Spaghetti Bolognese is not as simple as minced meat and tomato sauce cooked together. If time was not allowed, then the Bolognese is broken. During lockdown, I finally have time to cook a real Bolognese. Recipe adopted from a Japanese professional chef.
Jump to Bolognese Sauce Recipe
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Learnt from a Japanese Chef
Everyone cook Bolognese differently: Some cook minced meat with tomato sauce and herbs, and some even use ready-made tomato sauce with minced meat. I feel skeptical. So I referred to a pasta cookbook《PASTA 基本と応用、一生ものシェフレシピ１００》 written by a Japanese chef, Manaka Masao. His Bolognese is time consuming, but it’s really delicious! Let me share it with you.
Freeze for Later
A Bolognese sauce that has to be cooked for so long is certainly not just a one-time serving. This recipe yields about 1100 g Bolognese sauce, enough for 7-8 servings of pasta. It can be stored in fridge for 3 days, or freeze it for later use.
When you’re ready to eat, just boil some pasta, reheat the leftover Bolognese sauce, and mix them together. It’s even tastier if you sauté garlic and chilli prior to reheating the sauce, to increase the aroma.
If you want to cook meat-free pasta sauce, please try You Can’t Go Wrong Tomato Sauce which also uses soffritto as an aromatic base.
Real Bolognese Sauce Recipe
Find a weekend, gather the ingredients, roll up the sleeves, and start cooking this amazing Bolognese sauce. It takes time, but it’s easy to make. Cook once and enjoy for several meals.
Ingredients
Makes c.a. 1100 g
- 500 g pork and beef mix minced meat
- 175 g onion, diced
- 125 g carrot, diced
- 40 g celery, diced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 600 g canned tomato
- 150 g red wine
- 1 bay leaf
- 50 g olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
How to Make
- Heat the olive oil in a deep pan over medium-low heat, fry the garlic until fragrant, then add the onion, carrot and celery to cook for 7-10 mins.
- Add the minced meat and loosen up. Add ½ tsp salt and cook until the meat has changed colour. Then pour in red wine and bring to simmer for 2 mins.
- Add tinned tomato and bay leaf, continue cooking with low heat for 30 mins. Then add the remaining ½ tsp salt, keep cooking for an hour more. While it’s cooking, have a taste check and adjust. Add a little water if it’s too dry.
Cooking Note
According to the cookbook, this Bolognese meat sauce takes 1 ½ hour to cook. But I couldn’t wait so long, so I’ve attempted to shorten the cooking time to 30 mins. However, the tomato sauce was not integrated well enough with the meat and the texture was a bit watery. So I let it kept cooking. At the end, the total cooking time was around 80 mins, yet it tasted good.
Bolognese Rigatoni with Aubergine Recipe
If you cook the Bolognese sauce right and pasta to al-dente, then your prefect pasta is almost there. That’s why I love pasta — simple ingredients and cooking deliver great results.
Ingredients
Serves 2
- 140 g rigatoni
- 270 g real Bolognese sauce
- 180 g aubergine
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 dried chilli, deseeded
- Parmesan cheese
- olive oil
- salt
- c.a. 100 g pasta cooking water
How to Make
- Cut the aubergine into 4 mm thickness, season with a generous pinch of salt, and shallow-fry or deep-fry till cooked through. Then set aside.
- Bring a pot of water to boil, add 1% salt and cook the pasta.
- Meanwhile, heat a tbsp of olive oil in a pan, fry the garlic and chilli until fragrant. Add in the real Bolognese sauce and stir well.
- Add a few tbsp of pasta cooking water to the meat sauce, and return the cooked aubergine to the pan.
- Stir in the pasta and have a nice stir. Add more pasta cooking water if required. Drizzle in some more olive oil, and freshly grate in Parmesan cheese. Serve immediately and enjoy!
