Ragù alla Bolognese

I can recall nowhere  in Italy, from the Veneto to Sicily, from Lazio  to Puglia, where they serve what the English call "Spaghetti Bolognese".  And by English  spag bol, I mean a sauce made from copious amounts of tomatoes boiled with beef mince and a selection of herbs.
The concoction in most recipe books contains just too many tomatoes.
The best recipe for ragù alla bolognese ,  I nicked from the Sunday Times "Taste of Italy" supplement some years ago. The aroma of the complete sauce is wafting up the stairs as I write this. I've doubled up the ingredients. The sauce freezes well and can be used to fill cannelloni or the base sauce for a lasagne al forno

Ragù alla bolognese
100g butter
4 tbsp. olive oil
2 medium onions
2 medium carrots
2 sticks of celery
150g pancetta
400g minced pork or beef
400g minced veal
400ml dry red wine
salt and pepper
8 tbsp tomato purée
small amounts of water/meat stock and cream.
The original Sunday Times recipe suggests the carrot, onion, celery and pancetta are " finely chopped". Chopping any  vegetable "finely" is a skilled operation. It's must easier and the results are superior if you blitz all these ingredients in a Magimix. It is easier to use the mini mixer for the pancetta.

Heat the butter and oil in a deep pan and add the vegetables and fry them until they soften and are slightly brown. Because the vegetables are finely chopped this will take only a couple of minutes.
Add the pancetta and meat and fry until the meat changes colour. Add the wine and simmer until it evaporates fully. Add the seasoning, tomato purée and a little water/stock.
Cook slowly- and that's  the trick-stirring occasionally adding more water/stock if necessary. Set the timer for 90 minutes.
And don't spoil this by using spaghetti! The sauce clings to tagliatelle much better. Add a small amount of cream and mix well, before adding to the pasta

Comments

[Dan Goodman]

Cooking slowly does seem to be the key to it. I have two recipes which call for cooking it for 3h and 6h. I tried the shorter of the two (from Marcella Hazan) but also nicked some of the ideas from the longer (from Heston Blumenthal) and to be honest I wasn't that excited about it. It seemed to me that it led to a wonderful texture, what Blumenthal calls the "mouth feel", but the taste was a little lacking.

Possibly I didn't get it quite right though. I didn't use veal because I couldn't find any, that might have been part of the problem.

To be honest though, it's not really a meat sauce that I'm that interested in. At this time of year, if I was going to go to this sort of effort I'd make the classic (Tuscan?) hare sauce which is out of this world.

[Tony Hatfield]

Dan,
I've tried combinations 50/50 pork/beef and 50/50 veal/beef as well as 100% minced beef, and way out in front is the 50/50 veal/beef mince mix.
By the way Waitrose sells the 400g of minced veal for just under three quid!
t

[Dan Goodman]

Aha! Now that I'm actually living near a Waitrose rather than a Sainbury's I might just give that a go. Thanks for the tip!

[Jane Harvey]

The recipe I usually use is from Robert Carrier one from about 50 years ago, but we've just tried your recipe and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I used all beef, as veal is not available (and the nearest Waitrose being about 1,000 miles away makes that a little impractical). When I do it again I shall add a little garlic, which I felt it lacked.

I quite agree that too many English recipes treat this as an English sauce, and I find they also treat it as a sloppy sauce and serve far too much sauce in proportion with the pasta.

I haven't tried the Marcella Hazan recipe, but it does look interesting, so that's scheduled for a try in the New Year.

[Jane Harvey]

Sorry, for "too many English recipes treat this as an English sauce" read "too many English recipes treat this as an tomato sauce".

[Tony Hatfield]

Jane,
I must admit I'm surprised that wonderful market in Barcelona- Mercat de la Boqueria- could not supply you with the veal!
t

[folliculitis]

Hygiene, taste, ease of assimilation are some of the advantages of oven and pan, which yield lighter foods.