How to Make BOLOGNESE SAUCE like an Italian

- In this video we are making Bolognese ragù originating from the city of Bologna in the Emilia-Romagna region. The region that best represents Italy because Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, prosciutto, lasagna,

bolognese

and parmigiano and much more. All these beautiful dishes come from that region. I want to show you the authentic recipe to

make

a fantastic

bolognese

sauce

. Bolognese ragu. Are you ready? (upbeat rhythmic music) (fun music) Hello and welcome to Vincenzo's Plate. Today we are going to

make

the Bolognese ragout. The most beloved and favorite Sunday

sauce

. This is a sauce that is made with meat. It's a meat sauce.

So don't be confused when people think "oh, it's ketchup based." No, this is a meat base. Sauce is just an extra ingredient that you add for extra flavor. So let's get into it, let's learn how to make an authentic Bolognese ragù, known as Bolognese sauce. To make a top quality bolognese ragout we need top quality ingredients and we start by saying that we need 500 grams of top quality beef and about 200 grams of top quality pork. So we're talking about ground beef, ground pork. Why do we need pork and beef? Now, originally you can only use beef, but I think pork will take the flavors to the next level.

The other important ingredient is 150 grams of bacon. We want to use a nice, good-sized onion. A carrot and a stick of celery. So we need to use a good quality, you can use a passata or a tomato sauce with basil. Of course, I'm using my tomato basil sauce and it weighs about 500 mils. It's like a bottle of passata or a bottle of Vincenzo's Plate tomato sauce. Top quality extra virgin olive oil. A glass of white wine and then we need two glasses of water. Last but not least, salt and pepper and an ingredient that I like to use, it's not necessary, but I like to use my oregano, oregano for my meat.

The first thing we want to do is cut them into small pieces. Then pancetta is the ingredient you should use because it will give the perfect touch to your bolognese. There is no bolognese without bacon. So this is probably the most important ingredient along with your beautiful beef and pork. Now the onion, we want to cut it and use it whole, okay? What we will do with these ingredients is that we will mix them. Anyway, we cut the sides here off the carrot and I like to use the carrot skin. No need, you can peel it off.

Celery, we cut the bottom part and again, we cut it into pieces and then blend it. So when I say mix, we put it together there. It's like putting it through the meat grinder, you know, but we don't do that, we just mix the ingredients and what we do now, we just mix it. So. As you can see, our ingredients here are breaking down there and that's what you want. (blender whirring) And here it is. We have our beautiful blend made here. We need to start by making the soffritto and what we do is heat a good frying pan, I have a good frying pan and now we put four to five tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Here is our beautiful mixture that we mixed before and what we do is we wait for the oil to heat up and gently cook our ingredients, okay? So we started putting them on. Then, over a medium meat, you cook them until we get the beautiful caramelized flavor. You want to brown the onions, but honestly, it's a process that will take about 10 minutes. Oh yes, the smell in the kitchen right now must be divine. After about 10 delicious minutes smelling the soffritto, it's time to add the meat. So we have ground beef and pork and what we do now, as we cook it, we break it up with a spoon and we want to make sure that the ingredients are mixed well, okay?

Look, at this point you do want to smell the ragù. At this point, you'll want your kitchen to smell like ragù. This is where the magic begins, okay? So we want to flip it to make sure all the pieces of meat are nicely browned and now we need to start adding the flavors to our bolognese. So the first flavor we're going to add is salt. Salt, you have to be generous with the salt and stir. Okay, now at this point, many people have different options of types of herbs to use. I like to use oregano. For me, oregano, oregano, is a wonderful complement, a complement to add to meat.

You don't need to put too much. Now that we have the oregano we are going to add the wine. Okay, and we have a glass of white wine that I'm going to add to the sauce. What the wine will do is the wine will evaporate in a very short time, in about five minutes the wine will evaporate. Honestly, don't worry about it. If you don't like wine, maybe add a little broth, okay? We will wait about five minutes for the wine to evaporate before adding the tomato sauce. (spoon clinking) So when do you know when the alcohol has evaporated?

Well, as you can see, do you see the bubbles there? Well, that shows you that the alcohol is evaporating. The alcohol is cooking. So it practically disappeared. A couple more minutes and we can safely add the tomato sauce. And this is the moment when we can start the countdown. The countdown begins because from now on we need one more hour for our Bolognese ragout to be ready. Well. So. Mix it well. As I said before, ragù Bolognese is not a ragù with sauce, that is, it is not full of sauce. The sauce is the meat. The Bolognese ragout, the important thing is the meat.

Let's add some pepper because we love pepper. It's not necessary, but right now I like to chop up some bell pepper. Mix it well and now we are going to add a glass of water and to measure I am using a wine glass again. So we are using a glass of water for now and we let it simmer and we need to cover it. This is the moment where we are going to cover it with a lid. Okay, we put the lid on, we want the sauce to cook inside so that it stays moist. We want the sauce to stay moist.

