I love traditional ragù bolognese. In my culinary lexicon, that means a shredded meat sauce made from cubes of meat, stock, a little soffritto, a splash of wine, and a bit of cream or milk. In my world, this sauce is not made from ground meat, but certainly plenty of bolognese would argue about that. It is cooked long enough until the meat is sufficiently tender to shred when stirred with a spoon; there is no such thing as a quick ragù bolognese. Many traditional versions use pancetta and beef. I use only pork shoulder, primarily because I like pork better than beef.
I've made it in the oven, on the stove top, and in the slow cooker, especially when I want to leave it unattended while I am away from the house. The batch illustrated below, I threw in the slow cooker for about 9 hours. It is two-day process. The first day, I make the stock and then on the second day, I make the meat sauce using that stock.
The sauce is only as good as the stock you make it with, so if you want great sauce, you must first make great stock. I first roast stock bones, pork neck bones in this case, with chunks of onions, carrots, and celery. Once that comes out of the oven, I remove all the solids to the stock pot and put the roasting pan over a moderate flame.
To the pan, I add a large spoonful of the best tomato paste in the world, estratto di pomodoro, which has a deep, rich, umami flavor. Stirring constantly so that the paste will not burn, I further caramelize it for another minute or two. Then I stop the caramelization and potential burning by adding a glass of water. Once the water goes in, I scrape all the browned bits off the bottom of the pan.
After all the bits are off the roasting pan and into the liquid, I turn off the heat and pour the liquid into the stock pot. Into the stock pot go all my vegetable trimmings (leek leaves, celery leaves and ends, carrot tops, onion peels, parsley stems, etc.). Onion peels may surprise you, but they have been used forever as a yellow or brown dye and that color will serve your stock well.
Next, I add a couple of pig's feet (trotters) to the stock pot. Some people add a packet of gelatin to the stock pot to give the resulting stock a satiny mouthfeel, but I prefer to do it the old fashioned way using pig's feet. After filling the stock pot with water, it will simmer for several hours. I strain, cool, and refrigerate the stock overnight to solidify any fat on top which I remove the following day.
I pick the meat off the neck bones and use it for something (tacos!). In this case, since I am making meat sauce, I add it to the sauce.
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| Vegetables and Pork Necks Ready to Roast |
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| Roasted Vegetables and Pork Necks, Ready to Deglaze |
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| Vegetables and Scraps for the Stock |
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| Stock Just Starting to Cook |
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| Strained Stock |
On the second day, I start the bolognese by browning my pork shoulder cubes. I brown them only on one side. While browning them develops flavor, browning also dries the meat out. As a compromise between flavor and succulence, I brown just one side.
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| Browning Pork Shoulder Cubes in Batches |
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| After Browning the Meat, the Goodness Called the Fond Remains |
Once the meat has been browned, caramelized meat juices called the
fond in classic French cuisine remain on the bottom of the pan. Just like I did for the stock, I want all this tasty flavor in my meat sauce. As you can see, I am adding layer upon layer of flavor to the finished product.
To start removing the bits from the pan, I leave it on the flame and add my
soffritto (
mirepoix in French), a small dice of carrots, celery, and onions. The water in the vegetables will help loosen the fond from the pan as I stir. Once the vegetables have started to cook (the onions have gone translucent), I ensure that the remaining bits come off the bottom of the pan by adding a glass of white wine. I only ever use white wine for my ragù.
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| Soffritto for Ragù |
Now it's time to put the meat sauce on to cook. I put the browned neck cubes, the picked neck meat, the soffrito, the defatted stock, and a cup of heavy cream to the slow cooker. I put it on high and let it cook until it reaches the consistency of the sauce in the final picture, skimming the surface fat every now and again. I season the sauce with salt at the end. It's never good practice to salt a sauce that is going to be highly reduced (thus concentrating the salt) before the end.
The process will take several hours at a minimum and more if you are using a slow cooker. This batch took about nine hours in the slow cooker. It would have taken far less on the stovetop, but I had things to do away from home that did not leave me time to keep a mindful eye on the sauce on the stove, stirring it every now and again to keep the bottom from scorching. As a home cook, cooking should fit your life style; your life style should not be cooking. That's the province of a restaurant.
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| Sauce Before Cooking |
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| Finished Ragù Bolognese |
There's nothing hard about this sauce. It merely takes a lot of time (the vast majority of which is unattended), but that time is necessary to achieve the caramelized and umami-rich flavor that you expect from a quality meat sauce.
Finally, I note that there are no seasonings other than salt. The bolognese do not add herbs to their sauce in general, nor do they add garlic. Some do add a touch of nutmeg (noce moscata), but that remnant of highly spiced medieval cooking has never been my jam. You do you.
