Ragù di carne (or better known as bolognese sauce)
When we started talking about creating this blog, our first thought was to open with the recipe for my beloved pasta al ragù, known worldwide as bolognese sauce. Then life happened, and famously when I prepare ragù, I batch-cook it for at least 15 people, so it’s been a while.
Fear not, I’ll give y’all a lesson on why it’s wrong to call this specific recipe a bolognese sauce (not that anyone would expect anything less from me), but for the sake of clarity, I’ll refer to it as such throughout the post. Let just clarify though that ragù refers to any sort of heavy meat-based sauce, so nothing wrong with using the name. However, to be a ragù alla bolognese, boxes have to be ticked.
As for most things Italian, everyone has a different recipe for the perfect ragù sauce. And since this is not a ragù alla bolognese as per the traditional recipe, I’ll give you my own version that I kindly half-stole from my mom.
We served this with homemade tagliatelle (I mean, how good are we?), but we made it plenty of times to dress a lovely Sunday lasagna, so the choice is yours!
Ragù di carne (bettern known as bolognese sauce)
Equipment
- Big Pot/Dutch Oven
- Kitchen Robot (optional)
Ingredients
- 1/2 yellow onion (or 1 small onion)
- 1 carrot
- 1 stack celery
- 1 clove garlic
- 500 gr beef mince (approx 1 pound)
- 250 gr pork mince (approx 1/2 pound)
- 2 italian sausages
- 100 ml dry white wine
- 600 gr chopped tomatoes or passata (21oz)
- 2 bay leaves
- 50 ml milk
- Salt (to taste)
- Black pepper (to taste)
So what’s the real bolognese sauce?
The real ragù is the one from Bologna, in Emilia Romagna. You can thank them for this treat, as well as lasagne and tortellini. A recipe from the Bologna’s Convention & Visitors Bureau is available in English if you’re curious and want to try out the real deal.
Other variants can be: Neapolitan ragù, using beef shoulder, pork ribs, sausages and lard, which is anything but a light meal; wild boar ragù, which is one of my absolute favourites; even white ragù, using bechamel sauce instead of tomato passata… Choices are pretty much endless. We already have a list of other ragù we’re going to try that include venison, duck, and who knows, perhaps we’ll even try a low-fat version with ground turkey.
Bolognese sauce: a recipe that feels like home
When we made spaghetti and meatballs, we briefly touched on the appeal that comfort food has, especially when you’ve left your home country. Kenji Lopez says something similar when talking of his take of Naepolitan ragù, calling it the precursor of the Italian-American Sunday gravy. If that is true, I have no clue. What I can say is that you never add fish sauce to any ragù, not even if you’re Kenji Lopez (and we do love Kenji a lot).
Back to the story, I never made a bolognese sauce before moving to the UK, mostly because I never needed to. My mom always made it and that was good enough for me. But then, I moved to the UK and found myself missing Italian food a lot. I missed Sunday lunches, I missed my mom’s lasagna (still do), I missed saltimbocca alla romana, I missed supplì and pizza al taglio. So I did what most Italian expats do: I called my mom and asked for the recipe.
My first bolognese sauce was nice, but a good chunk got stuck to the pot. Always keep a very low flame my friends, that’s what I learned straight away. On top of that, it took me a bit of trial and error to figure out what I wanted to achieve: milk, no milk? how many cans of chopped tomatoes? red or white wine? how many hours is the minimum? and things like that. However, despite the mistakes and the imperfections, it always had the taste of Sunday lunch in Rome with the whole family reunited and that was enough for me.
After having made my first ragù, I asked my mom for a bunch of other recipes, from her recipe for meatballs and meatloaf to Tuscan crostini, and I’m sure I’ll definitely ask for more.