Recipes for bolognese sauce remind me of a comment by Samuel Johnson, “Politics is like men’s watches. Each one says something different and each man swears by his own.” I have over a dozen different recipes for bolognese. Some say no garlic; another has six cloves. Some say ground meat, some say diced meat. Moreover, which meat? I have recipes with just beef; others with beef, pork and veal; one with pork and veal; one with pork, veal and lamb, another with pork, veal and chicken livers. I have heard of chicken bolognese, I have seen a recipe with venison. Some have 4 ounces of thinly sliced diced pancetta, others no pancetta, two say mortadella, one says pancetta and mortadella. There are recipes with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste; others with a 28 ounce can of tomatoes. Some say red wine, others white, one has no wine. Most have some sort of dairy, some milk, others cream; but there is also a contingent saying beef stock instead of dairy.
The Accademia Italiana della Cucina (Italian Academy of Cuisine) published an official recipe for ragu bolognese:
300 grams beef cartella (thin skirt steak)
150 grams pancetta
50 grams carrot
50 grams celery stalk
50 grams onion
5 tablespoons tomato sauce or 20 grams triple tomato extract
1 cup whole milk
Half cup white or red wine, dry and not fizzy
Salt and pepper, to taste.
Cut the pancetta into little cubes and chop with a mezzaluna knife. Heat it in a saucepan until crisp and most of the fat is rendered, Chop the vegetables well with the mezzaluna; add to the pancetta in the pan and cook until soft. Next, the ground beef is added and stirred constantly until it sputters. The wine and the tomato (cut with a little broth) are added and everything is left to simmer for around two hours, adding the milk little by little and adjusting the salt and black pepper. Optional but advisable is the addition of a liter of whole milk at the end of the cooking.
I’ve made this (without the liter of milk) and it’s good, but I’m not sold on it. It makes a small amount of sauce for so much effort, and I do not own a mezzaluna. My experience is that three hours of simmering is better than two. I have found that finely chopped meat tastes better than ground meat, but it takes about two hours to chop three pounds of meat, so I am calling for ground meat in my recipe. I can sometimes get a mixture of ground beef, pork and veal called “meatball mixture” or “meatloaf mixture” and this does well in bolognese. Tomatoes will both add to the flavor and give you considerably more sauce. Bolognese is a sauce I have been trying to perfect for years, to the delight of my family.This is my current recipe, subject to change.
2 onions, finely diced
2 celery ribs, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ pound thinly sliced pancetta, diced
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground veal
1 pound ground pork
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat the oil in a large pot. Put in the pancetta and sauté over moderate heat until much of the fat is rendered, about 3 minutes. Add onions, celery, carrots and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Right at the end, add the garlic and cook for 30 more seconds (you should be able to smell the garlic).
Add the beef, veal and pork and cook until no longer pink, but not browned, breaking up the meat. (You can do this in a separate pan while cooking the pancetta and the vegetables. This will be a bit quicker, but you will have an additional pan to wash.)
Deglaze the pot with the white wine. Add the milk, canned tomato (with the juice), salt, pepper and thyme. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered, for three hours. Give it a stir every half hour so it's not sticking to the bottom.
Bolognese sauce is often served over spaghetti, but freshly made tagliatelle – similar to fettuccine, but broader – is better for this sauce. Bolognese also goes very well in lasagna.
You can freeze bolognese sauce for a couple of months, but you will probably use it before then.
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