Ingredient

Bolognese

A proper bolognese is a slow-cooked meat ragù with very little tomato, finished with milk, that takes three hours and tastes nothing like the tomato-and-mince sauce most people mean. Both are worth cooking; they are different dishes.

What makes it a ragù

The defining features are a long, slow cook and a low proportion of tomato. Tomato is a seasoning here rather than the body of the sauce — a couple of spoonfuls of purée, or a small tin, rather than the two large tins a quick mince sauce uses.

The body comes from the meat itself breaking down over hours, from a soffritto cooked until genuinely sweet, and from liquid — wine, stock and milk — reduced repeatedly rather than added all at once.

The result is brown rather than red, thick rather than saucy, and clings to pasta instead of sitting on it.

The method

1. Cook finely chopped onion, carrot and celery in butter and oil, slowly, for a good fifteen minutes until soft and sweet. This is not a step to rush.
2. Add finely chopped pancetta or bacon and let it render.
3. Add the mince — beef and pork together is traditional and better — and brown it properly, breaking it up. Do this in batches if the pan is crowded, or it will stew grey.
4. Pour in white wine (traditional) or red, and let it evaporate completely.
5. Add the milk and let that reduce away too. Milk tenderises the meat and rounds the acidity, and it is the step people omit and then wonder why theirs is sharper.
6. Now add a modest amount of tomato and enough stock to barely cover, and bring to the faintest simmer.
7. Cook uncovered, or barely covered, for two to three hours, topping up with stock or water as needed. It is done when the fat separates and the meat is completely tender.

Common mistakes

• Too much tomato. It becomes a tomato sauce with mince in it.
• Not long enough. Forty minutes gives cooked mince; three hours gives a ragù. There is no shortcut.
• Browning the mince in a crowded pan. Grey mince cannot be un-greyed.
• Skipping the milk. It makes a real difference to texture and to acidity.
• Boiling rather than simmering. It should barely move.
• Serving it with spaghetti. Traditionally it goes with tagliatelle, which is broader and holds the sauce. Spaghetti is not a crime, but the sauce slides off.

Finishing and serving

Toss, do not spoon

Drain the pasta a minute early and finish it in the pan with the sauce and a splash of the pasta water. This is the difference between coated pasta and pasta with a heap on top.

Pasta water

Starchy and salty, and it emulsifies the sauce so it clings. Never pour it all away.

Cheese

Parmesan, generously, at the table.

Make it ahead

It is much better the next day, and it freezes perfectly.

Lasagne

This is the ragù a proper lasagne uses. See lasagne.

Common questions