Spaghetti Squash with No-Tomato Sauce
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Nightshades give me belly aches and don’t do any favors for my arthritis, either. So this Spaghetti with No-Tomato Sauce has become my go-to substitute for tomato paste, puree, and sauce. Not only does the sauce work well in soups, stir-fries, and curries, but it makes for a fantastic autoimmune protocol-friendly spaghetti. It smells just like real marinara sauce and has a rich, beautiful color thanks to the beets. Since its inception this recipe has become a staple, with portions of sauce stored in the freezer for easy access any time I need it. (It keeps for about three months in my experience.) If you feel the sauce is too thick, add vegetable broth to taste while blending. I like to make it with multicolored carrots for a somewhat darker, more reddish hue, but the flavor will turn out just as well with orange carrots if that’s all you can find. And the color varies every time I make it, so don’t be concerned if yours doesn’t look quite the same.
Need a Break from Cooking?
Whether you’re traveling, moving, or just tired of spending so much time in the kitchen, 28 Days of No-Cook AIP can help. Designed for lazy days and/or a poorly-stocked kitchen, these simple dishes will make sticking to your autoimmune protocol during business trips, holiday travel, and times of illness or stress a lot easier!
Spaghetti with No-Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
Spaghetti
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 4 cups no-tomato sauce below
- 4 cups spinach chopped
- 1 whole spaghetti squash cooked
No-Tomato Sauce
- 16 medium carrot chopped
- 8 cloves garlic chopped
- 4 small onion chopped
- 2 medium beet chopped
- 8 whole bay leaf
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 2 tablespoons dried basil
- 2 tablespoons dried thyme
- 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
- 1 tablespoon dried parsley
- 1 tablespoons dried oregano
- 1 tablespoon sea salt or to taste
Equipment
Instructions
Spaghetti
- Brown the meat with oregano, parsley, basil, ginger, and salt in a large skillet over medium heat.
- Add the no-tomato sauce and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
- Stir in the spinach and cook until its reduced, then serve over the spaghetti squash.
No-Tomato Sauce
- Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker and cook on low for 7 hours.
- Remove the bay leaves. Puree in a blender until smooth, then season to taste.
I just purchased your e-book and it is very nice. I do have a question. I clicked on several of the recipes that bring me to your website and the page has the name of the recipe with a description but, how do I get the recipe?
Thanks for your attention to this problem.
Regards,
Peggy Nelson
While updating my website today, several recipes have vanished from their posts. I believe they will reappear when the updates have finished, but do not know at this time when that will be. Please bear with me, sorry for the inconvenience!
When you make the Nomato sauce, do you remove the bay leaves before you purée it?
Yes.
Thanks. I made the Nomato sauce and loved it! It had so much flavor, that I turned it into a meat sauce by just adding cooked ground beef and simmering for a while. I had it one night with Korean sweet potato noodles and another night with spaghetti squash. Yummy and very filling both ways. I have plenty of the meatless Nomato sauce left in my freezer and am looking forward to trying it in your Chicken with Molé recipe. Thanks again for a great recipe. I am in my third week of AIP, and it makes it so much easier to stick with it when I can enjoy great food like this 🙂
Awesome!!! I’m so glad you liked it! 😀
Hello! I just bought your book. So far so good. One of the foods i’m pretty sure I can’t have is garlic,although I am willing to give it a go again as it may have been something I ate with the garlic??? anywho…. Any good sub ideas to replace garlic with in the meantime?
Cheers
Christina
If it’s a FODMAP issue, the green parts of garlic, leeks, or onions should be fine.
I am trying this recipe now. Very excited about it, but shouldn’t I put some broth or other liquid in the crock pot with the Nomato Sauce?
I like a thick, chunky sauce, so I just let all the veggies steam until tender and then puree them into a thick sauce. If you like something thinner, you can add as much liquid as you like.
I just had this for dinner, and it was delicious! My non AIP hubby liked it too. About the Nomato sauce recipe: it did not work at all to cook on low for 1 hour in a crock pot. After an hour, nothing was even close to tender, so I turned it up to high for an hour. Still not close. So I transferred it to a stock pot, and simmered it for another hour, and that did the trick. I also needed to add about 2 cups of broth, so the veggies had something to cook in. Still, a great recipe, and I will make it again!
I’m glad you liked it!
I am so glad to read your post. I put the veggies in the slow cooker turned it to high and two hours later they were still nowhere near “fork tender”. I added some broth and cranked it up to high again. It smells wonderful.
Looking forward to the next step :). Thanks!
It says seven hours, not one hour.
Do you think it would work faster in a Hot Pot/pressure cooker
Pressure cooking will always be the fastest cooking method, though I haven’t tried it with this recipe so I can’t say how long to cook it for.
