Classic Bolognese Sauce (Ragù alla Bolognese) Recipe

Step-by-step recipe

1. It is important that the Bolognese comes out aromatic, thick, and mixes well with the pasta and clings to it. Italians recommend making the sauce with several kinds of meat: beef, pork, pancetta (Italian bacon). But as a rule they stick to beef browned in the fat rendered from pancetta. To my taste beef suits the sauce better than young veal. The sauce then turns out denser and richer.
   
2. Milk in the sauce makes it a little more pleasant to the taste and less sour. The tang always comes from the wine and tomatoes. It is important not to add milk and wine at the same time. And perhaps the hardest part is that Bolognese takes a very long time to cook. At least 2 hours. But longer is better, as the sauce becomes uniform and “glossy” and combines wonderfully with the pasta.
3. Making this sauce is a long and painstaking process, so it pays to prepare first. First of all, buy the ingredients. I think all of them are easy to find. The only problem might be celery stalks. Out of season they are simply not on sale. Sometimes, in that case, you can, with a big stretch, replace the celery stalks with 2 tbsp of finely chopped parsley and a little finely grated celery root.
   
4. Peel the vegetables. Chop the onion very finely with a knife. Grate the carrot on a fine grater. Pass the beef through a meat grinder twice to make mince. Scald the tomatoes, peel them and remove the seeds. Chop very finely. Fresh tomatoes can be replaced with canned chopped tomatoes.
5. Cut the bacon, or a piece of pork belly or pancetta, into small cubes. In a deep frying pan, fry the diced pork until the fat renders out. The cracklings can be eaten with bread or left in, in which case the sauce will have pieces of fried pork. If for some reason pork fat is not acceptable, heat a mixture of butter and olive oil, 2 tbsp of each.
   
6. Once the fat is ready, fry the chopped onion in it until soft. Do not overcook the onion, or the sauce will have a noticeable aftertaste. It is enough for the onion to turn slightly golden with no sign of browning.
   
7. Add the grated carrot and chopped celery stalks to the fried onion. Fry the vegetables for 5-6 mins, stirring constantly.
   
8. Add the ground beef to the fried vegetables and mix thoroughly, breaking up the lumps of meat so that the mixture of vegetables and beef becomes uniform. Keep frying, stirring constantly, for another 7-8 mins.
   
9. Add the finely chopped garlic. Season the sauce with a pinch of salt, ground black pepper and grated nutmeg. Sometimes, to improve the flavor of the sauce, I add 0.5 tsp of sugar, which makes it sweet-and-sour, only very slightly sweet.
   
10. Next add a mixture of dry white and red wine.
    
11. Keep stewing for another 15 mins over low heat, covered, and only then add the chopped parsley.
    
12. Add the chopped tomatoes and about a cup of broth or water. Stir and keep stewing over the lowest heat you can manage. The sauce should literally simmer. It is very important to stir from time to time so that it does not burn or stick to the pan.
    
13. The longer the sauce stews, the better. If the liquid cooks away, you can top up with meat broth (or water) in small amounts. Throughout the cooking the sauce should barely bubble.
14. Half an hour before the end of cooking, pour the milk into the sauce. If you like, you can add 2-3 pinches of dried herbs (oregano, basil, mint, savory). Stir, cover and stew over low heat until the sauce is completely done.
    
15. When the meat sauce is nearly ready, cook the pasta. The pasta is a wide noodle, tagliatelle or pappardelle. But the narrower fettuccine will do just fine. Cook the pasta in a large amount of rapidly boiling water, salted at 5-7 g of salt per liter of water. When the pasta is cooked to “al dente”, drain it in a colander and wait for the water to run off.
    
16. In a large bowl mix the pasta with half of the sauce. Toss thoroughly and put on plates. Spoon the rest of the sauce on top of the pasta. Be sure to sprinkle with 1 tsp of finely grated Parmesan.
17. Bolognese is perhaps the ideal tomato-based meat sauce for pasta. Despite the somewhat involved and lengthy cooking process, the sauce keeps in the fridge and can be reheated as needed. Though, of course, freshly made sauce is much tastier.