Spaghetti Bolognese

JæKæ

Minesajackdaniels wrote: »

Never let it boil, but leave it to sit on a low heat, throwing up the occasional blurping bubble, for an hour or two. Better again, then leave it overnight for the flavours to develop and reheat it the next day, over a low heat, for another hour.

Yep-the secret is slow cooking for hours. It makes all the difference. I add the mushrooms for the last 10 minutes, so they don't shrink to nothing.

RE*AC*TOR

worcester sauce

Minder

Diced onion, garlic, finely diced carrot and celery. Beef Mince and veal mince. Very finely chopped chicken liver. Tomatoes and wine, seasoning, a touch of oregano and some water - let it cook for a couple of hours at least. Very meaty flavour - delicious.

Ponster

Minder wrote: »

Diced onion, garlic, finely diced carrot and celery. Beef Mince and veal mince. Very finely chopped chicken liver. Tomatoes and wine, seasoning, a touch of oregano and some water - let it cook for a couple of hours at least. Very meaty flavour - delicious.

But is it still Spaghetti Bolognese or just a meaty Italian sauce?

Minder

Ponster wrote: »

But is it still Spaghetti Bolognese or just a meaty Italian sauce?

It is a Bolognese recipe from the Dean & DeLuca deli in NY

Ponster

Ok. I guess that Spaghetti Bolognese is whatever you makes you happy

Thanks for the replies folks. I'll try some of them the next time I go cooking.

FYI, I'm off to Italy next weekend and will try myself some of the wonderful Bolognese sauce which surprises some people when they discover that not only are there no tomatoes in it but there's no spaghetti either

Dizzyblonde

I throw it into the crock pot and leave it there all day.

Tree

a spoon of pesto and a generous blobbing of sweet chilli sauce, mmmmmmmmmmmm

BaZmO*

Check out Delia's recipe for a traditional Ragu (it's on her website). It's not exactly a Bolognese but it is gorgeous.

antoniosicily

start with extra-virgin olive oil, chop an onion and put it into the pot; when the color is like gold add minced meat (I usually add a little bit of salt at this time) and let it cook for 5-10 minutes, then add tomato, you can use tomato sauce (which is good) or peeled tomato, 3.5kg of tomato for 500gr of minced meat is a good balance. Peel a carrot and add it into the pot, I prefer not to chop eat, the carrot will ease the acid of tomato, which is the less edible thing I found here :-)

At this point wait for the tomato sauce to boil and then set the fire to 3 or 4 (in a scale of 1-12) and wait 3 hours; sometimes you'll have to rinse the sauce because it tends to stick to the inner surface of the pot.

At the end add sugar and salt, if you add them before you will end up with an overspiced sauce.

Suitable for home freezing.

--
Notes: bolognese == ragu', we have just ragu' in Italy; I don't know why there is a French name for this sauce, I don't think that Bologna is in France, unless something changed while I was in Ireland

Notes2: usually every family has its own recipe for a proper sauce, I tried to find a general recipe, but it could vary, for example you can use other beef cuts as base of your sauce, you can add onions after the meat and so on.

The Sweeper

I use Delia's ragu recipe to make quite a dry sauce for lasagne. Works a treat. It has chicken livers in it too, and just a note on using them: I buy chicken livers in a pack with about 400g in it and I probably use about 1-1.5 kilos of meat in the ragu sauce, depending if I'm mixing beef mince with veal or pork mince or whatever. The temptation is to use the whole pack of chicken livers because you'll use a bit less after cleaning and snipping them and chopping them etc.

Don't do it. The flavour of chicken liver is pretty strong and it becomes overpowering if you add it to a long, slow-cook recipe. They are a great addition for richness, but I wouldn't use more than 200g to a kilo of other meat, or they become all you can taste.

jdivision

Ponster wrote: »

But is it still Spaghetti Bolognese or just a meaty Italian sauce?

To the best of my knowledge spag bol is made in Italy with veal mince, or certainly some of same.

