Easy Homemade Vegetable Spaghetti Sauce Recipe – Alex Larson Nutrition (2024)

What Vegetables Are Needed to Make This Healthy Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

This recipe is easily customizable to you and your family’s preferences. The ingredients I’ve included in this recipe are easily accessible at most supermarkets and don’t require a lot of prep work. Let’s walk through the ingredients:

Sliced mushrooms – I buy pre-sliced and prefer the baby bella mushrooms as they have a richer flavor than the white button mushrooms.

Yellow onions – I like the sweetest of the yellow onion in this recipe compared to the sharper flavored red onion.

Leeks – These chop up very easily and provide great depth of flavor in the sauce.

Carrots and celery – I love using up leftover carrots and celery in different ways and blended into the sauce offers fantastic nutrition.

Zucchini – During the summer months when zucchini is plentiful, adding it to my pasta dishes and spaghetti sauce is my go-to move.

Butternut squash – While you certainly can use fresh butternut squash in this recipe. I am a tired mom and like to press the ‘easy’ button whenever possible and buying frozen, cubed butternut squash is just plain smart.

Canned plum tomatoes – If I don’t have Roma tomatoes that I’ve canned from the garden, I will use the big can of San Marzano tomatoes. Again, hit that ‘easy button’ whenever you can.

Optional ingredient additions:

Minced garlic (2-3 cloves) or 1 teaspoon garlic powder.

Ground beef or Italian sausage

Heightening the Flavor of Vegetables

In my standard version of this recipe, I cook all vegetables together in a Dutch oven. However, if you’d like make your sauce even more flavorful, here’s what to do!

Prep the carrots, celery, onions, leek and squash, add them to a baking sheet with some olive oil. Roast them in a 400 degree F oven for 20-30 minutes before transferring them to the Dutch oven on the stove top. The softer vegetables like mushrooms and zucchini you can add during the last 10 minutes as they don’t require as long in the oven. Roasting will add a savory depth of flavor through the caramelization of the natural sugars in the vegetables. This isn’t required, but if you have the interest and time to do this step, it will heighten the flavor of the sauce.

Cook Once, Eat Twice or More

As a busy, working mom and athlete, I love to take the time to batch cook meals or portions of meals in advance to save time in the future. This homemade family-friendly spaghetti sauce is one of them.

The recipe itself makes a lot. More than you’ll likely need for your family meal together. So I like to portion out extra (fully cooled) sauce into quart-size freezer bags. I like to use my digital scale and portion into 25 oz – the size of a standard store spaghetti jar. That way I just need to thaw and reheat the sauce for a future meal and feel like I’m winning as a mom for a day knowing my little family is getting a good dose of micronutrients from their favorite dinner – spaghetti night!

For more meal prep ideas, read The Ultimate Guide to Meal Prepping for Athletes

Vegetable Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 8 oz of sliced baby bella mushrooms
• 2 small yellow onions, diced
• 2 small leeks, sliced
• 3 large carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 zucchini, seeds removed and diced
• 2 sticks of celery, diced
• 10 oz bag frozen butternut squash, cubed
• 1 (28 oz) can plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
• 1 tbsp dried parsley flakes
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Prep veggies.*
2. Heat Dutch oven to a medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add finely minced garlic, and sauté for 1 minute. Then add all prepped veggies, including mushrooms, onions, leeks, carrots, zucchini, celery and squash.
3. Cover Dutch oven and cook for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the veggies are tender.
4. Pour in tomatoes + liquid from can and break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon. Stir in broth, oregano, parsley flakes and granulated sugar.
5. Simmer for 25 minutes (uncovered) until sauce has reduced. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 10-15 minutes.
6. Use an immersion blender to blend until sauce is smooth. Salt and pepper, to taste.
   

*For extra flavor, you can roast the veggies in the oven (400 degree F for ~45 minutes) with some olive oil, salt and pepper to maximize flavor. This would essentially replace Step 3 of the directions.

Divide up this batch recipe (I weight out to 25 oz with scale) in quart-size freezer bags and freeze for future meals.

Bon appetit!