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Marcella’s Bolognese Sauce

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When MM and I went to Italy in 2016, we took a pasta making class, and determined that it’s way, way easier to make pasta than we thought.  So we’ve gotten into the habit of avoiding boxed pasta, because homemade pasta tastes so much better.  But noodles alone do not a meal make.  You can throw butter and Parmesan with them, for a pretty simple meal, but we wanted to do something that didn’t require the jarred red sauce I grew up on.

Bolognese Sauce


Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
  • 3 Tbsp unsalted butter (plus 1 Tbsp for pasta)
  • 1/2 C onion chopped fine
  • 2/3 C carrots chopped fine
  • 2/3 C celery chopped fine
  • 3/4 lb ground chuck*
  • Whole nutmeg
  • 1 C whole milk
  • 1 C dry white wine
  • 1 1/2 C imported canned plum tomatoes with their juice, chopped fine
  • Salt
  • Ground black pepper

*You may think that you can reduce the fat by using ground sirloin – don’t do it.  You need a fatty beef for this sauce.  Trust me.

Directions

The following instructions come straight from the cookbook Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.
  1. Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in the pot, and turn the heat on to medium.  Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot.  Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.
  2. Add the beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper.  Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well, and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color.
  3. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely.  Add a tiny grating – about 1/8 tsp – of nutmeg, and stir.
  4. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well.  When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface.  Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time.  While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that tit begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat.  To keep it from sticking, continue the cooking, adding 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary.  At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce.  Taste and correct for salt.
  5. Toss with cooked drained pasta, adding the tablespoon of butter, and serve with freshly grated Parmesan on the side.

*If you can’t watch the sauce for a 3 to 4 hour stretch, you can turn off the heat whenever you need to leave, and resume cooking later on, as long as you complete the sauce within the same day.  Once done, you can refrigerate the sauce in a tightly sealed container for 3 days, or you can freeze it.  Before tossing with pasta, reheat it, letting it simmer for 15 minutes and stirring once or twice.

A while ago I purchased an Italian cook book written by Marcella Hazan, and I’ve been slowly going through some of the recipes.  And I found a really, really good Bolognese sauce.  It’s time intensive, so I suggest making this on a day when you’re planning on being home.

Try your best to get fresh ingredients, other than the can of tomatoes – if you have the ability to get imported canned Italian plum tomatoes, please do so.  Otherwise, if you have a favored brand, go for it.  You’ll be looking for the larger cans (either 32 or 48 ounces, I think) to make the 1 1/2 cups.

By the way, this recipe freezes beautifully!  Yum!

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