How do you bolognese? Are you a purist and omit all tomato products? Do you not GAF and make your own version (it me)? Do you use a variety of meats? Add any veg? Traditional tagliatelle, or >gasp< some other long strand pasta like linguine or fettuccine or pappardelle? Spaghetti, even — which is popular in my home country?
I’ve only made it twice: a beef/pork bolognese, Lidia’s traditional recipe with white wine and milk, IIRC, and a lamb bolognese that just came up in my FB Memories yesterday, which I REALLY liked. My notes said: “Used 1 lb of ground lamb. Made on 10/29/22, subbing Aleppo pepper for the RPF, anchovy paste for the anchovies. Parsley instead of basil as well…basil doesn’t seem right with lamb? The food processor gets the carrots, celery and garlic all smushy, perfect for this recipe. It was AMAZING!”
And since were going to be cool again this weekend after a 2 day warm-up to the upper 70s, I think I’ll make it again.
Wow you are really trying to stir the pot aren’t you with this one
I love bolognese and since I have no Italian heritage, I do a few different versions depending on my mood, what I have, what I’m using it for, etc . … .with no risk of my family revolting (hahahaha).
So some of your questions:
Vegetables: with all versions I do start with at least carrots and onions, sometimes celery.
Meats: it depends . . . I love an all beef version, which is my typical “go-to” version most times. I also love versions with pancetta and beef, and/or pancetta with a beef/pork combo. I’ve never tried it with lamb (though I do a tomato meat sauce with lamb that I love) - but I find that in my bolognese I don’t like the “stronger” meat flavors like lamb or guanciale.
Tomato: depends . . . . in my all beef versions I find that I don’t typically add tomato paste, but when I do pork/beef versions I do add tomato paste . . . I have no idea why that is and can’t explain it. Never really thought about it until you posted this . . .
Dairy: this is one that I find interesting, having tried many many recipes (from reliable sources) . . . I add it but various recipes seem to add it at different times. I’ve seen - added at the beginning while cooking the meat - added at the very end - and added at the end but as a bechamel instead of straight milk/cream. Curious what others do?
Pasta: I’m completely open here - I prefer a long strand noodle but width doesn’t matter to me, but I’ve also added it to penne, ziti, oricchiette . . . all blasphemous but it all tastes good
Literally just made 2 lasagne bolognese (not sure how to pluralize that correctly - lasagnas I guess in english) - ate one, trying to freeze the other - never tried freezing it before, too hard to resist eating it right after making.
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Harters
(Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? DEMAND ANSWERS)
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Like many things, bolognese in the UK has been Anglicised and bears only a passing relationship with the Italian original. So, a traditional British bolognese - something like this: - is what’s cooked in this and millions of other British homes
Outside of a few stickler restaurants, chefs and home cooks in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, most people take Bolognese to mean meat sauce with tomato in it. Which of course is not what Bolognese is for a stickler.
I have only had the proper tomato-free Bolognese 2 or 3 times in my life.
I essentially follow Marcella Hazan’s recipe. However, I repurpose just about any leftover protein on hand. Roast, steak, chops… Anything goes.
Once I made a pork roast seasoned with cinnamon. It was not good. So I “washed” the surfaces and ground it up → Bolognese. By chance a noted French restaurateur/food writer was coming for lunch. Realizing that I’d better keep it simple, I served this sauce with papperdelle. Quite stunning, with just an allusive hint of the cinnamon. But once was enough. I won’t try to repeat my good luck.
Interestingly, Greek Makaronia me Kima (which Lingua included in a link above) , often considered Greek Bolognese, always has a distinct hit of cinnamon. Not even elusive. It’s pronounced!
INGREDIENTI E DOSI (PER 6 PERSONE)Polpa di manzo macinata grossa: gr.400; Pancetta fresca di maiale a fette, gr. 150; mezza cipolla, circa gr. 60; 1 carota, circa gr. 60; 1 gambo di sedano, circa gr. 60; 1 bicchiere di vino rosso o bianco; Passata di pomodoro gr.200; Doppio concentrato di pomodoro: 1 cucchiaio; 1 bicchiere di latte intero (facoltativo); Brodo di carne o vegetale leggero (anche di dado); Olio extra vergine d’oliva: 3 cucchiai; Sale e pepe.
INGREDIENTS AND DOSES (SERVES 6 PEOPLE)Coarse minced beef pulp: 400 gr; Sliced fresh pork belly, gr. 150; half an onion, about gr. 60; 1 carrot, approximately gr. 60; 1 stalk of celery, approximately gr. 60; 1 glass of red or white wine; Tomato puree 200g; Double tomato paste: 1 tablespoon; 1 glass of whole milk (optional); Light meat or vegetable broth (also stock cube); Extra virgin olive oil: 3 tablespoons; Salt and pepper.
