Remember a few months back when I made fresh pasta? Were we friends then?
I made fresh pasta at the tail end of summer this year. I wore a snazzy red apron. I got my hands dirty. I walked around the house showing off my ball of dough to anyone who would pay attention. No one really payed attention. That’s ok.
I have been feeling nostalgic for my summer times of a few months back. Times when I would spend weekends talking about wine and food with these lovely ladies. (My friends are gorgeous. It’s almost weird.) Times when we would drink way too much Rose and just be downright silly. Those times will come again… in many months. For now, I’ll satiate myself with a giant bowl of fresh pasta with this INCREDIBLE Bolognese Recipe. You should do this too. No joke. Pasta is calming and generally makes the world a better place.
For all things pasta, you’ll want to pop on over here and read this. For all things Bolognese, you’ll want to jump on over and sauce it up.
This Bolognese recipe is one I adapted from Mario Batali. The man knows a hell of a lot about Italian food and Crocs. I generally only take his advice on Italian food and not on shoes.
This sauce is so amazing because of its many layers of flavors. There’s wine, there’s thyme, there’s a touch of sweetness from carrots, there’s onions and garlic and two different kinds of meat. Yes. Yes. Yes. If, for some reason, you aren’t so keen on several different types of meat, I would gently suggest you reconsider. Combining ground pork and veal (or beef) adds a dimension to your sauce that you can’t get with one meat alone. It’s well worth the effort. True.
Cream too. Please don’t skip the cream. That’s downright criminal.
Big Fat Bolognese Sauce
adapted from Mario Batali
makes about 8 cups
2 medium onions, finely chipped
4 celery ribs, finely chipped
2 medium carrots, finely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 pound pancetta or slab bacon, ground by butcher or thinly sliced and pulsed in a food processor until finely ground
1 pound ground veal (or ground beef will do too)
1 pound ground pork (not lean… sorry)
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup water
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper ( or to taste)
1 cup heavy cream
Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions, celery, carrots and garlic and sautee over moderate heat until softened. This should take about 5 minutes.
Add the pancetta, veal and pork and cook until no longer pink, breaking up the meat as it cooks. This should take about 6 minutes.
Add the tomato paste, heating it and mixing it in the cooked meat. Add the white wine and deglaze the pan. Add the water, canned tomato and thyme and gently simmer the sauce, covered, until it thickens and reduces, about an hour to an hour and a half. Once thickened add salt and pepper and heavy cream. Stir.
Sauce can be made up to two days ahead and stored in the fridge. This sauce keeps in the freezer for 1 month.
{ 61 comments… read them below or add one }
I was just wondering what to make for dinner! :D
Mmmm looks like the perfect comfort food. Now my husband wants this tonight!!
I think I’ll have to try this one this week! I may use a ground soy substitute for the meats (I’m a vegetarian and hopefully that will lighten it up a bit) but the rest sounds delicious!
Also, your shoes AND aprons are cuter than Mario’s! Thanks for the great recipe to try!
wow! I dream of making my own pasta someday..
Joy, this look so yummy! I haven’t made bolognase since last winter, I guess it’s time to dig in to rich, homey stuff like this again. I totally agree on the need for carrots, and I usually put a bit of diced pepperoni in my bolognase, but I think I’m going to try your recipe this week. Thanks!
Love Mario’s recipes. His orange Crocs… not so much.
Okay, you made me hungry and it’s 9:00PM at night.
All kidding aside, this looks phenomenally delicious!
Hello lova. The sauce I mean. I can’t wait~
Oh Yummy! That’s so fantastic since I was always wanting a recipe for this that is tried and true. Thank you, my friend!
On a side note, mixing meats is SO smart! I recently doubled my recipe for my homemade lasagna. I know a new mother and her family has been eating takeout for 6 mths now! Yikes! I did pork sausage and very lean ground beef. Half for our family, half for them…it was beyond good! The pork had red pepper flakes…sooo many layers of fantastico flavors.
Can’t wait to try this! I’m thinking tomorrow for dinner! :P
Joy, for real? I think our brains are linked somehow. NO JOKE, I was just thinking to myself this weekend, “I wonder if Joy has a favorite spaghetti recipe?”
If I didn’t just drool over your pictures and recipes before, now that I’m pregnant again I absolutely obsess over them! I heart your blog with a fierce passion!
Joy,
This looks really GOOD! There is a pasta sauce from Chef’s Restaurant in Bflo NY which is the only meat sauce I like… but this looks so good, I will try it! Later I’ll let you know just how much I loved it and am expecting to!
Deborah
I’m with Heidi. I think Joy has some crazy psychic powers or something because I was totally talking about her peanut butter and bacon cookies today and then she tweeted about them like an hour later!
LOVE fresh pasta. LOVE bolognese. LOVE your blog!!!
So a bunch of years ago, I got a pasta roller for myself for Christmas and was ashamed to say that I didn’t like the pasta… I couldn’t believe that I invested in a pasta roller and everyone swears by fresh pasta and I didn’t know why I didn’t like it.
Being American, I made pasta the way that we eat spaghetti here… boil the pasta, make the sauce, dump it all on your plate and go to town. Well, not so, my friends.
Three years ago I went to Italy and found out how to really cook the fresh pasta. Once you boil it and it is almost al dente, they put some of the sauce into another skillet on medium, add the al dente pasta with some of the cooking water and let it simmer. This way the pasta would soak up the yummy goodness of the sauce. The pasta will be perfectly al dente with the 3-4 min simmer in the sauce and the marriage of the pasta with the sauce will be sublime. (They don’t do this with fresh sauces like pesto, though… they just toss it in a bowl with the sauce and some cooking water)
Anyway, this has changed my life and I am happily making use of my pasta roller now! :) Hope this helps anyone making pasta!
ah, bolognese! there is nothing like bolognese in bologna… i’ll never forget it and i’m not sure i could ever recreate it. but this looks pretty authentic, i trust mario! and you. thanks for the recipe!
