Sometimes you just get a food craving. It may not make sense, but you can’t change it. Maybe it’s winter and you just need an apricot. Or you find yourself on a tropical beach dreaming of schnitzel. Or on Venice Beach during a summer heat wave, craving fettuccine Bolognese. What do you do?
If you’re me, you try to ignore it because it’s inconvenient and illogical. When that fails, maybe you try to figure out the underlying cause and address that. Perhaps you’re dehydrated or protein deficient. So you drink extra water and eat a black bean salad for lunch. The craving still isn’t gone, so you ignore it again, hoping it will go away this time. Except it doesn’t. It’s unstoppable.
An unstoppable craving for fettuccine Bolognese led me to spending a sunny, seventy-five-degree summer day trapped inside my small, dark kitchen while sauce simmered away on the stove. It was the wrong time of year and the wrong weather, but that dinner of savory fettuccine Bolognese goodness tasted exactly like what I needed. It satisfied my nagging craving, freeing my brain to focus on one of my many other obsessions.
Recipe history
Pellegrino Artusi published the first ragu characterized as a Bolognese sauce in a cookbook in 1891. His sauce, named Bolognese, differed from what we know today. Notably, it lacked tomatoes. Fortunately, for both me and the world at large, variation created soon after included tomato paste. It’s difficult to imagine sauce Bolognese would have caught on as it did without tomatoes.
Although we think of this dish as spaghetti Bolognese in the United States, outside of the United States, people do not serve the sauce over spaghetti. Instead, those outside of the United States serve it with flat, wide pasta such as tagliatelle or pappardelle, or over sturdy, medium-sized pasta shapes, such as penne or rigatoni. These pasta shapes grip the sauce far better than spaghetti does. The most likely explanation for this odd variation within the United States is that the dish, although introduced earlier by Italian immigrants, was popularized by soldiers who returned from WWII and referred to it erroneously as spaghetti Bolognese.
I first tasted true fettuccini Bolognese, rather than American-style meat sauce, at an Italian restaurant named Bianca, which was on Bleecker Street in New York. Xavier and I ate in this restaurant weekly, because it was both near our apartment and served delicious food. The owner, George, who knew us from around the neighborhood, was always happy to squeeze us in, no matter how busy they were or how late it was. It permitted me to satisfy my craving for one of my favorite foods every week. Then we moved to Sydney, Australia, where I struggled to find a similarly delicious Bolognese sauce. This forced me to work on recreating that restaurant’s delicious fettuccini Bolognese.
Recipe, tips & tricks
I developed and tweaked this recipe for over five years before I served it to anyone other than Frenchy and me. Although it was good from the very beginning, it wasn’t excellent; it didn’t evoke the same flavors I tasted at Bianca. So I kept tweaking it and changing it until it conjured the same memories, even if by then I had forgotten the specific flavors. Once I served it, it instantly became a hit. Friends consistently ask me to teach them how to make the recipe.
This recipe uses simple ingredients to create layered, complex flavor using fundamental cooking techniques such as caramelizing, deglazing, sauteing and braising. As I discovered over the years of refining this recipe, adding more ingredients doesn’t enhance the flavor; improving technique and increasing patience boosts it. Remember, this recipe must not be hurried. Make it on a lazy day at home. Stir it occasionally, but keep yourself occupied to resist the temptation of meddling with the sauce as it cooks.
To achieve the best results, take your time and caramelize the soffritto slowly, at a pace that suits you and your stove. The slower the conversion of the vegetable’s subtle sugars into nutty, complex sweetness, the more nuanced the final sauce. The good news is, during this time, not a lot of stirring is required, as that is better to give the same side of the vegetables enough undisturbed time in contact with the bottom of the hot pan to form the slowly browned bottom that is characteristic of caramelized vegetables. Once you notice the color and sweet smell, it’s time to stir the vegetables.
I often grind the meat for this sauce myself, using the grinder attachment for my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer, because freshly ground meat makes for a smoother, more flavorful sauce. When I don’t feel like grinding the meat, I will ask the butcher to grind some for me. I try to avoid using previously ground, vacuum sealed or otherwise tightly packed ground beef, because that meat doesn’t break down well in the sauce, so requires me to spend more time breaking it apart with a spoon.
