So far, homemade pasta sauce has been worth it… will the streak continue?

Time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

Apparently, Bolognese is a very particular meat sauce from Bologna, Italy. While there are tomatoes included, they aren’t typically the star of the show, leaving that to the meats (pork, pancetta, and veal). This recipe adds a little twist to it, using sweet Italian sausage instead of regular pork. So far, I’ve rally enjoyed all of the sauces I’ve made from the Italian American Cookbook, so I have high expectations for this one. I think the Neapolitan Style Short Rib Ragu is my favorite so far, so let’s see where this one ranks.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

Considering that there are a few ingredients that are in a Bolognese by definition, I think those ingredients are ones that you shouldn’t skip. Those ingredients include pancetta, veal, pork/sausage, white wine, and milk. This recipe loses a point in ingredient availability because I know that your typical grocery store will not have veal and you’ll need to do a little searching or visit your local butcher to find it. I think the choice of pasta is somewhat important, as well. The recipe recommends a egg pasta such as pappardelle, tagliatelle, or linguine (I used pappardelle). I’ll also point out that I just used a cooking white wine instead of one for drinking, as I’m not a big drinker, so I didn’t want to buy a bottle just for this. Other than those few notes, nothing in this recipe stood out particularly as key. I used all of the ingredients listed in the recipe.

Tools:

• Food Processor

• Sharp Knife

• 2 Large Pots

Cooking Review:

Prep: 27 Minutes

The prep for this recipe included roughly chopping the carrots, celery, and onions, as well as peeling some garlic and measuring out the milk and tomato paste. I also went ahead and removed the casings from my Italian sausage.

Food Processing: 10 minutes

I added the carrots and celery to the food processor first and let it run on low for between 30 seconds and a minute until they were about the size of rice. I transferred the chopped vegetables to a bowl and repeated with the onions and garlic. I quickly rinsed out and dried the food processor bowl and added in the pancetta, processing until a similar size to the vegetables. This took a little longer, maybe a minute or two.

Mixing Meats and browning: 16 minutes

I mixed together the Italian sausage and veal and seasoned the mixture with salt. Then, I added  the olive oil to a pot over high heat, letting the oil start to shimmer before adding in the meat. The recipe says to ‘add the meat,’ but after reading the next step, you’ll see that this is supposed to mean only the veal and sausage mixture. I messed this part up, as I added the pancetta as well at this step. I cooked the meats for 10 minutes before transferring the meat to a bowl and draining the fat. I was supposed to add the pancetta next, letting the fat render as the meat browned. So, I added some of the meat back to the pot (as close to 4oz as I could estimate) and let it brown further. I added some of the drained fat back into the pan as well, to act as the rendered pancetta fat. This secondary step took about 3 minutes.

Cooking Vegetables: 11 minutes

I added the processed vegetables to the pan and cooked them with the meat for 11 minutes, stirring occasionally. They began to take on a darker color near the end of this time.

Preparing for simmer: 12 minutes

The tomato paste was added and cooked with the vegetables for 3 minutes. The wine was added next and allowed to fully cook off. While the wine was cooking off, I crushed the tomatoes in a bowl with my hands. After about 5 minutes, the wine was cooked down, so I added the meat, milk, star anise, and crushed tomatoes. Everything was mixed together and brought to a simmer over a reduced heat.

Simmering and Finishing: 2 hours 8 minutes

The sauce was allowed to simmer for 2 hours with occasional stirring as it thickened up. With about 20 minutes left to go in the 2 hour simmer time, I put some water on the stove to boil. Once the sauce had been simmered for 2 hours, I removed it from the heat and added the lemon juice, sugar, and fish sauce. Once the pasta was done cooking, I added half of the sauce to the pot that I cooked the pasta in, added the cooked pasta, and tossed to coat the noodles. Finally, I added the butter and Parm to finish it off.

Analysis:

This Bolognese is plenty flavorful. With just the 3 table spoons of salt as seasoning during cooking, It’s a little surprising how much flavor this packs. Sure, at the end you add some Parmigiano Reggiano, lemon juice, and fish sauce, but I think those are really just there to elevate all of the flavors just that little bit more at the end. They really probably aren’t that necessary. The depth of flavor is there, too. I won’t say it’s quite as deep or complex as the Ragus I’ve made, but it doesn’t disappoint. Savory is the most prominent flavor profile, while balancing the saltiness with a very slight acidity and sweetness. The choice of pasta was perfect, in my opinion. The wide pappardelle noodles had a nice bite to them and were coated by the sauce quite well. As far as texture goes, because the pasta choice was so good and the sauce had some chunks of meat while being pretty smooth overall, I can’t complain. I think the eating experience was actually kind of fun. At the end of the day, I think that this sauce melds everything that goes into it nearly perfectly. No ingredient really stands out flavor-wise, but everything build upon the other ingredients to make something delicious. I’m going to give this recipe a 8/10. Yes, my complaints are few, but maybe because I’ve made those other Ragus that this recipe loses a couple points. One is because you might have a hard time finding veal, and the other because the flavor just isn’t quite as good as the other meat sauces I’ve made. In any case, I doubt you’ll be disappointed if you decide to make this.