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Pasta Bolognese Recipe

Minimal Version

Ingredients

  • Packet of pasta of your choice (e.g. 500g spaghetti)
  • 500g minced beef
  • Jar of pasta/bolognese sauce

Optional

  • Salt for salting the boiling pasta water)
  • Cheese for putting on top of the finished pasta bolognese.

Instructions (One pot version)

  1. Boil pasta in a pot of water as per instructions on packet.1
  2. Drain pasta.
  3. In the same pot, cook the minced beef.2
  4. Once all/most of the minced beef is brown, pour the pasta sauce into the bowl and mix it with the beef.
  5. Once the pasta sauce starts to bubble, turn off the heat.

You can mix the pasta with the meat sauce, or put the pasta into the bowl/plate and then pout the sauce on top. Serve with toppings (usually shredded cheese3) of your choice.

Comments

  1. Salting the pasta water is usually a habit of mine and most people will recommend a pinch, which is basically “pinch” a tub of salt with all of your fingertips and then toss it into the pot. If from a salt shaker, shake/grind it about 3-5 times. Personally I don’t notice a difference but who am I to judge long-time tested recommendations!
    If you’re the type to mix the pasta with the meat sauce, you may want to consider boiling the pasta for one minute less than the recommended time. This is because once you put the pasta into the finished meat sauce there’ll still be residual heat that’ll cook the pasta just that bit more.
  2. When you put the minced beef in the pot to brown, leave it as a clump to begin with, so that it lies flat on the bottom of the pot. This will allow you to give it a good sear for additional flavour! Repeat on multiple sides, then break it up when you’ve sufficiently seared the minced beef. Of course, when you sear the beef you’ll need to deglaze the pot, so after you pour the pasta sauce in make sure to scrape the bottom of the pot!
  3. Truthfully I’m comfortable with cheddar (“tasty”) cheese and if you’re lazy you can just buy the shredded version. But it’s cheaper to buy a block and shred your own.
    Some people recommend you only buy the block of cheese and shred it yourself because shredded cheese on its own will have more preservatives due to larger surface area. Bit of a moot point if you’re cooking for yourself, but something to consider if you want to fancy it up for someone else.

My Version as of Writing This Blog Post

Ingredients (for 5 servings)

Meat Sauce Base

  • Mirepoix (usually pre-prepped and frozen): ~400g diced onion, ~200g diced carrot, ~200g diced celery4
  • Bottle of passata (which is just blended tomatoes)
  • 1kg minced beef
  • Flavourings: 2 beef stock cubes, garlic, soy sauce, Worchestershire sauce, salt, MSG, red wine, powdered veggie stock

Others

  • Packet of pasta of your choice: I used 1kg of spaghetti but it’s a little too much noodles relative to the amount of meat sauce I got.

Instructions

  • Boil the pasta as per instructions on packet. Salt water if desired.
  • While the pasta is boiling, prep mirepoix and blend, using the passata and some pasta water to make it easier for the blender to churn through the frozen ingredients.
  • After the pasta is boiled, save at least 1 cup of pasta water (I just use a mug and dip it into the pasta water)5. Drain noodles.
  • In the same pot, sear the meat with oil of your choice2. Lightly salt the meat while it’s searing6.
  • Once a sufficient amount of meat is seared (and the rest mostly browned), pour the blended passata+mirepoix into the pot and bring to a boil. Make sure to scrape burnt bits off the bottom of the pot (deglaze).
  • Add other flavourings as desired and to taste. This is largely personal choice but I’ve listed above what I generally choose between.
  • Once the meat sauce starts to bubble, lower heat and let it simmer with the lid off until sauce is at desired consistency/thickness. If it’s too thick or you let it simmer for too long, use the reserved pasta water. If it’s too thin and you need to serve quickly, I’d use cornstarch+water.

Comments

4. I usually prep+freeze only the carrots and celery in advance. Onions’ smell tends to leak out of freezer containers and impact everything else, so you usually have to double bag them which I’m not a fan of. However onions can also be kept in the pantry whilst carrots and celery will eventually get all weird and droopy, so while I’m boiling the pasta I only need to prep onions.
There’s no need to adhere to strict measurements, mainly because carrots/celery/onions will never be that convenient, it’s more about keeping a 2:1:1 ratio of onion/carrot/celery (eyeballing it by physical volume is fine) and you can adjust to your taste. Don’t use celery leaves.
The objective of mirepoix is that it creates a veggie stock which helps thicken and adds body/volume to the sauce. Plus for a dish which would just mostly be carbs and protein, hiding some veggies in there helps on the health side of things.

5. The starch in the pasta water is an emulsifier, meaning it helps oils + water blend together to make the sauce. Arguably you could forego this and use some other starch/emulsifier.

6. There’s a piece of cooking wisdom that is “salt at every step” or “salt as you go”, and the explanation I heard is that salt is slow acting, and applying it to the meat specifically allows the salt to act on the meat first before it gets mixed into the sauce. Extend this idea to any other multi-step recipe basically, depending on what ingredients you want to enhance with salt/MSG.

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