Good pasta and sauce is not hard.
I'll share with you my method. I do somethings that some people here will say don't have an effect on the final product and that they will say doesn't make good pasta. I'm just going to say that I make my pasta the way my 100% Tuscan grandmother used to make it in her final years when she didn't want to make sauce from scratch anymore.
Pasta:
A: Buy fresh pasta. Look for this:
B: Cook it according to the package. I put salt, pepper and a tablespoon of olive oil in the water. You may not. I don't care. No you do not have to "finish it in the sauce" to make it taste good.
Just don't OVER cook it.
Sauce:
My grandmother used Prego in the jars. It's a good base. It needs to be doctored up some though.
As HTownAg98 said, start with some butter and diced onion. As Tailgate88 said, add mushrooms if you like. Saute. When translucent, add meat. Cook your meat 95% of the way through. Might still be small bits of red or pink still showing, that's ok. It'll finish cooking.
I do this in a pot but you can also do it in a deep saute pan.
Pour in your sauce. Save the jars! See below... One jar is enough for me and my fiance, but if you have a family, you may want two. Just gonna leave that up to you.
Ok, things to add to the sauce at this point:
1.) Large spoon full of jarred pesto sauce. I buy Kirkland brand from Costco. Jarred Pesto sauce is the best kept secret of short cutting Italian cooking. It's basil, garlic, olive oil and pine nuts (traditionally). Smear it on toast, you got garlic bread. Thin with more olive oil and drizzle over tomatoes and mozzarella with some balsamic vinegar, you got caprese. It's just a great multitasker to keep in the kitchen.
2.) Small can Rotel Chile's and Tomatoes. I like the spice from the chiles and most of the jarred sauces don't have enough tomato chunks for me so I add this. Grandma did too.
3.) 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Some people add several teaspoons of sugar to offset the acidity of the tomatoes, I prefer the tiniest bit of cinnamon. I find it really develops and plays well with the flavors and cuts the acidity nicely. Trust me on this.
4.) Take the jars that the sauce came in and put about two inches of water in each. Close the lid, shake. Get all the remaining sauce in liquid form and pour that into the sauce. A, this stops from being wasteful, but B, this gets water into the sauce. That's important.
Ok your sauce is ready to cook. Put the burner on a setting where you'll just get the pot simmering. Simmer and simmer and simmer and simmer. An hour. Two hours. Maybe even three. You're gonna cook out the water you added, so your volume will decrease a little and in the process A, you'll finish cooking your meat, B, you'll heat and cook all the other ingredients properly (if you're adding raw veggies at this stage like bell pepper, the tomatoes in the Rotel, etc,) and C, it will cook reduce the sauce slightly and darken the color a bit.
Serve over your pasta when the sauce is at a consistency you like.
But here's another suggestion... Take cooked fresh pasta and put it in a bowl or plate. Grate fresh cheese over it before putting sauce on it. I like Asiago, some folks like Romano or Parm... Whatever. Doesn't matter. Grate on pasta before saucing. Toss. Then sauce and cheese it again. The cheese sticks to the starches on the outside of the pasta and keeps the pasta from sticking to itself. Then the sauce sticks to the cheese.
Again, I'm sure some folks won't like what I'm suggesting, but it freaking works for me.
