Ragù alla bolognese, known as bolognese sauce, is a typical Italian sauce that comes from the beautiful city of Bologna. The base of this delicious sauce is grounded beef, tomatoes and a mix of vegetables. Very simple and yet very savory.

Everyone has his own technique. Who adds more or less tomato sauce, who sauté only onion and doesn’t put celery and carrot,who doesn’t add milk but just wine. The list continues. I remember when I was a kid my grandpa use to make the best bolognese sauce! It was always a little bit sweet. Only many years after I understood why. He was always adding a spoon of sugar to remove the tomato acidity. But I am sure he was doing something else, because I’ve tried, but I have never reached to the same flavor.

Bolognese sauce Ingredients

Meat: the traditional recipe has both grounded beef and pork, but in this case I used only beef.
Carrots, Celery and Onion: finely chopped they will dissolve in the sauce leaving just their flavor. If you don’t like carrots or celery, use just onion in your sauté.
Tomato paste: the traditional method uses only tomato paste and not tomatoes puree. I use both, because I like it better. I usually use Mutti tomato paste, I prefer it to others and I’ve been using it since I can remember. Try to avoid paste that has additions of herb or spices.
Tomatoes puree (passata): try to find a tomatoes puree without any herbs or any other additions. It needs to be tomatoes puree plane and simple. I would try to find one of the main Italian brand like Mutti, Pomì, Cirio ..etc.
Water, wine and/or milk: following the traditional recipe you should add white wine and milk. the milk is added at the end of the cooking process. In my case I didn’t follow the traditional recipe, but my family recipe and I’ve just used red wine.
Rosemary and salt: for the final touch.

Bolognese Sauce Recipe -Authentic Italian Ragù

Cuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy

Prep time

minutes

Cooking time

hours

Ingredients

1.5kg ground beef⁣⁣⁣
1 Onion, medium size and finely chopped
2 or 3 Celery sticks, finely chopped
1 Carrot, small size and finely chopped
2L Tomatoes Puree
3 poons of Extra-virgin olive oil⁣⁣⁣
150ml red wine
Fresh rosemary as much as you want
Salt

Directions

In a large saucepan ,over medium-high heat, heat oil with onion, celery and carrot for about 3-4 minutes.
Stir in beef and garlic, breaking up meat with back of a spoon. Cook until no longer pink and lightly seared, about 8 minutes.
Increase the heat to medium-high and add the beef. With help of a wooden spoon break up the beef and keep stirring it. The meat will soon start to get from red to light brown. At this point add the glass of wine and let the alcohol evaporate for a few minutes while continuing stirring.⁣⁣⁣
Once the alcohol is evaporated (you can understand that moving with your hands the vapor that comes from the pot towards your nose. If you smell alcohol, you need to wait a little bit more, otherwise the alcohol is fully evaporated). Now you can add the rest of the ingredients. Tomatoes puree, paste, salt and rosemary.
Cover with a lid, increase the heat and bring it to a boil. When it starts boiling wait for 10 minutes and only then reduce it to minimum heat and cook it for about 3h. The sauce is ready when mixing it you can see that it got pretty thickened. If after mixing the bolognese sauce it still looks pretty watery, it means that is not ready. Don’t give up and cook it until it gets pretty dense. Believe me it will worth it!

Notes

Onion, celery and carrots need to be finely chopped. If you have a food processor pulse them there until they are all blended together.

What is Bolognese Sauce good for?

You can use this sauce with any type of pasta, gnocchi or to make Lasagna. The classic Italian Lasagna has in fact bolognese sauce as one of its main ingredients.

You can freeze this sauce in small containers for a few months. When you decide to use it I recommend to defrost the bolognese sauce using a saucepan over low heat, and adding a few drops of oil or a spoon of water to help it reach the right thickness again.