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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsI am cooking Spaghetti Bolognese today
the sauce is already simmering on the stove. The smell is floating through my condo ....
Raven
(13,900 posts)MissHoneychurch
(33,600 posts)You need for a big pot:
2lbs ground beef
4 carrots
1/2 round celery
1 leek
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
red wine (at least half a bottle)
canned tomatoes
tomatoe puree
salt, pepper, herbs
sugar
Cut the veggies in really small pieces. Heat some oil in a big pot. Put the veggies in, first the onions and garlic, then the rest. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Take it out. Again heat some oil and add the ground beef. Let it get brown and crumbly. Add some tomato puree. Add the veggies again and then the wine and the canned tomatoes. Add salt, pepper and the herbs and also a dash of sugar. Let it simmer for some hours, stirring it every now and then. The longer it is simmering the better.
Cook the spaghettis, grind parmesan cheese
Taste the sauce, add salt and pepper if necessary.
Serve and enjoy
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Recipes for bolognese sauce remind me of a comment by Samuel Johnson, Politics is like mens watches. Each one says something different and each man swears by his own. I have over a dozen different recipes for bolognese. Some say no garlic; another has six cloves. Some say ground meat, some say diced meat. Moreover, which meat? I have recipes with just beef; others with beef, pork and veal; one with pork and veal; one with pork, veal and lamb, another with pork, veal and chicken livers. I have heard of chicken bolognese, I have seen a recipe with venison. Some have 4 ounces of thinly sliced diced pancetta, others no pancetta, two say mortadella, one says pancetta and mortadella. There are recipes with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste; others with a 28 ounce can of tomatoes. Some say red wine, others white, one has no wine. Most have some sort of dairy, some milk, others cream; but there is also a contingent saying beef stock instead of dairy.
The Accademia Italiana della Cucina (Italian Academy of Cuisine) published an official recipe for ragu bolognese:
300 grams beef cartella (thin skirt steak)
150 grams pancetta
50 grams carrot
50 grams celery stalk
50 grams onion
5 tablespoons tomato sauce or 20 grams triple tomato extract
1 cup whole milk
Half cup white or red wine, dry and not fizzy
Salt and pepper, to taste.
Cut the pancetta into little cubes and chop with a mezzaluna knife. Heat it in a saucepan until crisp and most of the fat is rendered, Chop the vegetables well with the mezzaluna; add to the pancetta in the pan and cook until soft. Next, the ground beef is added and stirred constantly until it sputters. The wine and the tomato (cut with a little broth) are added and everything is left to simmer for around two hours, adding the milk little by little and adjusting the salt and black pepper. Optional but advisable is the addition of a liter of whole milk at the end of the cooking.
Ive made this (without the liter of milk) and its good, but Im not sold on it. It makes a small amount of sauce for so much effort, and I do not own a mezzaluna. My experience is that three hours of simmering is better than two. I have found that finely chopped meat tastes better than ground meat, but it takes about two hours to chop three pounds of meat, so I am calling for ground meat in my recipe. I can sometimes get a mixture of ground beef, pork and veal called meatball mixture or meatloaf mixture and this does well in bolognese. Tomatoes will both add to the flavor and give you considerably more sauce. Bolognese is a sauce I have been trying to perfect for years, to the delight of my family.This is my current recipe, subject to change.
2 onions, finely diced
2 celery ribs, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ pound thinly sliced pancetta, diced
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground veal
1 pound ground pork
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat the oil in a large pot. Put in the pancetta and sauté over moderate heat until much of the fat is rendered, about 3 minutes. Add onions, celery, carrots and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Right at the end, add the garlic and cook for 30 more seconds (you should be able to smell the garlic).
Add the beef, veal and pork and cook until no longer pink, but not browned, breaking up the meat. (You can do this in a separate pan while cooking the pancetta and the vegetables. This will be a bit quicker, but you will have an additional pan to wash.)
Deglaze the pot with the white wine. Add the milk, canned tomato (with the juice), salt, pepper and thyme. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered, for three hours. Give it a stir every half hour so it's not sticking to the bottom.
Bolognese sauce is often served over spaghetti, but freshly made tagliatelle similar to fettuccine, but broader is better for this sauce. Bolognese also goes very well in lasagna.
You can freeze bolognese sauce for a couple of months, but you will probably use it before then.
MissHoneychurch
(33,600 posts)I might have to try that. I never made the Bolognese with milk.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,364 posts)Somehow the flavors blend overnight.
Anyway, it sounds good. Is this a special occasion?
MissHoneychurch
(33,600 posts)it is better the next day.
It was no special occasion, just hadn't cooked it in a while
Swede
(33,282 posts)MissHoneychurch
(33,600 posts)not sorry to say
WilmywoodNCparalegal
(2,654 posts)People from Bologna - as I am - who have lived there for generations know that the sauce known in the U.S. as Bolognese, but known in Italy as ragu`, is not tomato-heavy, requires 3-4 hours of slow cooking and used to be made with beef remnants, way back when people would use every leftover meat product since meat was a luxury. My dad's mom and grandmother used livers, entrails and all other sorts of stuff (yuck) in their ragu`, for instance.
Nowadays, real ragu` is made with beef, sometimes adding some ground pork (but I never heard the pancetta bit), after starting a mirepoix of celery, yellow onion and carrots in olive oil. The best utensil is a cast iron skillet with high edges. Once the beef is browned in the mirepoix, you can add bouillon cubes or actual bouillon (to flavor the beef) and red wine (some use beer). Simmer on low heat. When alcohol has evaporated, add three small cans of plain (not seasoned) tomato paste. That's it. There's no garlic, no other herbs or spices. Let simmer over very low heat for 3-4 hours.
Some people use leaner meats like ground turkey or a combo beef/turkey. I use very lean beef (93/7). Ragu` keeps frozen well in plastic containers. It's perfect for tagliatelle (a/k/a fettuccine), strichetti (bowties) and other pasta shapes with ridges or nooks and crannies for the sauce to adhere to. Not sure what the Accademia della Cucina is thinking.
Sources - several generations from father and mother's side from Bologna/Modena/Parma.
MissHoneychurch
(33,600 posts)I am not using pancetta at all. I use ground beef.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)There are many different recipes for ragu bolognese, each one is different. To use another analogy, it's like recipes for chili: Ground meat vs chopped meat, how many and which sort of peppers, which meat (I once had some chili in Texas made with armadillo, and another batch made with venison), wine or beer or some other liquid and the biggie -- beans or no beans. In this fight, I'm on the side of chopped beef, a couple of diced and seeded poblano peppers, red wine and no beans. On the other hand, my wife makes hers with ground beef, red kidney beans, tomato juice and some elbow macaroni added right at the end. She also bends over the pot and says "peppers", making sure not to say it too loudly. It's much the same with ragu bolognese.
Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem, "In the Neolithic Age", in which two neolithic tribesman are arguing about the correct way to write epic poems for the tribe. They go to the tribal shaman, who says,
There are nine and sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right.