Prison Dinner Pasta Sauce
A slow-cooked tomato and meat sauce, built the way Paulie does it in prison in Goodfellas, famous for its razor-thin sliced garlic.
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 2 h 30 min
- total
- 3 h
- serves
- 8
- level
- medium
In Goodfellas (1990), Paulie prepares this exact sauce in his prison cell, famously slicing garlic paper thin with a razor blade so it practically dissolves into the sauce as it cooks, a small, specific detail that has made the scene one of the film's most quoted moments about Italian-American cooking.
This style of long-simmered, multi-meat sauce is often called "Sunday gravy" in Italian-American households, and the prison version is really just a knowing nod to how much care that tradition gets, wherever it happens to be made.
Part of our 40 famous movie foods list.
method
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over low heat, and add the paper-thin sliced garlic. Cook very gently for 3 to 4 minutes, until fragrant but not browned; thin slices burn fast, so watch it closely.
Add the onion, and cook for 5 minutes.
Push the garlic and onion aside, and brown the sausage and pork pieces in the same pot, in batches if needed, until well colored.
Add the crushed tomatoes and tomato paste, and stir everything together.
Bring to a gentle simmer, then lower the heat and cook, uncovered or partially covered, for 2 to 2.5 hours, stirring occasionally, until the meat is falling-apart tender and the sauce has thickened and deepened.
Remove the meat, shred or chop it, and return it to the sauce.
Stir in the oregano and basil, and season with salt and pepper.
Serve over your pasta of choice.
chef's tips
- Slicing the garlic paper thin with a razor blade is a specific, much-discussed detail from Goodfellas (1990), where Paulie prepares this exact sauce in his prison cell using a razor to get the garlic thin enough that it "liquefies" into the sauce as it cooks.
- Cook the thin garlic slices gently over low heat; because they're so thin, they go from fragrant to burnt far faster than a regular chopped clove would.
- This kind of long-simmered sauce with multiple meats is often called "Sunday gravy" in Italian-American households, and the prison version in the film is a knowing nod to how seriously that tradition is taken, even behind bars.
- Letting the meat cook low and slow until it falls apart, then shredding it back into the sauce, is what gives this its rich, deeply savory character.