The Other Legendary Ragu From Naples is Glorious

pasta Anna Genovese sounds like it's from Genoa actually from Naples and it's the other famous Ragu from Naples that you must know how to make so let's just jump right into it now at its core this dish is simply a braise of beef that uses the juice of a massive amount of onions as the braising liquid and there is a ratio to this recipe traditionally you use about one part beef to four parts onion I like mine with a little bit more beef to balance out the sweetness of onions so I go with about one and a half to two parts beef to four parts onion two parts four parts I don't know if I said that right basically I got about four pounds of onions to about one and a half to two pounds of beef first thing I want to do is cut the tops off and cut them in half leaving the root intact now it's stock season so save your scraps for stock papers and everything it's bothered me this entire edit not knowing what I just mumbled whenever there's like this rubbery layer too you gotta get that out now since we have a lot of onions to slice I'm gonna go ahead and use my mandolin but you know I don't really love a mandolin they're dangerous mandolin is a good thing but only if you use it properly and I'll always recommend you using something like one of these this will really prevent you from getting jammed up and now you can use a knife and cut these as thin as you can and pretty irregularly but the thicker it's going to be the chunkier the sauce is going to end up being the thinner and more uniform you cut the onion the creamier the sauce becomes and it's sort of easily melds with the beef to become one which is what makes this dish great so we're gonna go as thin as we can I'm going to take my flat surface lean it up against the side secure it with the bowl confidently with the hands out of the way and then a swift motion push forward to slice the onion so I can see the pressure is starting to make it a little uneven so now I'll rotate it and now I'm going to be putting pressure on that lopsided side so I'm hoping now I can even it out and get as much yields from this as I can slowing down the closer I get to the bottom now I can even do this and get as much as I can out of the onion and this goes into your stock bag I'm gonna just go through and make your way slicing the rest of the onions foreign don't mess around here guys we're not playing games the reason that I don't like mandolins is because two thanksgivings in a row on Thanksgiving Eve my dad was cutting onions with a mandolin and two Thanksgiving Eaves in a row had to walk himself to the hospital while we all finished cooking all because he didn't want to use the safety on tests so don't be a ding dong like my dad operate with an abundance of caution with this okay I think it's a lifesaver right here all right so now we have our beef and onions which are like the base of this recipe these are all prepped now there's two other vegetables that we need to prep and we just need I need one second okay next we've got a little bit of carrot and a little bit of celery just about two celery stalks and like a small carrot and we're gonna kind of dice this as fine as we can again just like a Bolognese you kind of want these things to melt away into the sauce so the bigger it is is fine but you're just gonna get a little chunky over product at the end start with the celery clean up the ends stock back and slice them in half and then each of those halves go one more time in half again the end you can kind of curve the knife around the curvature of the celery Bunch them up slice them as thin as you can [Music] you just get those into a bowl then with the carrot and cut the top of the bottom off clean it up into the stock bag then I'm going to find where it sort of begins to taper cut it into two cut a little flat surface off of the carrot and then cut into thin planks [Music] cut those Into Thin strips punch them together really fine dice you get this nice little dice now traditionally there are no tomatoes in this Ragu it's what separates it from the Neapolitan Ragu also Neapolitan ragus often use pork and other types of meat other than beef this basically uses only beef however tomato adds a little rid of richness a little depth and a little balance to the sweetness of the onion it helps with the color of the sauce so I'm going to use both a little bit of cherry tomatoes and a little bit of tomato paste I'm just going to take some cherry tomatoes and just slice them in half get them into a bowl now whenever you cut cherry tomatoes like this get those fingers out of the way I've definitely nicked them before in the past so now I just always make sure those hands are safely out of the way and the only other two ingredients we need is some white wine and some bay leaf there's a few more ingredients but we can get to them later and before we get cooking what I want to do pat dry our beef make sure it's as dry as possible so we can get like a really nice color a really nice sear on this beach beach on this beef and moisture will be the enemy of that so as dry as you can get them and get them with some salt now we can head on over to the