Easy Bolognese Sauce Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making an easy, delicious bolognese. So let's get started. First off, we have a bit of prep work. We're gonna chop our carrots, celery, and onion. Delicious base for so many things. You wanna have smaller, uniform pieces that are gonna cook well, but not become mush. So I'm chopping my carrot into quarters. Bolognese is one of our go-to weeknight meals, and it's just so easy. Everyone loves it. It's really hearty and filling. And it's an excuse to eat pasta. Now we're gonna chop the celery as well. I'm cutting it down the middle, and cutting it to similar-sized pieces. By the way, if you're running short on time, you don't have to do this. Surprise. You can just go to the grocery store and buy a large container of mirepoix, which is a mixture of celery, onion, and carrots that have been chopped for you. Now, grab one onion. Size is up to you. And we're gonna give this a good chop, too. If you're a slow chopper, it makes dinner prep so long. If you wanna chop an onion quickly, remove the skin, cut it in half, cut the top off, leaving the bottom root base, and then slice thinly, and then chop. It'll make it real easy. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, but you love delicious things, hit that sub button. There's two new recipes every week, and all with something delicious around the corner. You'll also want six or so cloves of garlic. You can mince those, ugh, or use a garlic press. All right, grab a big pot and some olive oil. We're gonna get to work now. Place your large pot over medium-high heat. Now we're gonna add two tablespoons of olive oil, about, and get it nice and hot. You should see the oil start to shimmer in the pan, and that's when you know it's ready. By the way, if you ever have a problem with things sticking in your pan, it's because the pans are cold. They're not hot enough. Even if you use a stainless steel pan, you can cook eggs, basically, in a little bit of olive oil, and it will not stick if it's the proper temperature. Is it annoying? Yes, it is. Will it stick? No, it won't. You just have to watch the temperature and kind of get to know your oven and your pans. I see a shimmer, so it's time to add in our onions, celery, and carrots. All right. We're gonna cook this over medium-high, stirring occasionally for about seven minutes, or until the veggies start to soften. This recipe is so popular, and I'm actually making this video because it was requested by a few users. In case you're wondering, Bolognese is named after Bologna, the region in Italy where it came from. This, however, is an Americanized version. I am not claiming it as a traditional Italian one, although I would love to go to Bologna and try it out, so if you have any suggestions, let me know. Once tender, add your minced garlic, and cook for about a minute. These garlic presses are a lifesaver. I was so sick of my fingers really stinking of garlic. They're such a time-saver. Stir that garlic in. You do not want it to burn, and if you're using a big, heavy pot like I am, things are getting really toasty inside. I actually took this off heat for a minute because the pot is screaming hot, so that residual heat will cook the garlic, but having the heat off will help me not burn it and make it bitter. Cooled down a bit, so now we can go back on. All right, after about a minute of cooking, the garlic's lost its bite, and it's time to add 1 1⁄2 pounds of ground beef in. Right there. If you don't eat ground beef, you can make this with ground turkey. You can make it with ground pork. Any kind of ground meat is gonna work just fine. If you wanna make a vegetarian version of this, you could add in some mushrooms, like I do for my mushroom bolognese from my first book. Bits of tofu, whatever you want. So right now, you're breaking up the ground meat. You're cooking it, moving it around, and you're just browning it, so it needs about five minutes in that medium-high heat. All right, it's been just over five minutes, and my beef is nicely browned, so it's time to add one cup of either a dry white wine, a nice red wine, or beef broth. Any of those will work, and it's really up to you. Some people don't wanna use wine. I would use the beef broth. And then as for red or white, it's really personal preference. The more traditional one is red. There we go. And we're gonna scrape the bottom of our pot down, because there are some little brown bits with tons of flavor, and we're just gonna deglaze the pan. So scrape, scrape, scrape, move, move, move. Let that wine cook for just a bit to burn the alcohol off, and now we're gonna add a 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes. These are gonna get broken up one way or the other. If you want, you can just kind of pour them right into your hand and crush as you go. That gets very messy. Or you can break them up with your wooden spoon. They'll break down more as they cook. We're also adding a six-ounce can of tomato paste. Pure tomato flavor, tons of lycopene. Okay, stir that tomato paste in. I'm also gonna add one or two bay leaves. It's totally up to you. They do add a lot of flavor, but they need time to seep in like a tea. Now it's time to do my favorite thing. Reduce heat to low, all the way down. I'm gonna partially cover this so some of the liquid can evaporate, and this will hang out and simmer for two hours. The flavors will come together. It's gonna thicken up and be so good. But we're not done with this recipe. There's more things to add. It's been two hours. I've been stirring occasionally. It's time to uncover our pot, and you're gonna let this simmer for an additional hour or until it's thickened. It totally depends on your cooktop and the weather and everything else, even the pot you're using. So take a look at the consistency, and if it needs more time, give it more time. If you think it's ready now, we'll go on to the next step. This needs a bit. My bolognese sauce has been simmering away for a little bit less than an hour, and it looks wonderfully thick. Right now, it's time to remove your bay leaf. Thank you so much. You did a lot. It's almost time for the last step, but right now, we're heating up some water, and we're gonna make some pasta. But the most important thing is to salt liberally. You need to give that pasta some flavor so it's not just flavorless strands of something with a tasty sauce on the outside. You need to have some saltiness on the inside so you can taste it. So I like to add at least a tablespoon, but it's up to you. As soon as this comes to a boil, we're gonna add our pasta in, and in the meantime, let's make our sauce a little bit better. So we added a ton of flavor in here, but there's a lot of acid, but we could use something mellow to add some richness and cut that acidity. We're gonna use whole milk. If you want, you could use half and half or even heavy cream if you wanna be indulgent, but grab one cup of milk or something else, and we're gonna stir that in. There we go. It gives a lovely creaminess. Really stir that in because the rest of your sauce is very dense and the milk is fairly light in comparison, so it'll hang out on the top. Let that simmer away on the lowest heat just to warm it through because the milk probably cooled it down. As soon as your salted water comes to a boil, we're gonna add our pasta in. One pound of pappardelle or tagliatelle, and if you don't have those pastas, really anything will work. So we added the milk in, but let's give this a taste. Blend! It needs salt, so I'm gonna add two teaspoons of salt. If you want, you could add the first teaspoon, mix it in, and then give it a taste and add accordingly, but to me, it needed a lot. And give that a good stir. We also want one teaspoon of black pepper, a little bit of spice, always nice. And by the way, you could use any other spices you want in this, so, you know, if you like adding oregano to things, go ahead. You want a little pinch of chili powder? I almost always add like a half teaspoon of chili powder into any tomato sauce I make because it just gives it a little bit of a lift. It doesn't make it super spicy at all. Okay. Stir that in as well, and now we can give it a taste. Let's see. Oh, that's so much better. So much better, I can taste things now. Okay, that's great. Drain your pasta. Time to mix the pasta in. Stir to coat, be gentle. Hopefully you've kept an eye on your pasta and it's not falling apart, it's nicely al dente. And oftentimes you can undercook the pasta just a little bit because it will continue to cook with the residual heat from the sauce. Your bolognese will store in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to four days. If possible, I'd recommend storing it separate from the pasta, but it'll store together as well. You can also freeze the sauce for up to three months without the pasta in it. Garnish your bolognese with some Parmesan and parsley. Just like that, it's ready to enjoy. Pure flavor, oh my gosh, it is delicious and so hearty too. I hope you get a chance to make this recipe, and if you like this video, check out my pasta playlist.