Bolognese Sauce

when I make bolognese sauce I make a giant pot because you can use it for a ton of things and it freezes really well my bowl and a starts with a whole pound of carrots they make the sauce sweet and hearty the skins are bitter so I take them off so are the root ends you got to cut them off to the tips just tend to be a little bit dried out doesn't really matter if you cut them off now to dice carrots you cut them in half then you cut each half into long thin slices then you lay the slices flat and you cut them into matchsticks then you cut across the matchsticks to make a fine dice and this is gonna take forever and I am using my food processor this usually goes better if you break the carrots into chunks before you put them in there doesn't need to be too fine nor too perfect because this is gonna cook for hours it'll all break down now I do one large red onion and onions you really do need to cut into a few chunks before you process them and only doing one half at a time helps to otherwise some big pieces just seem to never get cut up they just spin around this is my 10 quart Dutch oven if I could only have one pot or pan in my whole kitchen this would be it you can do almost anything in it but for this use the largest pot that you've got or maybe a couple of smaller ones gonna fry the veggies and olive oil on high heat there's a ton of water in these so they're not gonna burn as long as you keep them moving we just got to give them a head start on the cooking when they shrunk down and they're looking soft I dumped them out more oil in the pan and then three pounds of ground meat this is beef chuck but you could use something leaner like sirloin but I really like the fat and sometimes they use lamb too which is really nice now this is the most important and labor-intensive step of the whole process I switch over to a wooden spoon and I use it to mash up the ground meat as I am stirring it around I'm really going to town on this stuff breaking it all apart I don't want little meatballs in this sauce and if they form now it'll be nearly impossible to break them up later so with that rigid spoon I'm just stirring and mashing stirring and mashing five minutes go by and now the meat is kind of gray and swimming and liquid a lot of people think that's fat it's mostly water and it will boil off just keep cooking on high heat and keep everything moving or it'll stick and burn another five minutes go by and as the water evaporates the sound changes instead of hissing the pan starts to roar and crackle that is the sound of all those little bits of meat starting to fry in their own rendered fat now is when this will change from gray to brown and the kitchen will suddenly smell different it'll smell amazing if you're not doing this with your ground beef recipes you are missing out now comes the secret ingredient a pound of chicken livers I am not kidding I lifted this idea from Barbara Lynch it is genius I just dumped them in the food processor I don't want to turn them into pate but something just sort of that and in they go toward the end of the Browning process liver gets gritty if you overcook it then I stir in a six ounce can of tomato paste and at this point you got to be really careful see that carpet of brown stuff stuck to the bottom the second that's about to burn I pour in a whole bottle of white wine and scraped like a month scrape scrape scrape scrape the whole bottom off because it tastes good and if you leave it there it's gonna burn vegetables go back in they would have burned if I'd left them in while I browned the meat then a good-quality 28 ounce can of crushed Tomatoes then another one and then another one I'm going for something halfway between the traditional ragù alla Bolognese any tomato at all in it and the traditional Italian American meat sauce which is basically tomato sauce with little clumps of ground beef floating around in it I like something in the middle of those extremes here comes my favorite cheat liquid chicken bullion a big spoonful it's crazy salty but this big pot needs salt so it's fine now I just get this to a heat where it's kind of burbling and I'm gonna cook it for three hours stirring every 15 minutes or so to make sure the bottom doesn't catch and burn while we're waiting let's talk about those chicken livers don't be freaked out this sauce will not taste like liver you don't have to tell anybody they're in there it will however taste Meteor than any meat sauce you've ever had and that is thanks in no small part to the livers all right it's been two hours let's have a look at this thing I'm always amazed by how little this reduces and yet it does thicken up I reckon that's just from all the solids breaking down when I season I do about a tablespoon of dried basil dried parsley dried oregano and a little less dried thyme I have no idea how much garlic powder that is whole bunch of pepper and then this instant source of sweet and sour maybe 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar I generally think dried herbs are better for long cook dishes and even then I think they taste better if you put them in during the last hour of cooking the vinegar you could put in whenever as long as the sauce is hot that'll boil off the harsh of vinegar scent okay an hour later and I put some pasta on the boil look at how thick and rich that is now time to give it a taste I'll do a little bit more balsamic and some salt remember that all sauces should be too strong because their flavor will be diluted by the rest of the food drain the pasta and I just do a couple of big spoonfuls of sauce per portion with a little fresh herb in there that's parsley grate some cheese on top and I like to drizzle some raw olive oil on the plate now that is damn good but let me show you a variation sometimes i spoon some sauce into a pot and drizzle in some heavy cream boil it until the cream thickens and throw in the pasta and some fresh basil and that is sweet and sour and meaty and velvety and rich all at the same time once the rest of the sauce cools down a bit I just smear it into a whole bunch of ice cube trays you could freeze it in a big plastic bin or something but this makes it so easy to thaw out exactly the amount that you need throw them in the freezer come back the next day and just twist to release them and dump them into a giant ziploc bag then when you get home at the end of a long day you just grab three cubes per person throw them in a bowl and microwave until thawed and while it's still hot put in a little bit more balsamic that really brightens it back up again after it's been in the freezer for a while and again that hot sauce will boil off the harsh nose of the vinegar just throw that on your pasta and you've got a deeply flavored slow-simmered home-cooked meal in like 10 minutes or however long it took to boil the pasta I don't know what I would do without this stuff it's great I had some extra that I didn't freeze by the way I am going to use that to make my lasagna which is going to be the next video that I edit

