Basic bolognese sauce for lasagne or pasta dishes
- ⏲️ Prep time: 45 min
- 🍳 Cook time: at least 4 hours
Ingredients
- extra virgin olive oil
- 2 carrots
- 2 celery sticks
- 1 large onion
- 2 garlic cloves (optional, but not traditional)
- 200 grams pancetta (optional)
- 300 grams beef mince
- 350 grams pork mince
- 350 grams veal mince (if you cant find veal replace with pork)
- 140 grams concentrated tomato paste
- 690 grams diced tomatoes
- water
- 1 can peeled tomatoes
- 1-2 glasses wine (whatever you have open)
- 1 glass of milk (optional)
- 1 glass of beef/vegetable stock (optional)
Directions
- Finely dice the carrots, celery, onion and pancetta, if your blender can handle it you can optionally blend all this to speed it up.
- Heat up a large saucepan or dutch oven on medium low heat and put enough olive oil in to cover the bottom of the pan.
- Put in your diced veggies and pancetta and let it slowly sauté for about 10 minutes until everything is fragrant and soft.
- If you are using garlic add it here and let it sweat for a minute
- Add in your minced meat and break it up into small clumps about the size of a rice grain with a spoon, keep stiring until all your meat is lightly cooked.
- Once all your meat is cooked and looks a bit grey add your wine, add enough to fully deglaze the pan (I usually add a little bit extra for the flavor) stir it through until it has completely evaporated. (If you are using it you can also add the stock at this point)
- Once your pan is somewhat dry you can add the tomato paste to the beef, let it cook for a minute to remove the slight metallic taste.
- Add your canned and peeled tomatoes and use your spoon to break them up, you don’t have to be too thorough since they will soften up while the sauce cooks.
- add the diced tomatoes, fill the jar your tomatoes came in with water give it a shake and add that to the pot, do the same with your can of peeled tomatoes.
- lower your heat to the lowest setting and slightly cover the pan with your lid.
- let it simmer for as long as you can wait, preferably at least 4 hours, if it starts getting a bit too dry you can add a bit more water to make sure the sauce doesn’t burn.
- Once it’s done simmering for as long as you can muster and its nice and thick, the liquid should not come above your meat and should be pretty concentrated
- You can add your glass of milk, let it simmer for 10 more minutes and serve.