4 Levels of Pasta Bolognese: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hi i'm emily and i'm a level one chef hi i'm lorenzo and i'm a level two chef hi i'm frank proto and i've been a professional chef for 27 years a lot of pasta bolognese is like an all day sunday sauce kind of thing and this is really like getting get out and eat dinner this recipe is the only recipe my mom knows how to make this sauce was a savior feeding all these kids every week one of the best times i've had a bolognese is i was on a trip with my wife we were in bologna that's what i'm chasing today is that perfect bowl of pasta i had in bologna [Music] i'm going to start by making the bolognese sauce so the base of my bolognese is a mirepoix it's the trio of vegetables or the sofrito as the italians call it that's celery carrots and onions now the onions and the carrots are going to give a little bit of sweetness a little bit of earthiness the celery gives a little sharpness and takes away some of that acidity what this gives us is a nice baseline of the sauce first thing i like to do is get my onions out of the way what i do is i take my onion i'm cutting across those the natural line of the onion and then i just kind of go up and over almost like you're going over the rainbow right i am going to use the grater it just incorporates in the sauce easier it will turn translucent easier and look all the pieces are pretty uniform i'm going to go with a little bit of a rough chop because i like chunks of vegetable in my sauce i'm not going to peel the carrot it's clean i don't peel my hair let's just wash them you don't really have to peel them i think it just looks a little better in your finished sauce i'm chopping my celery because it's stringy and you don't want those strings all throughout your sauce gross celery i less want chunks in my sauce and i want it to dissipate a little more but it's also full of water so it's going to do that anyway all right mirepoix all prepped here's my mirepoix my mirror is done next thing i'm going to do is grind some lamb i've never heard of lambonese i'm not sure i'm that brave i think lamb for bolognese is not something people expect to see but i think for this sauce it makes a lot of sense it's going to be super rich i'm working with lamb shoulder for a few reasons it's got a really nice meat to fat ratio and fat equals flavor okay we're ready let's grind i would not know where to start with grinding my own meat i'm not gonna buy a big thing of meat grind it clean a meat grinder and then make pasta you know i'm making a simple ground pork boney i think that ground pork is pretty good for this if i'm just going to use one protein i feel like pork is great because it's fatty and it gives you that sort of like pasta sauce with meat vibe that you think of as like just a classic classic version i like using ground chicken who's doing ground chicken come on ground chicken belongs in a lot of other things i'm not sure it belongs in a bowling case you won't even know it's ground chicken when i grind meat i like to cut it into long strips rather than small chunks you feed a long strip in and it goes through another important thing that i like to do is have it really cold it grinds so much better and a lot easier if you're going to try and run warm meat through this it gets gummy now that i have my lamb ground and my mirepoix i can start assembling this sauce i'm going to start off with adding a bit of olive oil next thing i'm going to do is add these dried chili to our bowl which are basically just like little cayenne peppers this is something my grandmother would do so that's why i do it it's a great garnish for later on once they start to smell a little toasty they come out and we put them aside for later so i'm browning my meat first because sometimes when i've made bolognese sauces before it's like too fatty and oily and it just like kind of breaks and this helps prevent that as the lamb cooks it renders a lot of fat out i'm gonna strain most of it out but i'm gonna keep some of it to cook my mirepoix i'm going to throw in my grated onions saute them to get it nice and hot i'm gonna add my garlic and then i'll add my carrots yum yum carrots uh celery counter balance is my spiciness that i'm gonna be adding i'm gonna go ahead and add my oregano and salt all right i'm gonna transfer it into a bowl and then start with a clean slate and start browning my meats a lot of bolognese has pancetta well no not me i'm going to use hot pork sausage because i love the spice and the oils that come out of this get my chicken in brown chicken is not the go-to for bologna sauce from the general public i don't know like what's the chicken bringing to the party there you know what i mean but when i add it into my hot sausage it'll kind of mimic the spices you will never notice all right so i've added my pork back in and now i'm just gonna like give it a little mash so i'm adding salt pepper flakes and i like a lot of pepper so we got some oregano here a lot of recipes call for bacon but i don't always have bacon in the house and i kind of feel like smoked paprika brings some of that baconiness when you don't have bacon and this is like always on my shelf and now i'm gonna add anchovies i love anchovies this has been a secret ingredient of italian grandmas everywhere and they're basically gonna melt into the sauce i've never heard of it but i bet it would be good kinda salty umami fishy anchovies aren't going to make my sauce taste fishy they're just going to give it this really nice richness like lift the next thing i'm going to do is actually add in my tomato paste and tomato sauce sure you can use tomato paste but uh pasada is uncooked fresh peeled tomatoes with no preservatives