Bolognese sauce recipe - complex flavours
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But it is still "easy" - you don't require great skill to prepare a great bolognese sauce. You just have more things to do, that's all. None of the steps are difficult.
The fact that a Bolognese sauce recipe is complicated is all the more reason to make your own. Because unless you dine in a really top rate - and expensive - Italian restaurant, chances are you will get a simplified, watered-down version of this classic authentic Italian pasta dish.
Bolognese is probably the most well-known pasta dish, served not only in Italian restaurants but also in various places that sell cheap Western food. In Singapore, for example, you can order a spaghetti bolognese even at hawker centres, where a plate might cost just S$5 or less.
But have you eaten a really good pasta Bolognese? Not me. At least not until I tried this authentic bolognese sauce recipe.
In the past, the few bolognese pasta dishes that I tried were little more than minced meat with tomato sauce. They tasted very ordinary and uninspiring.
So imagine my surprise when I did some research and discovered that an authentic Italian bolognese recipe requires a whole long list of ingredients, and very long cooking. Just looking at the recipe was enough to tell me that here is something truly special. The final result did not disappoint.
Bolognese sauce is commonly served with sSpaghetti, but works equally well with other medium to large pasta shapes, such as fettucine, linguine, penne, fusilli, etc. It can serve as a sauce for baked lasagne.
Ingredients (serves 4 to 6):
- 50g salted butter
- 200g pancetta / bacon
- 1 large onion
- 1 large carrot
- 1 stick calery
- 2 cloves garlic
- 500g minced beef (or 250g each of minced beef and minced pork)
- 2 cans (800 g) chopped tomatoes
- 2 tbsp tomato puree
- 2 cups beef stock or water
- 250ml dry red wine
- 1 bay leaf
- generous pinch of sea salt / ground black pepper
- small pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
- 300g dried spaghetti or other pasta, cooked according to instructions
- 50g freshly grated Parmiggiano / Parmesan cheese (for serving)
Method:
- Finely cut / dice the pancetta / bacon, onion, carrot, celery and garlic.
- Heat half of the butter in a heavy pan. Add the bacon and fry until golden. Add the onion, carrot, celeryand garlic and cook over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often.
- Increase the heat. When the pan is hot, add the beef (or beef and pork), using a wooden spoon to break up any lumps. Fry until meat is brown, about 2 or 3 minutes.
- Add tomato, tomato puree, beef stock, wine, salt, nutmeg and other seasoning ingredients. Reduce heat to very low, cover and cook for at least two hours. Check the liquid occasionally and add more water / beef stock if necessary to prevent the sauce from drying out.
Variations:
There are many variations to this Bolognese sauce recipe although it remains basically a tomato-based, meat sauce recipe. Possible variations include:
- Use minced lamb / mutton for a stronger flavour. Personally, I like the beef / pork combination best. Some bolognese sauce recipes call for minced veal but I don't recommend this because veal is actually the meat of a very sick animal suffering from extreme anemia. Minced chicken probably does not work well as this meat sauce needs a strong flavour. But if you like... why not?
- Vary the amount and the types of vegetables. I have seen, for example, bolognese sauce recipes that use two large carrots and two large onions. Also, some omit the celery and the garlic. Feel free to experiment. But for authenticity, leave in the carrots and onions.
- Cook with olive oil instead of butter. The majority of recipes that I've come across use butter.
- Vary the herbal seasoning using, for example, fresh parsley or dried oregano.
And so on. This recipe may also be baked, as I have done in a baked Bolognese sauce recipe.
A Chinese variant
There is, however, a more unusual variation that I would like to introduce you to. I did say in my introduction to pasta recipes that this section is unique, didn't I?
This comes from Northern China. Like Bolognese, it is also a meat sauce recipe, using minced meat such as pork or beef. The sauce base, however, is not tomato. Instead, it uses oriental fermented bean sauce such as miso or, for the convenience of Westerners, ready-made Hoisin sauce.
Click here for the "Chinese bolognese sauce recipe".
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