(Thanks Google translate)
I’ve been making this sauce lately in the Instant Pot with good results but omit the parsley and the garlic to make it a bit more traditional:
It’s very easy to make and you don’t have to keep an eye on it.
I love all manner of meaty sauces, but I only call one of them bolognese, and that’s the traditional version with beef/pork/veal, minimal tomato, dairy and wine. I’ve tried several famous chef/authors’ recipes, including one by Mario Batali, the famous Marcella Hazan version and Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s from The Splendid Table, and have ultimately landed on the Batali recipe (with a few tweaks) as my favorite. I usually make a huge batch once or twice a year and freeze it in portions to enjoy with tagliatelle or pappardelle (fresh) or fettucine or linguine (dried), or make into lasagne alla bolognese.
Here’s a link to the Mario Batali recipe I prefer (I believe I first found it on the Food Network site but it has since been removed): https://whatsusaneats.com/?p=1195
I omit the olive oil and render the ground pancetta in butter before sweating the vegetables in the resulting fat mixture - I find that the finished product has plenty of fat without the additional olive oil, especially if the ground meats used are not too lean. I typically do use beef, pork and veal in a 2:1:1 ratio but I have made it with just beef and pork, or just beef, with delicious results. 2-3 ounces of tomato paste per pound of ground meat is the perfect amount of tomato, in my opinion - it gives just the right hint of flavor and acidity without turning the sauce from a meat sauce into a tomato sauce.
To that end, I enjoyed Marcella Hazan’s recipe but found it too tomato-y for a bolognese - it’s much closer to what I would consider an American-style “spaghetti sauce with meat” given that it uses canned whole tomatoes rather than paste, and quite a lot of them at that - two cups of tomatoes per pound of meat https://leitesculinaria.com/84057/recipes-marcella-hazan-bolognese-sauce.html. Good, just not what I’m looking for in bolognese. Also, she calls for nutmeg, which I prefer not to include in the meat sauce but rather in the bechamel when making lasagne alla bolognese. If I’m eating the meat sauce tossed with long pasta I prefer no nutmeg.
In contrast, Rossetto Kasper’s “Classic Ragu Bolognese” (page 44-45 for those who have a copy of The Splendid Table) was much too rich and not tomato-y enough for my taste. She calls for just 1 ounce of tomato paste per 1.25 lbs of ground beef, no veal/pork to lighten, and loads up on richness with 10 ounces of fatback and a half cup of heavy cream. Her “Lighter Contemporary Ragu Bolognese” on the following page is more in line with the Batali recipe but still calls for a little less tomato paste than I would prefer.
Outside of the above, where I am indeed a purist, I make all manner of meat and tomato sauces and love them all - I just don’t call them bolognese. I refer to American-style “spaghetti sauce” as fauxlognese, understood in this household to be a thick, tomato-heavy sauce with lots of ground beef (coarsely broken up, not finely mashed and long-simmered like bolognese), onion, garlic, and sometimes other stuff (diced fennel, mushrooms, sliced green olives, etc.). I never use a mirepoix/celery or carrots in this type of sauce.
That shrimp “bolognese” looks delicious but I cannot fathom why anyone would call it bolognese. It would be one thing if it incorporated the classic elements of a bolognese, but it’s not even close - fennel, lemon, tarragon? Call it ragu if you need it to have an Italian word in the title, or use another word for sauce from any other language on the planet that suits your fancy, but IMO calling it bolognese is just misleading and may discourage readers who know what bolognese is from trying what I’m sure is a fabulous recipe.
In case I haven’t nerded out on bolognese enough here, I am curious to know if any of you HOs ever make fresh pasta to make lasagna alla bolognese and if so, how thin you roll it. I made it last weekend for guests and rolled my pasta to a 6 on my KA attachment, which I now feel was too thin - I would do a 4 or 5 next time. I also went a little overboard with my sauces in each layer, especially the meat sauce, so it was just a little unbalanced. Guests still raved, but as I may have mentioned, I’m kind of a nerd about this and love to nitpick!
Yes, exactly. So if you’re making a meat (any meat) sauce not in the style of Bologna and you want to use an Italian word in its name, use ragù, not Bolognese. In the case of the Ottolenghi, I’m guessing he used Bolognese because he wanted to convey the idea of a long simmering time (long for shrimp, anyway), but ragù does that just as well or better, at least to this native American English speaker. He is Israeli-British, though - and we all know how those Brits love to bastardize both Bolognese and the English language .