I absolutely loved this! It made me feel good and full. I ended up doubling the meat to balance the sauce and spaghetti squash.
I’m so glad you liked it! This is one of my all-time favorite meals!
So so yummy! After having gone through all of you ebook “28 Days of AIP, ” I would add one note for everybody: after making this big batch, freeze 1/4 cup for Week 2, freeze 1 tbsp for Week 3, freeze 1 cup for Week 4. Enjoy the rest – nom nom nom! 🙂
Great note! So glad you liked it!
Will this work in a pressure cooker, and if so, what would be the suggested time? I don’t own a crock pot and love the instant gratification of the pressure cooker! Thanks so much.
I’m sure it would, but I don’t have a pressure cooker so I don’t know what the instructions would be.
How much does the Nomato Sauce make (cups)? I don’t know how to can, but could you make a larger batch and can it or maybe freeze for future use? So it would be like grabbing a jar or AIP Prego? 🙂 🙂 newbie to AIP
Yes, you can can or freeze leftover nomato sauce. I usually get 6-8 cups out of a batch.
This recipe is great!! Thank you for posting it! I was struggling with sticking to the diet today and this hit the spot. It was really yummy and my husband loved it too!
Awesome! I’m so glad you guys enjoyed it, it’s one of my all-time favorites!
I would love to be able to read this recipe, but the print is so light I’m unable.
I made the nomato sauce, and it was orange, not red. I used one can of canned beets. I drained them, could that be the problem?
I use fresh beets, so draining canned ones is appropriate. To get a nice red color, I use a mix of purple and orange carrots, so if you just used orange ones, your sauce will look different from mine.
I know it’s a year later, but I’ve made nomato sauce with both canned and fresh beets and was amazed that even when I added all of the red liquid from the canned beets they completely washed out during cooking and I ended up with a very orangey colored sauce. The precooked “Love Beets” in the produce department act like fresh beets however, and give a lovely red hue. Sharing in case anybody else is tempted to use canned beets 🙂
This was good. I had to add a big squeeze of lime to the sauce though to get that tomato-like acidity. I used sausage instead of hamburger and lentil pasta since we’re not on AIP, just trying to switch up my kids’ eating habits. Thankfully, they didn’t notice anything strange and ate up their lunch. 😉
Awesome! I’m glad it went over well with the little ones!
THANK YOU SO MUCH for this recipe!! I have a 7 yr old who we’re trying to feed AIP to help her with health issues including helping her to gain weight. She ate it all!!! I was surprised liked it myself as I hate beets! This recipe is definitely a keeper!
That’s awesome!!! I’m so glad you both enjoyed it!
Have you ever frozen the sauce?
I never have leftovers that long, but I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t freeze well!
Any feel for how much 16 carrots is? They vary so much in size… 2#?
I always buy in bulk, picking out 16 medium-sized ones. I haven’t actually measured how many pounds that is, but I imagine it’s more than two. The recipe is very forgiving if you mix and match different sized carrots and wind up with a slightly different amount.
What about the beets? Any estimate on pounds?
I just use two mid-sized ones, or one large one and a small one. The nice thing about recipes like this is that the portions don’t have to be exact; the recipe will still come out if you use slightly more or less beets.
Is there anything I could substitute the beets for? This recipe looks amazing!
You can use more carrots instead, though your sauce will be more orange than red.
I made this sauce last week and it was awesome! I used some with ground beef. It was also a great dipping sauce for sauteed plantains! And I LOVED being able to throw the ingredients in the crock pot and then just use my immersion blender. I’m 1 week back into AIP and your ebook has been invaluable! THANK YOU!
I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed the recipe and the ebook, Mel! Best of luck on the AIP!
This is awesome in the Instant Pot! I like to use the saute’ function to carmelize the onions a bit first, and then deglaze the bottom of the pot with a bit of the broth before putting in all remaining ingredients. However, that is totally optional; you could simply put everything into the IP at once (like the original instructions say to do with the slow cooker). Push Manual-High for 20 minutes. Let it depressurize naturally. Blend with the stick blender and adjust seasonings to taste. So yummy, with the bonus of less dishes to wash, less electricity used, and less heat in the kitchen. Woot!
That’s a great idea, Ali! Thanks for sharing the pressure-cooking instructions and I’m glad you enjoyed the recipe!
Yummy!!!
This was delicious even my husband thought so. The prep was rather time-consuming though offset by the amount that can be frozen for another meal (11 cups total). I did add an extra cup of chicken broth (to the no tomato sauce) and 1-1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar) to the spaghetti to mimic the acidic taste of tomatoes otherwise it was just too sweet with the carrots and beets. I made this in an Instant Pot set to 15 minutes and natural release, other than that I followed the directions.