Lasagna sauce without the lasagna

I defrosted a package of ground beef and a package of four pork sausages, thinking I'd do something separate with each. Faced with coming up with two individual plans for meals, however, my brain just wasn't up to it - instead, it wanted meat sauce. Meaty meat sauce, with beef and sausage and tomatoes, and little else. 

I found the perfect recipe for my meat in Cook's Illustrated's The New Best Recipe. This cookbook is a solid, reliable tome for pretty much everything under the sun; think Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, but with more details, background, and illustrations. Their stand-alone pasta sauce recipes, though, required more work and different types of meat than I wanted to use. What to do? 

So I turned to their lasagna recipe. A good meat lasagna has a rich, meaty sauce that isn't too watery - otherwise, the lasagna becomes a watery lump. What could be wrong with using a sauce for what is essentially a casserole, but without the casserole? 

Turns out, nothing. Nothing at all. Just a delicious plate of pasta sauce with some good, solid pasta. I made a double batch, and the rest will end up in a lasagna next week; the ricotta and mozzarella is already waiting, thanks to a sale at the grocery store. (And yes, I checked the sell-by dates - they'll be more than fine to use to make a lasagna this weekend.)