stove and I'm just going to preheat a heavy Dutch oven on high heat so we can get a beautiful sear on these once that pot is hot enough add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan and then add the beef to Brown if you're making a larger amount of sauce sear it in batches or use that seven and a half quart dutch oven we really want to develop a strong crust on this first side of the beef and you can see the top side of the meat is becoming a bit shiny as it Cooks as moisture pushes up through it so I just want to wait for a real crust to develop on that first side before I flip it and once we see that hard crust develop give them all a flip now this is the type of crust you want to see when you're searing meat for a brace take your time even if it takes longer than you think that's the visual cue that you're looking for we still have that heat on high to evaporate any moisture releasing from the meat quickly and once we get as many sides as we can nicely browned and I'm going to lower the heat a little bit and remove the beef from the pot then we can go ahead and add in the carrots and the celery and like a little handful of those sliced onions turn the heat back up a little bit to medium high and then saute the vegetables for a few minutes and as they release their moisture it should deglaze the brown bits off the bottom of the pan which will now try to build back up again so after the vegetables begin to Brown around the edges I'm going to add about one and a half tablespoons of that tomato paste and get that stirred in and coating the vegetables again tomato paste is not really traditional but I think it really adds a nice richness to balance the sweetness and great color then we get the beef back into the pot stir everything together and once we can see the pot starting to Brown again then we can go ahead and deglaze the pot with about two cups of the white wine then reduce that down by at least half now I'll add the bay leaf and once I see that that wine has thickened we can go ahead and transfer that mound of onions directly over the top of the beef [Music] the onions with a decent amount of salt and stir them up best you can then add in the cherry tomatoes hit those with a little bit of salt as well and then we're gonna put the lid on before I set a timer I let everything Steam for a few minutes and then give it a check stir the onions up a little bit more as they collapse and then place the lid on for another few minutes give it one more stir set that flame down to low get the lid back on and we can set a timer for about two hours stirring about every 30 minutes or so now it's gonna cook down and you may be asking yourself Steve wow what a nice pot and with the fall coming if you want to cook some of my most comforting recipes you're gonna need a dutch oven like this thanks to our sponsor today Maiden part of their five piece enameled cast iron collection made in designs professional quality products for the home cook and they partner with multi-generational factories and Artisans to offer you a comprehensive collection of pots pan surfware and everything else you might need to cook and serve food in a home kitchen maiden's entire cast iron collection is entirely hand enameled and crafted with high performance cast iron for Superior heat retention and durability you can get the maiden Dutch oven in a 5.5 quart which I'm using today for a nice smaller batch of sauce but they also have a larger seven and a half quart pot for bigger jobs the 11 inch Skillets shape combines the versatility of made in stainless steel frying pans with the exceptional heat retention and durability that comes with their enameled cast iron collection and then maybe my newest favorite part of all time the miniature two quart dutch oven which has the same heat retention and durability as its bigger brother just in a miniature size something like this is perfect for sauce all of course in my favorite color Harbor blue and all of maiden's enamel cast iron cookware can go from stove top to the oven up to 580 degrees and now is the perfect time to get stocked up head on down my link in the description and let's get back into the recipe after 30 minutes let's give it our first check and the onions are melting down but they're just getting started so the lid goes back on and we're gonna let it go check back in after an hour and a half and the onions have further collapsed you have given off more of their juice and the color is deepening lid back on 30 more minutes and after the full two hours of cooking you can see the onions have completely collapsed given off all of their juice and that is now the braising liquid for the beef the smell is out of control the beef is starting to become tender now we can enter the second phase of the cooking process which is cooking with the lid off we have all this liquid in here we want to reduce that down and concentrate the flavor to thicken the sauce and to make it suitable for marrying with pasta so now for the purposes of you guys I'm going to set a stopwatch to measure how long I cook this I'm guessing it's going to be around two hours or so and over that time you'll see a transformation