Real Bolognese Meat Sauce with Trader Joe's ingredients

Hello everyone. Today we're going to cook a traditional Italian recipe, Bolognese sauce. This is a meat sauce. There are so many variations, but I'm here today because recently the Italian Chamber of Commerce released a regulated recipe, an official recipe. And this is something fairly rare when it comes to Italian cuisine. I'm going to do my best to make these official recipes with Trader Joe's ingredients. Let's start with veggies, carrots, celery, onions, then of course meat. First thing to pay attention is the bacon. It has to be uncured, not smoked. I'm going to do it 100% beef. I bought a variety, organic, non-organic. It's all good. Then tomato sauce. And you need milk, glass of wine, either red or white, olive oil, broth, vegetable broth, salt and pepper, and you're good to go. The very first thing you want to do is to take your bacon, pancetta ideally, not smoked. Okay. So you take it, you chop it into pieces. And you are going to add just some olive oil on a big pot like this. Ideally it should be three spoons, but you know, it's okay to go how you feel. You add your pancetta that you chopped, like it doesn't have to be too fine. It doesn't have to be too big. You can remove some of the fats if you want. Okay. Now we have our bacon. Time to turn on the fire. And then you spread the bacon as nicely as possible. While we wait for the bacon to cook, we start working on the veggies. We get celery, carrots, and onion. Make sure to change your chopping board. Do not use this one. It's the meat. And you want to wash your knife as well. So here it is. We've got our veggies. I got baby carrots because that's what they had after the juice. It's okay. They're still carrots. No problem. Chop these veggies. Not too fine, not too thick. They have to get golden, but not to burn. Once the bacon is ready, you will see it as a bit crunchy. Do not burn it, please. It's time to add our veggies. Blow it. Okay. Look at this. This is ready. Make sure you don't burn the onion, of course. And now it's time for the main ingredient, meat. This new recipe, approved recipe, calls for 100% beef, which is what I'm going to do today. But most of the times what I do is 70% beef and 30% pork. While the meat is cooking, one thing you can do is to warm up some broth. This can be either vegetable or chicken broth. If you don't have the broth, just use warm water. After 10-15 minutes, as you can see, the meat is nice and brown. Now the recipe calls for a glass of wine. This is interesting because they say either red or white. I've tried with wine, without wine, and it makes no difference. My own take, no wine. Tomato sauce. Make sure that this tomato sauce, not regular tomatoes, not diced tomatoes, because otherwise there's too much water. Now, the recipe calls for one of these, one pound, right? Yes. But I'm going to add two because I like it better. There is another ingredient, which is tomato paste. But personally, I do not like it, so I'm not going to use it today. The recipe also calls for a glass of milk. This does make a difference, I have to say. It's way smoother, it's way more, I can say, firm in a sense. I really like better with milk, but I will add this later after the meat has absorbed the tomato. Look at this, it's already looking great. Now we keep this big boy simmering for two, three hours. It depends on the meat that they're using. Remember, make sure to keep medium heat because you don't want the meat sauce to get stuck at the bottom of the pot and to burn. And you keep your broth handy. Why is that? OK, I suggest you every five to ten minutes to come here, keep an eye on it, check it out. If you see it becomes too solid, you add some broth. After an hour or so, you can add a glass of milk. We're done. Two and a half hours. It's pretty good. As you can see, the sauce is nice and smooth, fairly juicy. This is going to be great with some tagliatelle. Now, when I cook meat sauce, I cook a lot of it. Why? Because then I freeze it. You can keep it in the freezer for up to six months. OK, I hope it helps. See you next time. Ciao.