Bolognese sauce is one of the most loved pasta sauces in my family. Cook it with love for a couple of hours for a mouth watering sauce that will warm you up from the inside. You can cook it ahead and refrigerate up to 3 days. I double the quantity below to freeze for a quick weeknight dinner.
One of the first references to this sauce comes from a cookbook published at the end of the 19th century titled “La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene” (The Science of Cooking and Art of Eating Well). Tracing its origins to Bologna, this traditional ragu recipe has reincarnated with many variations, and below is my tried and tested version.
The foundation of making any stew, soup, risotto, or ragu is soffritto. Based on the Italian verb soffriggere, which means “to stir fry” or “saute”, soffrito is essentially a base that consists of minced vegetables, which are sautéed in olive oil or butter and are mixed as a base to other star ingredients (meats, other legumes, etc). The most common trinity is onion, carrots and celery.
Once I chop up my onion, carrots and celery, I blend them in a food processor; I want all the flavor, but I don’t want to see chunks of the vegetables in my sauce. Sometimes a pancetta may be added to to the soffrito. Another great alliterative is to replace celery with fennel bulb.
The variations of the sauce are based on the combination of the following:
- Choice of meat: beef, pork or veal or any combination of them. Veal is more tender than beef and as the result the flavour will be much more delicate. Just like my ultimate meatballs, I like to mix the 3 of them together.
- Choice of proportion and type of tomatoes used: The original version of the sauce calls only for small amount of tomato paste to be used, but in my version I use diced tomatoes, which makes the sauce more tomatoey.
- Choice of cooking liquid: wine, milk or broth. If cooking with veal, white wine with no tomato sauce is a great option.
- Choice of verbs and spices added during cooking: My family loves fennel and coriander, but you can mix in nutmeg, and bay leaf as well.
Garlic or no garlic? Is this even a question? There is a lot of debate if you should cook with onion AND garlic, OR you must make a choice. Personally, I love to add 4-5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped along with my herbs and right before adding tomato paste.
Once you find your perfect ratio, the key is to simmer the sauce for minimum 1 hour, and up to 3 hours. The longer it is cooked, it allows for more water to evaporate and to intensity and concentrate the flavor. If you cook it for 3 hours, add a bit (you will need to add a bit more pasta water when mixing it to create the most creamy version).
Bolognese Sauce Ragù
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 yellow onion
- 2 medium carrots
- 2 celery stalks
- 4-5 clove garlic
- 1/2 tsp fennel seed
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ground coriander
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tbsp tomato paste Muti brand
- 28 oz diced tomatoes Muti brand
- 1 cup red wine
- 2 cup beef broth
- 1 lb ground meat mixture beef, veal and pork
- salt & pepper
- spaghetti or your other favorite pasta
- parmesan cheese optional
Instructions
- Prepare your soffrito by pulsing onion, celery and carrots in a food processor. If you don’t have a food processor, no worries, just use your kitchen grader and use the smallest setting you have.
- Heat 1/4 cup of oil in a large Dutch oven or pot over medium heat. Beak meat into small clumps and add to the pot. You can season with salt, however, since we are going to cook with beef stock, I prefer not to. You don’t need to break meat apart; you want the meet to be browned, but not crisp. If it is still a bit pink in the middle no worries, we will cook it again. Once done transfer to a bowl.
- Add soffrito to the pot and cook stirring occasionally for 8 minutes, until the vegetables are translucent.
- Add garlic and your spices and mix with the vegetable mix for about 5 minutes.
- Add tomato paste, and mix stir until tomato paste is darkened, about 5 minutes. This will get rid of the raw taste of tomatoes.
- Return feed to the pot, and pour in wine. Cook until wine is evaporated about 10 minutes.
- Add stock and diced tomatoes.
- Reduce heat to the lowest setting and cook uncovered, until meat is very tender. If the liquid evaporates before the meat is tender, add more beef stock.
- Cook pasta in a large pot of water that is salted. Follow directions for al dente on the box. Before draining the pasta, reserve 2 cups of pasta water. Drain the pasta, and add sauce to the cooked pasta. Now it is time to add pasta water, 1 cup at a time to achieve ultimate smoothness.
- Transfer pasta to a plate and top with Parmesan cheese.