Once you add the ground beef to the pan, make sure you don’t brown it and that some pink remains when you add the liquids. This ensures the meat will absorb the flavors of the sauce as it finishes cooking. It also allows the meat to remain soft enough to break itself down into small pieces as it cooks, which is necessary to achieve a smoother sauce. If you brown the meat completely before adding the liquid, you will have to break up larger, tougher chunks of cooked meat with a spoon as the sauce cooks. This requires more work and results in a less smooth and flavorful sauce.
I prefer to use Italian peeled tomatoes over diced tomatoes in this recipe because they add a sweeter, more tomatoey flavor I prefer. I don’t remove the seeds from these tomatoes because they are unnoticeable in the final sauce. If seeds bother you, it is fine to use diced tomatoes. Both types of tomatoes will break down to form a smooth sauce during the hours of slow braising.
The simplest way to remove excess fat from the sauce is to chill it in the refrigerator overnight. Use a fork or spatula to lift off solidified fat from the sauce’s surface. This is the method I use because it is far less tedious than skimming the sauce as it cooks. It also has the side benefit of allowing the sauce’s flavors to further develop in the refrigerator overnight. But if you’re planning to serve the sauce immediately, I recommend skimming it during cooking to remove excess fat.
The additions of parsley and balsamic vinegar to the sauce just after it finishes cooking aren’t necessary, but add hints of brightness that round out the sauce’s complexity.
My final tip is to cook the pasta until it is just al dente, save a bit of cooking water, and drain it. Then return the pasta to the pan with enough sauce to coat it. Finish cooking the pasta in the sauce, which will allow the sauce to thicken on to the pasta, giving it an even coating. If the sauce thickens too much, add a little of the reserved cooking water to thin it. Then serve it topped with more of the Bolognese sauce.
The ingredients may be simple, but this sauce will amaze you with its balance of meaty, deep flavor, rich tomato taste, creaminess, and balanced sweetness. It freezes well, so I make extra and freeze it for convenience.
This sauce’s deep flavor and comforting nature gives me my Bianca fix every time I make it. Serve it alongside a glass of that wine you opened to add to the sauce, and enter your pasta-fueled happy place.
Recipe
2 tbsp of olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 celery stick, finely diced
2 oz pancetta, finely diced, and unprocessed (if possible)
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 pound of freshly ground beef
½ cup of dry red wine
4 tbsp of tomato paste
1 can of Italian peeled tomatoes
1 cup of full fat milk
1 cup of beef stock
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
¼ teaspoon of nutmeg
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
¼ cup chopped flat leaf (Italian) parsley
Time: 39 – 45 minutes (active); 3-4 hours (total)
1 pound of cooked fresh pasta, such as linguine or tagliatelle, for serving
Makes 4-6 servings
- Heat the olive oil over medium low heat in a dutch oven or other heavy bottomed pan
- Add the onion, carrots, and celery and sweat over medium low heat, stirring regularly. Once the vegetables have released most of the their water and have softened, lower the heat to low and allow the vegetables to caramelize, stirring occasionally to even out the caramelization. The carmelization process should take approximately 1 hour; adjust the heat lower or higher as needed.
- Increase the heat to medium and add the crushed garlic and pancetta. Cook, stirring as needed, for 2-3 minutes, until the garlic is fragrant, but not browned.
- Add the ground beef, and cook stirring, until it is light brown with light pink remaining. Avoid browning the beef as much as possible.
- Add the tomato paste, canned tomatoes (with juices) milk, beef stock, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, and simmer for 1 hour, stirring two of three times.
- Uncover and gently simmer until the sauce is thickened, the tomatoes and meat have broken down, and the flavors have melded together. This will take 1.5-2 hours. Add additional salt, pepper, or nutmeg to taste.
- Turn the heat off and stir in the balsamic vinegar and parsley.
This recipe, due to its rich, umami flavor, and balanced complexity, has been a long time favorite among my friends and family. I can’t wait to hear what you thought of it in the comments below.
References and related links
- Recipe from the Italian Academy of cuisine https://www.accademiaitalianadellacucina.it/en/notizie/notizia/italian-academy-cuisine-registers-updated-recipe-true-rag%C3%B9-alla-Bolognese
- Pancetta https://usa.citterio.com/en/product/pancetta-cubetti-uci0023412 (available at Trader Joe’s)