win-win i don't even know what pasada is this tomato paste is directly from italy sometimes you get a tinny flavor from the tomato paste in cans the stuff in the jar is a little bit better so i'm just using like regular canned tomato paste from the store you get a good amount of it a lot of times it's less than a dollar and then tomato sauce i'm going to add back in my lovely sofrito or my mirepoix and i'm going to add white wine i'm using the red wine to deglaze my pan it's going to give a nice acidity to my sauce even if it calls for red wine i think to cook with white wine because i do like the taste of white wine so you know you cook with what you like to drink as well you could use white wine for this it's totally up to you the sauce will be a little bit lighter and i think that the red wine complements it a little bit better than a white the wine is nice and cooked off i don't smell any alcohol anymore and the lamb can go back in and then i'm gonna add my chicken stock while i'm waiting what i'm gonna do is make a bouquet garni which is a very fancy way of saying i'm gonna bundle some herbs together and tie them i have basil oregano some rosemary and some bay leaf i'm going to add my bouquet garnish so that the sauce has the flavor of the herbs but the herbs aren't part of the sauce you're not going to eat them so my sauce has been cooking for about 30 minutes it has thickened up beautifully so i'm adding pepperoni to give my bolognese another kick of spice add like a cup of chicken broth and a splash of milk i add milk because it adds a little bit of creaminess and like a little extra like depth of flavor and i'm adding ricotta to give my sauce a little bit of creaminess oh ricotta would be nice yeah if you've got ricotta in the house go for it then maybe bring it to my house please ricotta is a fantastic substitute for milk it's gonna give it more of a creaminess and thickness to your saw parmesan rinds it's going to give my sauce a great cheese flavor without adding cheese to the sauce and i'm going to add some bay leaves so i'm going to let this simmer for like 15-20 minutes so i'm going to let my sauce gently cook down for another 30 minutes my bolognese has cooked for about an hour it's reduced it looks rich i'm taking out my parmesan rinds and my bouquet garni they've done their work they flavored my sauce and now i don't need them anymore they're no good to me throw them away so the next thing i'm going to do is make my pasta i'm using boxed spaghetti it goes well with everything it tastes good it's easy to make i absolutely prefer fresh pasta to box pasta any sauce that you put to it doesn't exactly absorb into the pasta as easily i love using tagliotelli pasta a beautiful flat not majorly wide noodle i've got a beautiful pot of boiling water ah that was hot i'm making a handmade orchite which basically means little ears i prefer to do handmade pasta i feel like it's a dyeing art and i want to kind of bring it back the texture is better that'll hold your sauce really well the pasta i'm making is a semolina dough it's basically four ingredients semolina flour is made from 100 derm wheat it makes a nice firm chewy pasta double zero flour gives my pasta a little bit of that silkiness everything needs salt for flavor and just some water i'm going to add my salt to the water just to dissolve it i just find that i get better dispersion of the salt when i add it to the water so the first thing i need to do is salt my water pretty generous see so not crazy because i'm going to also be using this water to incorporate in the sauce later as well and i'm just going to dump in my spaghetti and then i want to like break it up a little so it doesn't all stick together anytime i cooking fresh pasta i always constantly stir the pot because it will stick i'm looking for a soft pliable dough that isn't super dry because when i stretch it out i wanted to grab my board a little now that the dough is not wet and sticky anymore and it's starting to come together i'm gonna just dump it out into my board then i'm just gonna start to pull it together so i'm just gathering all of the flour together to form a ball of dough when i press the dough and it bounces back that means i have some decent gluten development and that's all that i'm looking for i'm gonna wrap my dough and let it rest for about 20 minutes i'm going to let this boil i want to say like 12 minutes i will double check the package the nice thing about box spaghetti is it tells you what to do 10 to 12 minutes we'll go on the 10 side maybe even 9. so i'm going to boil this fresh pasta for about two to three minutes so it gets a nice chew to it and it's not mushy now it's time to roll these pastas out i don't want my cutting board to be floured at this point because when i squish this down and pull it to make the orchetti shape i want my cutting board to hold on to the pasta so i get it around my finger i open it up around my thumb and then i have a really nice sheen i've never seen work yeti with bolognese but i bet it works they are wonderful for holding sauce they have a little bit of a cup on the inside and on the other side they have a little bit of a dome that has all these little ridges that grab onto the sauce it's kind of relaxing and mesmerizing right the way that i check my pasta other than tasting it is like you can kind of pick it up and see how floppy it is this isn't quite quite there yet you can tell because it doesn't fully flop um this is pretty close let's get out of the water out of the water i would say that this pasta is ready to go it's very floppy now and ready to ride now i'm gonna drain my pasta all right oh god i'm so clumsy i feel like i can hear like bumbling music as i do this you know i