Having it covered in meat sauce is something serious! (7)
I believe the answer is:
gravity
'is something serious' is the definition.
(as in the gravity of the situation)
'having it covered in' is the wordplay.
'having' becomes 'gravy' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'covered in' is an insertion indicator.
'gravy' going around 'it' is 'GRAVITY'.
'meat sauce' acts as a link.
This may not be correct. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for gravity that I've seen before include "weight" , "The force of attraction between masses in the universe" , "It causes objects to fall to the ground when dropped" , "cause producing mass movement" , "Pulling power" .)