Ultimate Bolognese Sauce – My Two-Day Meat-Sauce Recipe

Video Description

Learn how to make a deep, two-day Bolognese sauce — slow-cooked beef, pork & lamb in red wine and homemade stock for an ultra-silky ragù. Starting with a base stock made from oxtail and poussin, combined with the same aromatic vegetables found in the sauce, this foundation enhances the depth of flavours. The sauce features a hearty mix of beef chuck, lamb shoulder, and pork shoulder, simmered with the homemade stock. The slow cooking concludes in the oven, allowing the flavours to meld and intensify, creating a mouth-coating consistency perfect for coating pasta. 0:00 - Why my ragù isn’t “authentic” 0:52 - Day-1 Stock – oxtail & poussin 4:33 - Day-2 kick-off – guanciale soffritto 10:43 - Meat trio prep – pork, lamb & beef 13:24 - Umami bombs – soy, anchovy, tomato 15:14 - Full-bottle red-wine reduction 16:10 - Slow finish – 3 h oven braise 18:05 - Texture test, season & serve *Ingredients*: - ~1 kg meat mix (pork shoulder, lamb shoulder, beef chuck) - ~100 g guanciale - 2 medium carrots, finely diced - 2 celery stalks, finely diced - 2 medium onions, finely diced - 1 head garlic, minced - 1 bay leaf (plus more optional) - 2 tbsp tomato purée - 2 tbsp anchovy paste (or minced salted anchovies) - 2 tbsp soy sauce - 1 tin chopped tomatoes (400 g) - ~500 ml dry red wine - Gelatinous stock (see below) - Parsley (added in stages) - Salt, black pepper *Stock Ingredients*: - ~1 kg oxtail - 1 poussin (or small chicken) - Aromatic veg trimmings (celery, carrot, onion) - 2 bay leaves - 2 star anise - 1 tsp black peppercorns *Day 1 – Make the Stock*: 1. Roast oxtail and aromatic veg (minus garlic) in oven at 200°C until deeply browned (~40 min). 2. Transfer to pressure cooker with poussin, spices, herbs. Cover with water, cook 2 hr (or 6 hr simmer). Strain, chill overnight. Skim fat before using stock. *Day 2 – Make the Sauce*: 1. Dice guanciale, render slowly in cold pan until fat released. 2. Add diced carrot, celery, onion, sweat slowly. Add parsley stems. 3. When translucent, add garlic. Continue to sweat. 4. Add meat, break apart. Evaporate liquid without browning fully. 5. Add tomato purée, anchovy paste, soy sauce, canned tomatoes. Cook briefly. 6. Add wine, reduce at high heat ~8 min to remove alcohol. 7. Preheat oven to 150°C. Add enough stock to cover meat. Bring to boil, transfer to oven. 8. Cook 3 hr, stirring every 15 min. Add stock as needed. 9. After 3 hr, skim fat, remove bay leaves. Optionally blend small portion and return for creaminess. *To Finish*: Taste, adjust seasoning. Serve with pasta, parmesan, and chopped parsley. *The Story* When I first thought about starting this channel, I figured Bolognese would be one of my initial videos. 219 videos later, we are finally here. Along with roasted chicken, Bolognese is one of my two favourite things to cook. The dish is all about refinement. The basic principles and recipes are quite established that the task at hand is not to come up with something extraordinary but to execute each small step as close to perfection as possible, hopefully coming up with ideas to make small improvements to different steps along the way. There are so many small moving parts in what is considered almost a comfort food recipe that if I were to cook it a thousand times, I doubt any two would taste identical. The first time I cooked this dish seriously was after watching Heston Blumenthal’s In Search For Perfection series. I followed most steps, and the results were decent but nowhere near mind-blowing (the fault was probably mine, not his), but it was good enough that this easy-to-prep-ahead dish became one of my go-tos. Every time, I would do something slightly different and would often actually notice the difference in the end result. Shortly after that, I discovered Mr. Marco Pierre White. While I’ve heard about and read about him (first in Gordon Ramsay’s Humble Pie - the bike story…), I was too young to have had the chance to dine at Harvey's. While we can all agree his Bolognese recipe for Knorr did not showcase his skills, his cooking videos changed how I look at cooking, showed me the importance of tasting along the way, and questioning each step along the way. The perpetual refinement was on from that day. This dish has gone through, and will continue to go through, many iterations. I don’t expect anyone to actually cook my current recipe, but I hope by posting it and explaining, to the best of my abilities, the reasoning behind each step, it could contribute slightly to the refinement of your next meat sauce. ____ *Follow us on Instagram:* https://www.instagram.com/w2kitchn/ #W2Kitchen #bolognesesauce #meatsauce