Paleo & Whole30 Marinara Sauce with Sausage and Zoodles
Homemade paleo & Whole30 marinara sauce, made from canned tomatoes with Italian sausage. Served over zucchini noodles. A healthy and delicious dinner recipe! Paleo, whole30, gluten free, grain free, dairy free, sugar free, clean eating.
I can’t believe I’ve been buying store bought marinara sauce a majority of my life, when homemade is such a cinch to make and tastes even better! Plus, I noticed my previous go to jarred sauce has sugar as an ingredient.
Now homemade Whole30 and paleo marinara sauce is the only way to go for me!
Another perk of making my own marinara sauce is I can tweak it to be exactly our taste. I like my marinara sauce to be simple with just tomatoes, onions, garlic, salt and pepper. So my sauce isn’t too chunky, I puree the onions and garlic until they’re almost a liquid. As the onions are cooking, they almost completely dissolve and give the marinara sauce tons of flavor.
I use canned tomatoes. It is important to get high quality tomatoes. My favorite are Trader Joe’s diced tomatoes in tomato juice. They’re tomatoes are always sweet and ripe and full of flavor. If I can’t get my hands on those, I use San Marzano tomatoes.
To add more protein and flavor, I like to add in Italian sausage to my marinara sauce. I prefer sweet Italian sausage, but feel free to use spicy if you prefer it. I cut the casings and pinch of little sausage “meatballs”. I brown them in the skillet before adding in the onions and garlic.
I love serving my whole30 and paleo marinara sauce over zucchini noodles made in my spiralizer. I like serving it on raw zucchini noodles. The warm marinara sauce is enough to cook the raw noodles and make them a tad more tender. Whenever I sautee zucchini noodles they get too soft and lose their al dente bite.
Since the zucchini noodles release a bit of moisture, I keep my marinara sauce on the thicker side. Then, when I toss it with the zucchini noodles the bit of moisture they release gets the sauce to the perfect consistency.
Top it with some fresh chopped basil and you have the most delicious and healthy whole30 and paleo marinara sauce with sausage and zoodles! The simple and real ingredients make this dinner whole30, paleo, gluten free, grain free, dairy free, sugar free, and clean eating.
Paleo & Whole30 Marinara Sauce with Sausage and Zoodles
Ingredients
- 1 pound sweet italian sausage links
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 large onion, peeled and cut into large chunks
- 5 cloves of garlic, peeled
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes (Trader Joe's makes my favorite!)
- 4 medium zucchinis, spiralized into noodles
- Chopped fresh basil to garnish
Instructions
- Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
- Cut the casings on the sausage links, and remove the meat. Pinch of 2 teaspoon sausage hunks, and add to the pan to cook. Cook for 5 minutes until the bottoms are golden brown, then stir to brown all sides.
- Add the onion chunks and garlic to your food processor with the S-blade. Process for 1 minute until the onions are very finely chopped and almost look like a liquid.
- Add the chopped onions and garlic to the sausage, season with salt, and cook for 3 minutes.
- Add the diced tomatoes to the same food processor, and process for 1 minute until the tomatoes are finely chopped.
- Add the tomatoes to the pan, and stir to combine.
- Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. The marinara sauce will be thick.
- Serve each spiralized zucchini raw in a pasta bowl, and top with the warm marinara and sausage sauce, and top with fresh basil. As you toss to coat the raw zucchini noodles, they will release a bit of moisture which will thin out the thick marinara sauce perfectly. The warm marinara sauce will warm the raw zucchini noodles.
More Paleo Dinners:
Paleo and Whole30 Chicken Zoodle Soup
Paleo and Whole30 Grilled Lemon Herb Chicken Drumsticks
Paleo and Whole30 Grilled BBQ Chicken BLT Salad
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