For some reason, I always crave the same foods at any given time. It's always either ice cream, spaghetti with red sauce, pizza, or pad thai. Weird, right?

Well if you love yourself some pasta with red sauce too, you should try this Ultimate Spaghetti Sauce, from the blog Bell'alimento.

The sauce is kind of ridiculous because you simmer four (or five, in my case) whole links of Italian sausage in tomato sauce for four hours before chopping them up and throwing them back into the sauce. All the sausage juices, or as some like to call it, fat, simmer right into the sauce.

My only deviations from the original recipe were using one extra sausage (hey, it comes five to a pack at Harris Teeter), and pureeing some of the onions and carrots post simmering to make the sauce thicker and less chunky.

This stuff is so comforting on a cold, dark night.

Ultimate Spaghetti Sauce

Courtesy of Bell'alimento blog

Ingredients:

1 35 oz large can of whole tomatoes

4 sweet Italian sausages

1/2 jar of roasted red bell peppers, roughly chopped

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 carrots, peeled and minced

1/4 cup red wine

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp unsalted butter

extra virgin olive oil

water

salt

pepper

Directions:

In a large skillet (I used a Dutch oven) over medium heat add a few good turns of your olive oil.

Slightly brown your sausages. Add your onions and saute until translucent. Add your garlic and cook through about a minute. Add in roasted red bell pepper and carrots. Cook through until carrots are soft.

Add your tomatoes and all of it’s sauce and crush with a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to low. Add in your wine, butter and sugar and season well with salt and pepper. The longer your sauce has to simmer the better it will be. It will need at least an hour but preferably up to four hours.

When your sauce reduces, add in some water and simmer again. Right before you’re about to serve, remove your sausages and give them a good chop. Return sausages to pan. Taste for seasoning. Add salt if necessary.