- Updated: December 17, 2020
Bolognese Sauce or Ragu alla Bolognese is a meat sauce. A true Bolognese takes time, but it tastes way so much better (of course!).
I got a jar of Bolognese sauce recently through a product promotion at Village Grocer.
The Barilla spaghetti promotion pack had 2 packs (500 g each) of spaghetti n5 and a 400 g jar of Bolognese sauce. The promotion pack was priced the same as 2 packs of pasta. They were literally giving away the sauce for free.
It is my personal preference to use linguine for a meat sauce pasta dish. So, instead of Spaghetti No. 5, I used Linguine No. 13.
I have omitted pancetta as it is not available. And wine as well, as I prefer to drink it instead of using it for cooking.
The detailed recipe for making a meat sauce from scratch can be found here.
Note:
Tbsp = tablespoon
Chopped = chopped or cut into ½ cm pieces
Soffrito is a mixture of slowly cooked carrots, onions, and celery, used as a base to add flavour to sauces, soups and stews. The vegetables are roughly chopped into small pieces and cooked in olive oil over low heat until soft and just shy of brown or golden.
Pancetta is a salumi made of pork belly meat that is salt cured.
Salumi (singular salume) is an Italian term describing the preparation of cured meat products made predominantly from pork.
Ingredients
500 g linguine or spaghetti.
1 tbsp salt added to boiling pasta.
3 tbsp olive oil.
1 large size onion finely chopped.
1 large size carrot finely chopped.
1 celery stalk finely chopped.
25g pancetta cut into pieces, if available.
2 tomatoes finely chopped.
300 g minced lean pork.
1 tbsp oregano.
½ tbsp black pepper powder.
1 jar (400 g) Barilla Bolognese sauce.
4 to 6 tbsp chopped parsley. The stems are to be separated from the leaves. The stems are used in an earlier stage of the cooking the dish. The leaves are added when mixing the sauce with the pasta.
Grated cheese – added prior to serving
Method
1. Heat 3 tbsp oil in a pan. Add finely chopped onions, carrot, celery, and pancetta (if available).
2. Stir and sauté on a low to medium flame for 15 minutes or until the soffrito is brown or golden.
3. Then add the minced pork, oregano, and black pepper.
4. Stir and sauté on a medium flame for 5 minutes or until pork is cooked and brown.
5. Then add the finely chopped tomatoes and parsley stems and sauté the ingredients on a low to medium flame for 2 minutes. At the same time, boil water with 1 tbsp of salt in a large pot for cooking the pasta.
6. Pour the sauce from the jar into pan and stir and mix. Cook until the pasta is ready. At the same time, place the pasta into the large pot of boiling water.
7. Cook the pasta in the pot of boiling water according to package directions until al dente. This is around 9 minutes.
8. While the sauce is being cooked in the pan, add some pasta water according to your needs. Check and stir occasionally to ensure that the sauce is not dried out.
9. When the pasta is al dente, transfer it to the pan containing the sauce. Add the chopped parsley leaves and some more pasta water if it is a bit dry.
10. Stir and mix the pasta to ensure that it is fully coated with the sauce, for 1 to 2 minutes.
11. Switch off the flame.
12. Transfer the pasta covered in the meat sauce to the serving plates.
13. Add grated cheese and serve.
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 40 mins
Total Time: 50 mins
Cuisine inspiration: Italian
Servings: 4