tossed with sauce and cheese, not merely naked noodles topped with both.

If you’re in NYC, Raffetto says to come on by: “My first choice would be Raffetto’s rosemary fettuccine. We’re all massive rosemary advocates in my family, and it pairs so beautifully with a hearty, meat-based sauce. We also just started to make fresh, bronze die extruded pasta in the past year, so rigatoni has become my second choice/obsession.”

Bronze die pasta is known for its rougher texture, especially on ribbed shapes like rigatoni, so Raffetto’s tips for the best sauce sponge are luckily available in most grocery stores that sell the big brands’ “fancier” pastas that are die cut. If you can’t grab these, go for texture! Rigatoni and penne rigate are choices with plenty of surface area to soak it up.

Before we jump into the recipe, there are a few more tips you can deploy to make Sunday Sauce less of an ordeal—and more something to savor. 

1. Salt the sauce AT THE END. Salt added too early cooks the tomatoes into acid, and that’s usually why people add sugar. It’s not necessary if you use good tomatoes, and salt after.

2. Buy in bulk, freeze in packs. If you want to use four meats in your sauce, go right ahead! But unless you want extra sausage, extra meatballs, and sauce leftovers, it’s hard to buy exactly the right amount for four servings without having extra. Grab two pounds of each meat and immediately freeze ¾ of it into three sauce packs. 

3. Meatball Hack: use half sweet sausage and half ground lean beef instead of plain ground pork to really nail that deep-seasoned flavor. While some use milk and bread to make their meatballs, we use breadcrumbs, loads of grated garlic, parsley, and lemon zest in our family recipe. These can also be store-bought from a good butcher.

4. Don’t even bother mincing the garlic and onions; a rough chop of the onion and just a few smashed, peeled cloves will do. The cooking time will melt them all down into the sauce. 

Not Quick (but Definitely Easy) Sunday Sauce

Serves 6-8 or serves 4 with extra to freeze 
Ingredients:

• ½ pound meatballs (about 5 medium) 

• ½ pound sweet Italian sausage (about 3 links)

• Two country pork ribs 

• ¼ cup cooking wine (I use old wine for this)

• Olive oil for the pan

• 1 32-ounce can good quality peeled tomatoes

• 1 32-ounce can good quality crushed tomatoes with basil

• 1 small onion, chopped

• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

• 1 head of fresh basil (if in season)

• 1 pecorino or parmigiano rind (optional)

• Salt to taste 

• Grated pecorino cheese for serving

• One pound of pasta per four people, cooked al dente 

• Two loaves of seeded semolina Italian bread (you’ll need them) 

Instructions:

1. Get a heavy-bottomed pan going really hot, then sear each of the meats on as many sides as you can. Don’t worry about cooking them at all, just get a mean crust on all sides.

2. Remove meat and keep in an insulated bowl or on a baking sheet nearby. Lower the heat a bit, add a drizzle of olive oil, and toss in the onion and garlic. Cook for about 5 minutes until softened, then add wine to deglaze the pan, scraping all the meat bits and the fond up well.

3. Drop in tomatoes and half of the basil, then stir thoroughly. Add the meats back to the pot with all of their juices, give another little stir, and then bring to a very low simmer with the lid mostly covering it to protect from splatters. 

Now, the folk magic happens, as the meats cook down into the tomatoes, the house fills with the scent, and people try to sneak a taste pretty much all day long, a long running joke in every household that follows this tradition. 

Note: After 90 minutes, you could serve it, provided the meats are cooked and you’ve got about a 30% reduction in tomato volume, but I really like a three-hour simmer to get the ribs completely disintegrated. Stirring every 20-30 minutes usually does the trick; this is no risotto that needs a constant eye.

5. When you find the meat cooked to your liking, add the last of the basil, season with salt if needed (remember, you’ll be adding cheese!). Turn the heat off, close the lid, and boil a separate pot of salted water. Toss your desired pasta shape in, cook al dente, and strain, putting it back in that pot. 

6. Ladle in two or three scoops of just the sauce, with a hefty sprinkle of cheese, and gently toss to coat. Divvy up into bowls, top with more sauce and a few hunks of meat, sprinkle with cheese, and serve with crusty bread to make a scarpetta (or little shoe) for cleaning up that bowl.