Because we call it ragu.
Not only are you a pasta queen, you are the word girl (eg: a fine writer), not to mention have a killer plate collection Anthropologie could sell and make millions on. Srsly. I collect blue & white ceramic plates, but now thinking green green Green!
great recipe and great writing–i enjoy reading your blog as much as i enjoy the baking/cooking–can you recommend some of your favorite rose wines? thanks!
Hummm, I love fresh pasta and this bolognese sauce looks so delicious !
i’m overwhelmed by my recipe collection and the good intentions i have to organize them. how do you organize yours? i’ve got lots of cute binders from target and loads of clear page protectors for inserting recipes. or maybe i could scan everything, but it’s daunting…any advice? many thanks :)
This looks like the perfect comfort food!
Hi Joy
do you know we had the same yesterday lunch?
Homemade tagliatelle with a bolognese souce (with beef, pok and a slice of bacon). I skipped the cream… in Italy we don’t use it so much! (But we have a kind of it with pasta: bolognese sauce, cream mixed together with short pasta (like penne) sprinkle of parmesan cheese and broiled in the oven until crisp).
Happy to know you enjoy italian style cooking
cheers Martina
I love bolognese sauce! I’ve never made fresh pasta before… always felt too intimidating. I’m intrigued though! ;)
Bolognese is a definite fave at my house. To save a bit of cash, we tend to make it vegetarian or use portabellos instead of meat. I do acknowledge that the flavor suffers a little bit for it, but it is still delish!
Lovely idea! may I suggest to heat and stir the sauce and the pasta together in a pan on the fire, the flavours blend better this way. it’s called “saltare la pasta”
Oooh… yum! I took a stab at a Bolognese sauce about a month ago and just guessed at what might be in a typical recipe. I used ground turkey and some pancetta. My husband actually loved it (and he is not a lover of turkey as a “meat substitute”). I’ll be sure to give yours a try, Joy!
This sounds amazing. I want to try it, but if I left the meat out do you think it would still work? My hubby is vegetarian. If not, I will still make it for the girls and I. :)Sounds too good to pass up.
This is one of my favorite bolognese recipes. Mario sure does know his food and his shoes; crocs are great especially in the kitchen.
Haven’t even had my breakfast yet, and all I want is that bolognese.
And yes, your friends are gorgeous. Every time I read your blog, I think, ‘Joy and I would totally be friends if we ever met…’ But now I realize I am totally not gorgeous enough for your crowd.
Well, I still get to make me some pasta!!
Keep up the great work.
Oh my god, this looks so completely delicious. I never knew what exactly Bolognese sauce was! I didn’t realize it was so meaty.
This looks amazing. Really amazing. I have been heavily hinting at a pasta roller for Christmas, so maybe, just maybe, I can finally try that homemade pasta.
Also, the sauce almost makes me want to go back on my vegetarian vow. Like some of the comments above, I am totally going to make this vegetarian. It looks too good not to try it.
It’s such perfect weather for bolognese! I was going to make some this weekend and didn’t have the time because my recipe cooks for 4 hours. Now I’m tempted all over again. An hour I can manage.
I’ve been meaning to do this foreverrr! My problem is space. I have a pretty big kitchen, but minimal counter space… and our table is a big glass table and not good for cooking chores. Boo. I need to just go for it anyway! Yours look amazing!
That sauce looks and sounds amazing, though I hope no one gets on my case cuz I’ll use fresh pasta instead of homemade!
You impress me with your homemade pasta. I’m not sure I’m up for that yet…. but the sauce looks delicious. And, you might just be the person to convince me to use more than one meat. We’ll see… :)
Joy, that pasta looks absolutely delicious! Now I want some bolognese….
You are very very inspiring! :D
Such great comfort food!
Joy,
Could you leave the white wine out and still have it taste okay, or is there something you could subsitute?
this looks fantastic, but i don’t eat pork so i guess it’s not for me. maybe i can adapt it to just beef?
Wow this looks awesome! However, I have very little self control when it comes to food in general, and especially pasta, and my servings are generally about 3 times the size of what is on that teeny little plate. :)
WE have already decided to make pasta tonight… But I think it’s too late to get creative with the man of the house cooking already… I will definitly save this recipe for another night this month or next! YUM!!
Looks fantastic! I really need to try making my own pasta one of these days (I’d totally walk around trying to show it off, too).
I just love this blog so much. Reading it really brightens up my day. It makes me smile even when I am miserable studying for exams in the library.
I made this last night and it was a huge hit with my family. Great meal to serve on a snowy, blustery night! Thank you…love your recipes!
Holy moly. This looks so delicious! The perfect meal for a cold night. I just might have to try this, although I don’t think I have the energy for the fresh pasta. We’ll see!
This looks awesome.. Question though do you not drain the grease when you brown the meat??
Last year I made the official ragu alla Bolognese sauce registered in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina. It cooked for hours, i think it was 5 hours. I thought this was a good thing. Smelled like heaven in le creuset.
After all that it tasted like dog food… all the flavor had leached out of the ground meat! This recipe made much more sense! I can’t wait to try it!
Yum! I really want to try making fresh pasta but I admit at being fairly daunted by the prospect.
On another note, hopefully this isn’t too prying, but in the photo of your friends the redhead looks a LOT like one of the new interns on Greys Anatomy. :)
-K
Great recipe! Thanks!
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