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 4,325,866

Rating: 4.8729239 out of 5

Keywords: Bolognese, sauce, ragu, pasta, spaghetti, carrots, carrot, onion, onions, tomato, tomatoes, meat, beef, liver, livers, chicken, bouillon, wine, meaty, freeze, freezer

Id: V5WR-K0zJYs

Length: 6min 31sec (391 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

When I make mine I use half a bottle of red wine, fresh garlic and no livers. So close.

[u/flwombat]

If you want to go even more nuts than this try Kenji Lopez-Alt's bolognese recipe, which also uses chicken livers and chicken stock but also beef, lamb, and pork. It's like 25 ingredients, pretty time-consuming and costly, but holy fuck is it good.

This video recipe is awesome, Kenji's recipe is the obsessive weirdo's extreme version maybe

[u/yosemighty_sam]

I make this all the time but I think he made a mistake browning the meat. He does 3lbs at once, overloading the pan, making it cook slow and forcing all the juices out, so the meat spends like 10 mins just boiling, and when he finally reduces it he adds back a whole bottle of white wine to de-glaze the pan and rehydrate the meat. I think that's super overkill. Just cook the meat 1lb at a time, it will brown much faster without drying out, then need only a cup or less of wine to de-glaze. Final product will have better texture and less wasted wine, in the same time or less.

I also recommend adding excessive fresh garlic and some spicy peppers. 2 habaneros finely diced and added to the meat while it finishes browning will add a layer of heat to the whole dish without being spicy.

[u/laygo3]

I have a different method/philosophy of seasoning my bolognese: when browning the meat, I add season until just the meat alone tastes good without the "help" of sauces. I also like to mix hot italian sausage with my ground beef.

I use the same method for pasta or lasagna too!

[u/xscientist]

Just a note: It HAS to be chicken livers, because they will disintegrate into the sauce. I once put some diced beef liver into my bolognese and the end result was bolognese with little cubes of beef liver in it. It was not ok.

[u/FACE_MEAT]

My new favorite cooking channel on YouTube. This guy is absolutely killing it.

[u/javawong]

Chicken livers...interesting.

[u/bandformywagon]

Like he said in the video, this is not the authentic italian way. So no soffrito, red wine, milk etc. This is his version which i think looks really good and will definitely try out.

Love the icecube tray idea too. I have kids so anything that makes my life easier and more convenient gets a thumbs up from me.

[u/mr_poopie_butt-hole]

I really like this. But for god's sake, never throw all your meat in to brown at the same time, that water means it's stewing, and you won't get the full quotient of flavour from the Maillard reaction. Always fry off your meat in small batches on very high heat, if you see any liquid forming at the bottom of the pan, that's too much meat in the pan. Small batches means the liquid vaporizes immediately and you get more Maillard reaction, which in turn means more flavour.