Lurvely

I use finely chopped onion, a little garlic, steak mince, peppers, mushrooms, a teaspoon of pesto, tomatoes, tomato puree, oregano & basil. I let it simmer for ages & its gorgeous, even nicer the next day I love grated parmesan on top..beautiful.

Ponster

jdivision wrote: »

To the best of my knowledge spag bol is made in Italy with veal mince, or certainly some of same.

It depends on the region really. You can travel into the next valley or town and find a new *authentic* recipe

I've had it with several times with a veal pork mix and once I think that was all veal, both were wonderful. But the thing they had in common was that there was no tomato sauce nor tomatoes used.

The Sweeper

What was the sauce base then?

Ponster

What little I know comes from speaking to Italians but.....

Spaghetti Bolognese as described in the recipes above in not an Italian recipe. As antoniosicily pointed out, even the name "Spaghetti Bolognese" is French, not Italian

I guess it's like Chicken tikka masala which is supposed to be a British dish and not Indian.

In Italy it's called a Ragu or Bolognese sauce and the recipe is fixed as :

minced beef: 300gr
very finely chopped bacon: 150 gr
finely chopped carrot: 50gr
finely chopped celery: 50gr
finely chopped onion: 50gr
double concentrate tomato paste: 30gr
white/red wine (dry): half a glass
whole fresh milk: 1 glass
salt, pepper.

You'll see that there is a little bit of tomato paste (no tomatoes) and it's served with tagliatelle or pappardelle and not spaghetti. But once you have an Italian sauce that's made from fresh tomatoes then yes, you do use spaghetti.

This is why I asked for people's different Spag Bol recipies as opposed to asking for 'proper'


This is like the Irish Stew recipe I guess. Proper "Bolognese sauce" like proper Irish Stew has a fixed, defined recipe. This doesn't mean to say that you can't add new things to it and change it. I couldn't imagine making this without garlic for example

antoniosicily

there's a little bit of misunderstanding here:

ragu' is a recipe which comes from Bologna, in Italy, so outside Italy sometimes it's called bolognese, but it's an *italian* recipe, made with sauce (see the recipe); apart from variants in italy we have two different ragu', the bolognese one (with mainly minced meat) and the one from naples (with many meats); both of them have tomato sauces.

the official recipe, should be this:
http://www.accademiaitalianacucina.it/cgi-bin/dbview.pl?ricette.txt+dbviewer.html+599
(in italian sorry)

Minder

Ponster wrote: »

In Italy it's called a Ragu or Bolognese sauce and the recipe is fixed as :

minced beef: 300gr
very finely chopped bacon: 150 gr
finely chopped carrot: 50gr
finely chopped celery: 50gr
finely chopped onion: 50gr
double concentrate tomato paste: 30gr
white/red wine (dry): half a glass
whole fresh milk: 1 glass
salt, pepper.

What happens if you want to make it for a big crowd?;)

Ponster

Hmmm, that link isn't working but I figured it out....Weird I was on that site yesterday which is whjere I got the recipe *Iù posted but I can't find it now.... ?

Do you mean this one ?

300 gr di pomodori pelati, 150 gr di polpa di maiale, 100 gr di polpa di vitello, 100 gr di petto di pollo sminuzzato, 50 gr di vino rosso secco, 30 gr di burro, un cucchiaino di conserva di pomodoro, un cucchiaio di lardo, sedano, carota, cipolla, 300 gr di tagliatelle all’uovo fatte in casa, formaggio parmigiano reggiano, pepe, sale

It says "Tagliatelle Al Ragù" but isn't there chicken in there ?

Ponster

Minder wrote: »

What happens if you want to make it for a big crowd?;)

You can't. The rest have to put up with chip butties !

Dizzyblonde

Minder wrote: »

What happens if you want to make it for a big crowd?;)

Serve it on saucers?

Seriously, though, we've been cooking Spag Bol in Ireland for so long that it's become, like stew, something that differs from one house to another. We all tweak a recipe around until we come up with one we love, and to me that's the joy in cooking.

Ponster

Dizzyblonde wrote: »

Serve it on saucers?

