While I was ordering porcini and every local specialty that I had read about while in Italy, my husband ordered bolognese at dinner on several occasions. I laughed and said, “You’ve been eating spaghetti your whole life! Why do you keep ordering bolognese? Don’t you want to try something new?” Not until our trip was ending in Rome did I decide to try it. Wow! I had completely missed the boat on this one in my ignorance. An authentic bolognese sauce is not your mother’s American-Italian spaghetti sauce. It is in a league of its own.
Upon returning home, I sought to replicate that sauce by trying all kinds of recipes…and falling short. Why? I was attempting to make a leaner version than what the instructions told me. Lean ground sirloin just will not cut it in this case. This sauce is really all about the fat…and slow simmering all afternoon. You really can’t skimp on either one. Do you want an authentic bolognese sauce?
Once I realized the error of my ways, I began buying chuck roast at the supermarket and asked the butcher to grind it fine. That was a turning point. Chuck has the right amount of fat, which equals flavor. Principles matter in cooking without recipes. That’s how you develop your intuition in the kitchen.
Today I decided to use some ground meats that I had in the freezer: 2 pounds of ground beef (15 % fat) and a pound of ground wild boar, which to my surprise was rather lean. The boar meat that I had purchased previously was much fattier, so I imagined it would work well in this sauce. No matter. It’s all good.
I also took out of the freezer a couple of chicken livers and an inch of bacon. Pancetta is traditional, but I really like the smokiness of bacon and I usually have some in the freezer.
Chop Ingredients
If you have a food processor, it is very useful for making this dish because you want everything to be chopped up very small in order to create a very silky texture. So, here’s what I chopped and put into separate bowls first:
- one huge onion
- 3 stalks of celery
- 2 carrots
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 2 organic chicken livers
- one inch of bacon
- 1 2/3 cans of tomatoes (28 ounce cans)
The Rest of the Ingredients:
- 2 pounds ground beef (15% fat)
- 1 pound ground wild boar
- butter
- olive oil
- milk
- dry white wine
- 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
- less than 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- salt
Why these amounts? Because it’s what I had on hand. Another carrot or stalk of celery or a couple more chicken livers would have been great, but I was using up what I had in the refrigerator/freezer. I usually use a tiny bit less tomato too, but I had part of a can open, so why not finish it?
How To Make the Sauce
So, here’s how I do this in my favorite big pot: Melt a tablespoon of butter and add the ground chicken livers and bacon. Trust me on this. The flavor is great and no one will say it tastes like liver.
Once that mixture is no longer pink, add the onions and let them help you scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Cook those for a few minutes before adding the carrots and celery and a little olive oil. Keep stirring and cook for a few minutes.
Then, add the meat and continue to cook while stirring. Pour a cup or so of dry white wine into the pot at this point, which Lidia Bastianich says helps to break up the meat into smaller pieces. Although I used to put the wine in later, I think this makes more sense. Additionally, you can better eyeball the necessary amount. The wine should just cover the meat. Let that cook down a bit and add the garlic.
Then add about a cup of milk. For this dish, I specifically buy whole milk. It’s the only time I do so. Don’t tell my husband, but I used 1 % this time because that’s what I had…so that’s why I used so little in comparison to the other ingredients. If I had whole milk, I might have used up to another cup. I decided there was enough going on between the bacon and the butter and a little extra tomato…
Grate a little nutmeg in there and add the tomatoes and about a tablespoon of tomato paste. Season with salt. Reduce heat to simmer and stir frequently for 4 hours. Yes, it really does need that long, in my opinion. If you don’t have all afternoon to devote to this, don’t bother. Don’t worry. It’s totally worth the investment of time and it freezes well, so you won’t have to do this again for a while. The amount of sauce I made here would easily serve 10 people.
To Serve
You could serve this with any pasta that you desire, but we like a fresh, eggy tagliatelle if we can get it. Otherwise, dried is fine, but I think it must be eggy. Dried egg noodles will even do if you can’t find anything else. We might toss the cooked pasta in butter before combining it with the sauce. Yes, it’s not a low-fat meal…but it’s worth the calories once in a while…especially if you don’t eat a heaping plate full. I know that it’s hard to exercise self-control when an authentic bolognese sauce is this good, but in Italy pasta was merely the first course of our dinner. Can you believe we actually lost weight there? That’s what happens when you walk everywhere. Note to self: walk a little extra tomorrow…
Ready for another authentic pasta sauce I learned about in Italy? Read Skillful With Shellfish next for another simple meal idea.
Fat. Great ideas!!!! Yum.
Cute story