happen after 30 minutes the color is beginning to change after an hour and a half the color is getting even deeper and the flavor even stronger I see the bay leaf so I'm just going to remove that before I forget it and now that beef is just falling apart it's shredded it's blending in now a little bit better with those onions and I can give it a little seasoning check it's really nice maybe needs a touch of salt but it's already amazing it's got about 30 more minutes or so so I'll get a pot of water boiling and keep that sauce simmering and if at any point it dries up feed it a little bit of water at a time just to keep it wet and I ended up laying red juice for about two hours and 15 minutes A total cook time of about 4 hours and 15 minutes and now the beef and the onions have become one homogenous sauce now the sauce is looking and smelling beautiful and it's about time to think about the pasta and we have two options here you've got the traditional version this is the long ziti it's these Long Hollow tubes which I believe it like the precursor to cut ziti so generally what you would do is cut pieces and you just snap it like that you're never supposed to break spaghetti but this is the exception oh and that's traditionally how you would serve this pasta with this broken little ziti and I do like it but it's a little too rustic for me sometimes I get pieces that are just a little too long and they're kind of annoying to get into the mat so instead we're gonna use the cut ziti basically the same thing just nicely uniformly shaped which is what I want then I'm also going to need some fresh basil and then a blend of grated parmigiano reggiano with pecorino Romano traditionally it's just with pecorino Romano but it's just a little too much salt for me and I like the blend of the two so that's what I go with and then to finish it I just like a little bit of butter at the end let's wrap it all up now I can put the sauce in the back burner and reorganize my stovetop for cooking the pasta the water's just about boiling now so you can add salt to it enough salt to taste like a seasoned broth then I'm just going to measure out about half the box of ziti and then get those into the water and keep them moving the box says nine minutes to Al Dente so I'm gonna set a timer for seven and a half minutes and finish the pasta in the sauce now I'm going to move the pasta over to the side so you can take a look at the sauce and I'm gonna get my three-quart Saucier and about a cup or two of the Genovese sauce and get that simmering keep the pasta moving and when the pasta starch starts to rise to the top I'm gonna add some butter to the Genovese sauce which is not traditional and then I'm going to pick some fresh basil leaves and get them into the sauce now work that butter into the sauce until it melts the butter just sort of helps bring it all together and we're going to take some of that starch on the top of the pasta water and add it directly to the sauce now the sauce is looking absolutely perfect let's check the timer we're just at seven and a half minutes so we can fish out the pasta and transfer it to the sauce along with a little bit of the pasta water I'm going to use the pasta water as needed to finish cooking the pasta we also need enough liquid in the sauce to melt the cheese in it in a few minutes so I'm just marrying the sauce with the pasta constantly adjusting the consistency with pasta water and once the pasta is perfectly Al Dente I'm gonna kill the heat on the stove and allow the pasta to cool a bit and then work in that cheese blend stirring the pasta and get it melted nicely in the sauce [Music] and once the sauce is thickened and coated the pasta we're ready to serve it spoon the pasta into a bowl ensuring that plenty of that sauce is running throughout the pasta and then we can finish it with a healthy sprinkle of the cheese mix now we can take a bite and see the result which despite using such a large amount of sweet onions and cooking them way down it's not too sweet because of how we treated the sauce and the balance we added the flavor is this mellow smooth sweetness that also at the same time maintains its savoriness and you're left with this subtle satisfying aftertaste that lingers in your mouth forcing you to keep taking bite after bite this is truly one of the greatest Italian pasta sauces in the books and now it's a part of your rotation just in time for the fall and if you're not sucking up every ounce of sauce with that bread you're missing half the fun you don't want to miss this one recipe is going to be down in the description that's all that I have today I'll see you next time until then take care of yourself and go feed yourself foreign [Music]

Channel: NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Views: 804,806

Keywords: pasta alla genovese, naples ragu, famous Naples pasta, famous italian pasta recipes, not another cooking show, Stephen cusato, the food freak, easy italian recipes, comforting pasta recipes 2023, fall pasta recipes, slow cooking fall pasta recipes, slow cooking winter pasta recipes

Id: xbIoNCRDy6s

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023