guess i keep dropping noodles so i'm going to save some of this pasta water for when i plate so i can get a nice consistency of the sauce that i'm actually looking for i'm going to cook this pasta once my sauce is ready fresh pasta definitely takes less time to cook than dry pasta it's fairly dense so it might not take 10 minutes it'll probably take six or seven and now i'm ready to put it all together i have a pot of boiling water here i want this to be sea salty i'm gonna throw my pasta in just all at once give it a quick stir so it's not sticking to the bottom and then i can heat my sauce up you want to have just enough sauce to coat your pasta it's almost like dressing a salad i'm going to take a little bit of my basil and i'm just going to tear that in here for a little bit of brightness and freshness because i made fresh pasta i want to have everything ready to go i don't want this pasta to sit at all i want it to go directly from the water into the sauce so that i keep that nice chewy texture so take some of my pasta i'm gonna combine my beautiful thank you teddy fresh pasta whoops whoops and we're going to put a little pot of water just to loosen everything up my pasta is cooked about three quarters of the way right now and i'm just gonna let it finish in the sauce and what's gonna happen here is that the starch from the pasta is gonna help thicken my sauce a little and let it coat a little bit better so now my pasta and my meat socks are perfectly combined i'm gonna plate it up it looks so good i just got this kid's smile on my face this is a nice portion of pasta you generally tend to put a big bowl of pasta in front of people you don't need any more the sauce is super rich the pasta is dense so i don't want to have a huge bowl of pasta next up garnish so i'm garnishing my pasta with grated parmesan the real stuff so i'm just going to take a little bit of pecorino romano it's super sharp and i'm going to put a little parmesan on too the parmesan is much more nutty i'm using a shaker of parmesan cheese just because it's easy to get it lasts forever one always has it around i call those pringles cheeses the kind that's on the shelf and who knows how long it's been there i also have fresh parsley i have chopped parsley i just think it adds a nice little bit of freshness you know it's simple i prefer the basil but parsley that's pretty good and beautiful fresh basil i'm crumbling the fried chili to our bowl on top for a little bit of heat go for it i love spicy food and this is my spaghetti bolognese and this is my spicy pasta bolognese and this is my lamb bolognese with handmade or ketty [Music] i'm very excited to eat this it's like it's classic this is going to be ugly let's do it [Music] that works but that chewy beautiful bite off of pasta is just heaven one of the things that sticks out to me right away is that the meat is super rich but it's not super strong the pasta like i said holds on to the sauce that is exactly what i wanted it to do you're good i love you it's a perfectly good weeknight bolognese and what did it take me half an hour maybe 45 minutes go away don't watch me while i eat pasta bolognese is a pasta dish served with a slowly cooked aromatic thick meat sauce named for the place that made it famous bologna italy let's see how each of our chefs made theirs emily used pork in her bolognese pork is the meat of hogs and is typically lighter in color because of a lower myoglobin concentration which is the oxygen rich biomolecule that gives meat its color lorenzo used a combination of ground chicken and hot italian sausage ground chicken is a mild meat but the addition of hot spicy italian sausage gave a really nice flavor combination to his bolognese frank used lamb that he freshly ground grinding meat yourself means that you're not consuming a combination of meats from various animals as may be the case with commercial ground meat emily made her bolognese with the classic milk base instead of the traditional milk lorenzo added ricotta which is not a true cheese in that it isn't made from casein proteins from the milk traditionally it was made from the watery byproduct of making cheese curds which is twice heated which promoted coagulation and precipitation of the proteins in the way which were then scooped out and called ricotta frank elevated his bolognese by using a parmesan rind from the thick outer portion of a wheel of cheese which is a great way to use something that might otherwise get thrown out adding dairy in the form of a cheese rind adds saltiness and aids in thickening because of the additional concentrated proteins and starches emily used a box of dried spaghetti made with semolina spaghetti is extruded through dyes dried boxed and ready to use lorenzo used fresh tagliatelle fresh tagliatelle is made with flour eggs and sometimes additional yolks it's soft and supple and cooks very quickly because it has a higher water content than emily's dried pasta frank made his own hand-shaped oriketti pasta he used a combination of double-o flour which is very finely ground and semolina a more coarsely ground flour combined with enough water to make a firm dough the advantage of the combination of flowers is that the double o flower has high elasticity for kneading and semolina has additional protein which makes maintaining the shape of the oriquetti more reliable pasta bolognese is so satisfying with so many combinations and options next time you're making this delicious dish for a party of two or twenty we hope you'll take some of these tips from our three fabulous chefs

Channel: Epicurious

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Id: t-e_xTbAydE

Length: 16min 58sec (1018 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2022