If we don't put the lid on we are going to have a problem, we are going to have the problem of the meat drying out along with the sauce. Then you take a lid and cover it. Our beautiful sauce is cooking and I need to tell you guys something. Well, this recipe is the recipe that represents Italy. The best of the world. Okay, everyone loves meat ragù, bolognese ragù. Please, please, don't watch those videos. There are so many videos on YouTube that do it the wrong way and you are damaging the traditions of Italy, the history of the place and the dish.

You're hurting the nonas all over Italy, you know, please keep it traditional. Follow my recipe. This is the basic version, you can give it your touch, yes, but don't bastardize it, don't change it too much. Well, try to keep it traditional and don't forget that this is not a tomato sauce dish. It's a meat sauce. Well? You want the meat to take over. It's been half an hour, guys, let's open the lid. Let's see what's going on there. Oh! Yeah! See what I mean when I say keep the lid on? The thing is, a glass of water was enough, it's still nice and moist.

The meat is cooked to perfection. The tomato is still there, it is giving color to the sauce and what we do now is continue cooking it without covering for another half hour. Guys, as you can see from the edges here, you can see that the sauce has reduced and it's still going on. We have about 20 more minutes left and you can see that the meat is already close to the edge up to here, you know, so we just need this water to go away and as you can see, the meat is nice and moist. The reason we have to break the meat is to have this result now.

If we didn't break the meat, the meat would now be a big meatball, it would be a big piece and at this point it can still be broken more. The smaller the meat, the more you will enjoy your pasta. Well? Guys, it's important to stir the sauce every 10 to 15 minutes because you don't want the meat to stick to the bottom and look at that. 20 more minutes left, guys. ♪ 20 more minutes ♪ And here we have our beautiful sauce and as you can see all the water has disappeared and look how rich and thick it is right now. Check it out.

Is this what we want. Look how beautiful this meat is and don't worry about the water because it will be absorbed by your pasta. So this is the good consistency you want. There are some people at this point who put cream in it or put milk in it. Yes, you can still do it, but I like it as is. Look how pretty this is. So I'm not going for the milk, but again, it's up to you. For the bolognese ragout, bolognese sauce, what pasta do we use? Now you can use spaghetti like you've been doing your whole life but you're not going to enjoy the dish as much as you should.

The reason is because the spaghetti is very thin and the meat doesn't really stick together and when you pick up the fork you miss the texture in your mouth, that beautiful combination in your mouth. If you use pappardelle, tagliatelle, fettuccine, the reason it's better and right is because, one, it's egg pasta. This way they absorb more of the sauce. They absorb the sauce and the meat sticks to the pasta, so when you pick up the noodle fork you'll have a nice combination of pasta and meat in your mouth, okay? You won't want to use spaghetti anymore, believe me.

If you want to use dry pasta, use penne or rigatoni. That's the best, rigatoni or ziti. Simply because the meat goes inside and again you have the combination of flavors. The combination of meat and pasta. Now that our sauce is ready what we are going to do is cook the pasta. We're going to add a good spoonful of rock salt. I put it inside. Now always follow the instructions on your package, okay? I am using egg noodles but it is dry egg. This takes about seven minutes. If you make fresh pasta, it will probably take about four minutes to cook.

Oh Lord. So nice. I know what you're about to ask. You're going to say but that's too much sauce for me. What am I going to do with all that sauce? Well, you use what you need for lunch or dinner and you will freeze what is left. Oh yes, you can store it in the refrigerator for about five days or freeze it. You can put it in a bag, a Ziploc bag, or you can put it in plastic containers. Okay guys, our pasta is ready so let's put our bolognese sauce in a pan. In a very hot pan.

Put it in there, you don't need to add oil. So we're going to put a little bit of sauce there because we're going to make the pasta butter in that pan. So our pasta is ready. We can get our money. So we need to add about two tablespoons, two tablespoons of pasta water because it's full of starch. So we are going to add it into this pan and then we make the butter. What the water does, the starches in the water, is pretty special because it combines all of our ingredients and that's how we have a beautiful plate of tagliatelle bolognese.

Here it is, guys. Here you have for you our wonderful dish of bolognese noodles. See, I like to add a little more sauce right at the end. Right at the end I put more sauce on top. I keep stirring and then what we do, we serve and add more sauce to the plate. Isn't this the best pasta or video recipe? You need a nice glass of red wine and here's my beautiful, beautiful pasta. So make sure you mix it correctly, make sure you have the ingredients, the sauce, the meat all over it and it's time to enjoy.

To see if I made a masterpiece. (slurping loudly) That's what I meant when you need to use that egg pasta as tagliatelle. Look, the meat comes out on my fork, a beautiful silky texture of the pasta comes out, a beautiful juicy, tender meat, full of flavors and all together in my mouth. You know, you can't have this experience with spaghetti. This is simply a wonderful pasta. Now I know why it is such a popular pasta. (slurping loudly) Thank you so much for watching this episode. See you in the next video recipe for Vincenzo's Plate. E ora si mangia - Plate by Vincenzo.

Oh yeah! (slurping loudly) Mmm. It melts in my mouth. It melts in my mouth. (slurping loudly)