Bolognese Ragù Sauce
Ingredients
- 25g lightly salted butter
- 75g smoked pancetta or bacon, cubed
- 1 white or red onion, finely chopped
- 2 carrots, finely chopped
- 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
- 500g beef mince
- nutmeg, for grating
- 150ml red or white wine (plus another glass for the cook!)
- 500ml beef or chicken stock
- 1 x 400g tin of plum tomatoes (or the same weight of fresh tomatoes, chopped)
- ½ dried oregano 1 bay leaf
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Melt the butter in a medium-large ovenproof casserole over a medium heat, add the pancetta or bacon and cook for a few minutes until starting to crisp up and the fat is rendered. Add the vegetables and cook for a further 5–10 minutes until they soften (the cooking time will depend on the size of your pan).
Preheat the oven to 150°C/gas mark 1.
Form the beef mince into 4 balls and season them generously with salt and pepper. Push the vegetables and pancetta to one side of the pan (or transfer them to a bowl), add the balls of mince and fry them for about 10 minutes, turning them so they caramelize all over and take on a good amount of color, then roughly break up the balls and stir them together with the vegetables and pancetta (add them back to the casserole if you transferred them to a bowl while frying the beef). Season with a little freshly grated nutmeg.
Pour in the wine and cook for a few minutes to allow the alcohol to evaporate, then add the stock, tomatoes, oregano and bay leaf.
Season with a little salt and pepper (if the stock is already seasoned, hold back on the salt) and heat through – if necessary, add a little more stock to cover the meat. Scrunch up a piece of baking parchment then un-scrunch it and place it on top of the sauce. Cover the pan with a lid and place it in the oven. Bake the Bolognese for 45 minutes, then remove the pan from the oven, lift the lid and check if the sauce is thickening – it should simmer gently, not boil like mad. Return it to the oven and bake for a further 45 minutes. I find its texture is ideal at this stage but if you like a really thick sauce, pass the Bolognese through a sieve into a clean pan, reserving the solid ingredients in a bowl, and reduce the liquid by half.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Eat with pasta of choice, and freeze whatever you don’t use in solo batches.
Variations
– Milk is often added along with the stock and/or wine but I find the butter adds real depth of flavor and some delicious dairy fat to the sauce.
– Many like to add 50–100g chopped chicken livers to their Bolognese, after frying off the mince.
– My mother adds chopped green pepper to the soffritto mix (a trick she picked up from my grandmother, who randomly picked it up from someone in Hong Kong. I know, me neither. But it works!) and much more wine.
– If I don’t have wine in the house I’ll add a splash of brandy to deglaze and then a little wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar for extra acidity.
– Heston Blumenthal adds a star anise to his Bolognese, which really brings out the flavor of the beef. You can chuck in Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, anchovy sauce and all manner of umami-rich ingredients if you have them in your cupboard, just do so sparingly as they’re all highly concentrated in flavor. You still want to taste the beef and vegetables at the end of the cooking process.