Seriously, though, we've been cooking Spag Bol in Ireland for so long that it's become, like stew, something that differs from one house to another. We all tweak a recipe around until we come up with one we love, and to me that's the joy in cooking.

Which is the wonderful thing about it. I started the thread the day after I made *mine* and when the wife told me that it was really meaty I said it was probably due to the anchovies

She told me that you don't put them in spag bol so I thought I'(d ask you lot wht weird stuff you put in yours

Dero

Ponster wrote: »

In Italy it's called a Ragu or Bolognese sauce and the recipe is fixed as :

minced beef: 300gr
very finely chopped bacon: 150 gr
finely chopped carrot: 50gr
finely chopped celery: 50gr
finely chopped onion: 50gr
double concentrate tomato paste: 30gr
white/red wine (dry): half a glass
whole fresh milk: 1 glass
salt, pepper.

I use Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe from The River Cottage Family Cookbook, and it looks to be very similar to this. It's absolutely delicious (although we generally leave out the milk).

Dizzyblonde

Ponster wrote: »

Which is the wonderful thing about it. I started the thread the day after I made *mine* and when the wife told me that it was really meaty I said it was probably due to the anchovies

She told me that you don't put them in spag bol so I thought I'(d ask you lot wht weird stuff you put in yours

Chaque un a son gout

vibe666

I've been making spag bol for at least 20 years, initially based on my mums recipe (which, in turn was based on her own mothers) but I doubt I've ever made it exactly the same.

everything is done by eye and taste, no fixed measurements or fixed ingredients. The only thing I ALWAYS do now without fail is to sear the meat off in small handful sized batches in a very hot, totally dry non-stick pan to caremelise the meat first. then the soffritto (minced onion, carrot & celery) with some garlic. (I sometimes add finely diced spicy smoked paprika chorizo at this point) once that's cooked down, in goes a glass of red wine until reduced to a nice syrup before putting the mince back in and mixing through. then I just build it up various fairly random combinations of tomato, tomato puree, sun dried tomatoes, passata, tinned toms etc. depending on what I have to hand, followed by a beef stock cube.

I used to add some sugar to the mix to cut through the acidity of the toms, but recently someone steered me towards a couple of chunks of dark chocolate to do the same to a chili, so I plan on giving this a try with the next spag bol.

I've also tried various combinations of ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce and many others as a test. Worcestershire sauce and fish sauce do both add a certain something to the mix, but I wouldn't always use them, i guess it depends on how it's going at the time.

making a heap of it a day ahead and then reheating the next day is always a bonus too, it ALWAYS tastes better the next day.

I also put a small spoon of the sauce into the drained pasta and mix it through, it stops it drying out too quickly and sticking. it also gives the pasta a much more appealing colour too. i used to use a little oil for the same job, but it was a little too oily for my liking.

Gavin "shels"

Can anyone suggest a nice and easy spaghetti bolognese recipe?

Dizzyblonde

Fry 1 chopped onion and 2 fat cloves of garlic (also chopped or crushed) in a little olive oil until soft. Add 1 pound of round steak mince and fry until browned. Add 2 tins of tomatoes and 2 tablespoons of tomato puree. Then add 2 teaspoons of sugar, plenty of salt and black pepper, about 2 teaspoons of dried basil and a teaspoon of dried oregano. Bring to the boil, turn the heat down and simmer slowly for around an hour and a half (I put it in the slow cooker and let it simmer all day).
There are far more complicated recipes than this, but I use this all the time and it's really nice

Gavin "shels"

Oh now that sounds the business, minus the onion.:o

who_ru

why the sugar?

The Hill Billy

The only thing I'd add to Dizzyblonde's recipe would be a few field mushrooms cut into large chunks & fried with the onion & garlic. Oh, maybe a small pinch of ground chilli or dried chilli flakes for a hint of heat.

who_ru wrote: »

why the sugar?

Tomatoes can be somewhat bitter. Sugar compliments tomatoes very well & takes the edge off the bitterness.