Pasta Bolognese
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Servings
4 servings
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Course
Main Course
Pasta Bolognese
There are a few Marcella Hazan Pasta Bolognese recipes out there. I tweaked a few of them to come up with this recipe, which is inspired and adapted by her. Note that this sauce will take a while to prepare. It's mostly downtime. At first, you're just sauteeing ingredients, stirring until they're combined, then adding wine and milk, simmering and stirring until those have been absorbed. Once the tomatoes have been added, that's when you let the sauce cook at the lowest heat possible, stirring every once in a while, until it's ready. Within an hour, it comes together into a nice paste, but if you cook it another hour, nursing it with water as you go, you'll get a sauce with a richer flavor. One of Hazan's recipes says to cook sauce Bolognese for up to 4 hours! In the "untraditional" category, some people like to grate from Parmesan cheese over finished bowls of pasta.
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons butter salted or unsalted, plus 1 tablespoon for finishing the pasta
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 cup (60g) diced onions
- 1/2 cup (65g) diced celery
- 1/2 cup (65g) diced carrots (peeled)
- 12 ounces (340g) ground beef (I recommend using one that's at least 15% fat)
- 1 teaspoon salt or more to taste
- freshly-ground black pepper
- 3/4 cup (180ml) whole milk
- 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
- 1 cup (250ml) dry white wine
- 1 1/2 cups (350ml) canned plum tomatoes crushed, with their juice
- 1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 pound (450g) pasta
Instructions
- Melt the butter with the olive oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft and translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the celery and carrots and cook, stirring a few times, until they start to wilt, 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the ground beef, salt, and some freshly ground pepper. Lower the heat to medium and cook, stirring, until the beef is no longer raw on the outside. Pour in the milk, and cook at a steady simmer, stirring occasionally, until the milk is absorbed. Add a dusting of nutmeg and the wine, and continue to cook until the wine is mostly absorbed. (These steps can take a bit longer than you think, maybe 10 to 15 minutes of so, but this isn't a sauce to be rushed.)
- Add the tomatoes in their juice and the tomato paste. Let come close to a boil then lower the heat to as low as possible until the sauce is just barely bubbling. Cook the sauce uncovered for 1 hour, stirring every once in a while, until most of the liquid is absorbed but the mixture is still wet, rich and thick. (There's a picture of it in the spoon, in the post.) You can use the sauce now, or if you want to give it some extra attention, you can cook it for another hour, adding up to 1/2 cup (125ml) of water, little by little as it continues to cook, and stirring occasionally, to make the sauce even more unctuous.
- Taste and add salt, if desired.
- To serve, cook the pasta in lightly salted water as directed on the package. (Before draining, reserve a little of the pasta cooking water.) Drain the pasta and toss the hot pasta in the Bolognese sauce with 1 tablespoon of butter. If the sauce needs a bit of thinning out, add a parsimonious splash of the reserved pasta water.
Notes
- Storage: The Bolognese sauce will keep for up to four days in the refrigerator. It can be rewarmed on the stovetop with a little bit of water, until ready to use. It can also be frozen for up to three months.
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