How to Make Sunday Sauce With Meatballs Like a Pro

So anyway, I’ve grown up eating lots of Italian food. My grandfather was a butcher for most of his life, and for my family, it has always been about the food.

Living in New Jersey, there is no shortage of really good authentic Italian food.

There are thousands and thousands of really good restaurants in New Jersey and the surrounding states.

But the best Italian food is homemade from the heart.

Every Sunday, my mother and grandmother made Italian gravy, also known as Sunday sauce.

Growing up, we called it gravy.

But as an adult, I started calling it Sunday sauce so I use them both interchangeably.

What do you call it?

What is Sunday Sauce or Italian Gravy?

Whether you call it Italian gravy or Sunday sauce, it brings up lots of memories of Sunday family gatherings where either my mother or grandmother stirred a huge pot of tomato sauce and meat all day long.

Sunday sauce is tomato sauce that has been stewing meatballs, sausages and any other kind of meat you can throw in there.

For me, I typically make it with meatballs and sweet Italian sausage.

Some cook the meat right in the sauce.

But I prefer to pre-cook the meat so it’s browned.

I start my Sunday sauce in the morning and let it sit on the stove top all day long so the flavors can marinate.

And my family loves it.

How to Make Sunday Sauce

I typically make a big pot of Sunday sauce on, well…Sundays. But also love to make it when we are up at the Vermont cabin skiing or before a good snowstorm.

It’s a great dish to make because it feeds many and you have lots of versatility with serving options.

Sometimes I’ll keep it simple and we’ll make sandwiches.

Others times I’ll serve it over some sort of pasta.

We love to make pizzas out of the leftovers.

The possibilities are almost endless.

How to Make Meatballs in Italian Gravy

My family loves how I make meatballs and I almost never make them the same.

That’s partially because I generally don’t work with measured ingredients and eyeball it instead. So the recipe ingredients below are a rough estimate based on how we like it.

If I’m feeling lazy about it, I’ll swap out real onions and garlic for the prepared spices so there is some flexibility when making these. They just won’t taste the same.

To me, meatballs in Italian gravy taste better when they have more seasonings in the mix.

This recipe makes about 20-25 meatballs depending on how big you make them.

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