The Best Bolognese Recipe

Bolognese is a rich, thick meat sauce from Italian cuisine sometimes called ragu. What distinguishes it from other meat sauces is the high ratio of meat to tomato that makes it very thick and rich. Beginning with a soffritto of the holy trinity; carrots, onion and celery plus some garlic and salt. Flavor is slowly added and cooked into this dish over a long time. We also use a combination of three different meats; ground beef, ground lamb, and spicy pork sausage. The end result is an amazing elevation of a meat sauce.

This recipe is naturally gluten free and can be served successfully over gluten free pasta.

Watch a Video

Here is a video of 2 Cooks in the Kitchen making Bolognese (this was one of our first cooking videos):

Prepare the Soffrito

The most important ingredient for our bolognese is time. We want to cook everything low and slow and let the marvelous flavors develop, beginning with our soffritto. We’ll put the onion, carrots, celery, garlic and salt in the food processor and pulse until it is chopped up well. For a spicier version you can add a couple fresh serrano peppers to the food processor as well.

Cook the Soffritto

Then we will heat a drizzle of olive oil in our stock pot over medium low heat and pour in the contents of the food processor. We will add another pinch of salt and cook this stirring frequently until most of the liquid is cooked out in about 20 minutes. When you take your time with this and cook it well you provide a solid base for your bolognese.

Cut the Meat

The next ingredient we will need is the meat. We use 1 lb of ground beef, 1 lb of ground lamb and 1 lb of spicy pork sausage for this recipe and the combination of different meats really makes it special. We’ll want to cut all these up before putting them in the pan. We have found that the pork sausage, which is difficult to break apart when warm, cuts easily when it’s still frozen. Once our soffritto is cooked we will add the meat to our pot along with another sprinkle of salt.

Cook the Meat

We will cook the meat, stirring frequently, still over our medium-low heat, until it is all browned, about 20 to 30 minutes. You don’t want to rush this since this is where the great flavors will develop.

Add a Dried Chile Or Two

We like to add a dried chile to this for both the flavor and the spice. We’ll grind a dried serrano or a dried morita in the spice grinder and stir it in to our meat sauce.

Tomato Paste

Next we will add the tomato paste. This is an odd amount and we always have to hunt for a large can and a small can when we make this recipe. We need about 16 ounces and we usually end up with either 2 ounces more or 2 ounces less. It will be fine either way, you don’t have to throw the extra away. You cannot substitute tomato sauce for tomato paste. It is not the same! We will stir this in well and cook it for about 5 minutes to get it browned a little.

Salt and Zinfandel Wine

After the tomato paste has cooked a little we will add some more salt. You can give it a generous sprinkle at this point. Then we will add the wine. We need about 3 cups of a good red wine. This is a whole bottle minus a small amount for the chef, you know, to make sure the wine is good and all. You want to use a wine that you would drink and not just the cheapest wine you can find. We like a nice zinfandel for this job and Costco has the 7 Deadly Zins for a reasonble price, which works just fine. It’s also a nice wine to pair with the meal when you’re all done so be sure to get 2 bottles. We’ll get this all stirred in.

Thyme and Bay Leaves

Then we will add the bundle of thyme, the bay leaves and the water. We have never found this recipe to need much water. It is going to cook for several hours and we don’t want it to dry out but we also don’t want it to end up too soupy. We’ll just add 1/2 cup of water at this point and then if it looks like it needs more as it cooks we can add more later.

More Salt

Before we let it cook for a while we are going to add another generous sprinkle of Maldon Flake Salt.

Simmer Low and Slow

Now we need to turn the heat down to a low flame so the pot just simmers. We’re going to let it cook along for 5 or 6 hours, checking and stirring from time to time. When it is done you will have a nice thick meaty sauce that resembles a moist ground meat. You will want to cover the pot as this sauce can tend to bubble and spit out of the pot.

Serve With Pasta

Now you could eat this like a soup and I’m sure it would be a very fine soup but more traditionally it would be served with pasta. We have found one brand of gluten free pasta that is really quite good as long as you cook it long enough. We don’t really like to recommend or purchase this brand because of their treatment of humans, but until another company makes a gluten free pasta as good we are using Barilla. If you know of another brand as good please let us know. Another option is to serve over spaghetti squash.

Another great way you can serve bolognese is over a baked potato. This is absolutely delicious and naturally gluten free to boot!

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For a vegetarian sauce to serve over pasta try our Best Tomato Sauce.

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