In East Baltimore and Baltimore county suburbs, Maryland, USA, “meat sauce” means ground beef on top of the cheese — usually a lot — like you can barely see the cheese under all that meat.
It doesn’t refer to the tomato sauce under the cheese.
I am asking to question to find out whether other places have it, and call it that, or whether it’s a specific regional thing.
If so, what are the boundaries of the region. Do Philadelphia and New Jersey have it? New York? Delaware? New England?
They don’t have it south of Baltimore, so I doubt it’s in Virginia, say.
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Many marinara style sauces have meat in them. You can also get vegetarian ones.
The meat is a ground beef usually and it cooks way down until it can’t really be identified as a specific ingredient in the sauce.
I’m sure it could be found, people are doing all sorts of wacky shit with pizza these days. Haven’t personally seen it.
It’s not that common where I live (at least in pizza). A lot of the pizza sauces where I live are tomato based
This is a strange question. Meatless tomato sauce is really common everywhere. And asking where the meat is makes it look like you’ve never seen a pizza before.
Americans do “meat lovers pizza”, which can be any combination (or all of) ground beef, sausage, pepperoni and ham. It’s technically a topping but it’s kind of a fine point to say it’s not “in the sauce” I’d say. It’s all mixed in and baked there.
No, I dont think so. Some place might make a specialty pizza with that but I’ve never heard of it. Meat is a topping you can put on it, it goes on after the sauce is put on, but it typically won’t be any kind of ground meat, it’ll be sliced up. Like sliced meatball, sliced or crumbled sausage, cubed or sliced ham, sliced pepperoni.
Not typically. Pizza sauce is by default tomatoes, some garlic and onion, perhaps some basil and oregano, a little sugar, a little salt, maybe some red pepper flake.
Any “pizza sauce” with meat would be called something else. We have all sorts of bases for pizzas from pestos to mashed potatoes to bechamel to bbq sauce. But if someone says “pizza sauce”, it’s a basic tomato sauce…no meat.
Never seen it here.
Most pizzas are made with tomato based pizza sauce.
Meats are added as toppings either under or on top of the cheese added to the top of a pizza.
[it looks something like this](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSKKcN5guv6Jqf8POaV8wwX6dwQyKrUK0QOIA&usqp=CAU)
People use all kinds of meats on pizza. Pepperoni, Italian sausage, chicken, ham, prosciutto, bacon, anchovies, etc.
The classics are pepperoni or Italian sausage.
Meat sauce? Like a bolognese? I haven’t seen this as an offering on a pizza. Usually, the sauce is more like a marinara (if not pesto or some type of white sauce), and the meat is served as much larger chunks.
That said, there may be some small restaurants around that offer such a pie.
The only time I’ve seen something like that is when my mom’s church friend made spaghetti and meat sauce. We were expecting tomato sauce with meat in it, but she brought a “sauce” that was mostly ground beef and oil.
“Meat sauce” would only mean a tomato sauce with meat in it for me. Like Bolognese.
The only single meat here that would cover all the cheese would be pepperoni, never ground beef. You can get a “carnivore” pizza which would be varying amounts of pepperoni, ham, sausage, bacon, and/or ground beef that collectively cover the pizza, but never one single type of meat. And yeah that would be a carnivore or meat lovers pizza.
Sounds like just putting a whole bunch of ground beef on top of a pizza. I can’t say that I’ve seen that. I’ve seen ground beef as a topping option, but it doesn’t cover the whole top enough to hide the cheese.
I’m sure you could order it custom out here in San Diego, but it’s not something that’s going to be listed out on the menu.
Kind of. There’s a restaurant that makes pizza-flavored pies with a meat sauce, but not flatbread-style pizzas, and no, not deep-dish either. It’s called [Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Company](https://chicagopizzaandovengrinder.com) and it’s been around for a long time.
I live in the Baltimore area and have never once seen , or even heard, of a pizza place offering “meat sauce” as a topping. Honestly, it sounds like it could be an interesting substitution for regular pizza sauce, though.
As far as the actual meat toppings…I’ve never seen any place refer to that as “meat sauce” either. It’s just ground beef/pork/whatever type of meat and from the way you’re describing it’s a double or triple topping of it.
The closest thing I’ve seen to that is a meatball pizza with little bits of ground beef as a topping. However, that’s usually done in the same quantity as any other topping like pepperoni or sausage–never seen it to the point where it’s covering the whole slice.
So like, pizza with bolognese instead of marinara? Something like that?
I never saw that in Jersey. I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere I live. I’m sure *someone* has done it… but not common.
I live near Philly and have lived in the northern part of the city. All of the pizza sauce I’ve had on typical pizza doesn’t have meat in it.
Meat sauce in Western NY refers to our regional hot sauce.
I’ve never seen a pizza like that but it sounds delicious.
I’ve never heard of that.
When I was in school in NC, pizza was crust with meat sauce on it covered by cheese. I guess they used meat sauce because that is what was sent to them or it was left over from spaghetti the day before.
I’m in NJ and no. We have ground beef on pizza, but not as much as you’re describing.