Bolognese Sauce
Transcript
00:00When I make bolognese sauce, I make a giant pot, because you can use it for a ton of things
00:04and it freezes really well. My bolognese starts with a whole pound of carrots. They make the
00:09sauce sweet and hearty. The skins are bitter, so I take them off. So are the root ends — you
00:14gotta cut them off too. The tips just tend to be a little bit dried out. Doesn't really
00:17matter if you cut them off.
00:19Now to dice carrots, you cut them in half, then you cut each half into long, thin slices.
00:25Then you lay the slices flat and you cut them into matchsticks. Then you cut across the
00:29matchsticks to make a fine dice, and this is gonna take for f**k ever and I am using
00:33my food processor. This usually goes better if you break the carrots into chunks before
00:37you put them in. There, doesn't need to be too fine nor too perfect, because this is
00:41gonna cook for hours. It'll all break down.
00:44Now I do one large red onion, and onions you really do need to cut into a few chunks before
00:49you process them, and only doing one half at a time helps too. Otherwise some big pieces
00:54just seem to never get cut up. They just spin around.
00:57This is my 10-quart Dutch oven. If I could only have one pot or pan in my whole kitchen,
01:02this would be it. You can do almost anything in it, but for this, use the largest pot that
01:07you've got, or maybe a couple smaller ones.
01:09Gonna fry the veggies in olive oil on high heat. There's a ton of water in these, so
01:13they're not gonna burn as long as you keep them moving. We just gotta give them a head
01:17start on the cooking. When they've shrunk down and they're looking soft, I dump them
01:21out.
01:22More oil in the pan, and then three pounds of ground meat. This is beef chuck, but you
01:27could use something leaner, like sirloin, but I really like the fat. And sometimes I
01:31use lamb too, which is really nice.
01:33Now this is the most important and labor-intensive step of the whole process. I switch over to
01:38a wooden spoon, and I use it to mash up the ground meat as I am stirring it around. I'm
01:43really going to town on this stuff, breaking it all apart. I don't want little meatballs
01:48in this sauce, and if they form now, it'll be nearly impossible to break them up later.
01:53So with that rigid spoon, I'm just stirring and mashing, stirring and mashing. Five minutes
01:58go by, and now the meat is kinda gray and swimming in liquid. Lot of people think that's
02:02fat. It's mostly water, and it will boil off. Just keep cooking on high heat and keep everything
02:08moving or it'll stick and burn.
02:11Another five minutes go by, and as the water evaporates, the sound changes. Instead of
02:16hissing, the pan starts to roar and crackle. That is the sound of all those little bits
02:22of meat starting to fry in their own rendered fat. Now is when this will change from gray
02:27to brown, and the kitchen will suddenly smell different. It'll smell amazing. If you're
02:32not doing this with your ground beef recipes, you are missing out.
02:36Now comes the secret ingredient — a pound of chicken livers. I am not kidding. I lifted
02:41this idea from Barbara Lynch. It is genius. I just dump them in the food processor. I
02:46don't want to turn them into pate, but something just short of that. And in they go, toward
02:50the end of the browning process. Liver gets gritty if you overcook it.
02:54Then I stir in a 6-ounce can of tomato paste, and at this point you gotta be really careful.
02:59See that carpet of brown stuff stuck to the bottom? The second that's about to burn, I
03:04pour in a whole bottle of white wine and scrape like a motherf**ker. Scrape, scrape, scrape,
03:10the whole bottom off, because it tastes good, and if you leave it there, it's gonna burn.
03:15Vegetables go back in. They would have burned if I'd left them in while I browned the meat.
03:19Then a good-quality 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes.
03:23Then another one. And then another one.
03:26I'm going for something halfway between the traditional ragu a la bolognese, which has
03:30hardly any tomato at all in it, and the traditional Italian-American meat sauce, which is basically
03:36tomato sauce with little clumps of ground beef floating around in it. I like something
03:40in the middle of those extremes.
03:42Here comes my favorite cheat — liquid chicken bouillon. A big spoonful. It's crazy salty,
03:48but this big pot needs salt, so it's fine.
03:50Now, I just get this to a heat where it's kinda burbling, and I'm gonna cook it for
03:543 hours, stirring every 15 minutes or so to make sure the bottom doesn't catch and burn.
04:00While we're waiting, let's talk about those chicken livers. Don't be freaked out. This
04:04sauce will not taste like liver. You don't have to tell anybody they're in there. It
04:08will, however, taste meatier than any meat sauce you've ever had, and that is thanks
04:13in no small part to the livers.
04:15All right, it's been two hours. Let's have a look at this thing. I'm always amazed by
04:20how little this reduces, and yet it does thicken up. I reckon that's just from all the solids
04:25breaking down.
04:26This is when I season. I do about a tablespoon of dried basil, dried parsley, dried oregano,
04:32and a little less dried thyme. I have no idea how much garlic powder that is. Whole bunch
04:36of pepper, and then this instant source of sweet and sour, maybe a quarter cup of balsamic
04:41vinegar.
04:42I generally think dried herbs are better for long-cooked dishes, and even then I think
04:46they taste better if you put them in during the last hour of cooking. The vinegar you
04:50could put in whenever, as long as the sauce is hot. That'll boil off the harsh vinegar
04:54scent.
04:55OK, an hour later, and I put some pasta on the boil. Look at how thick and rich that
05:00is now. Time to give it a taste. I'll do a little bit more balsamic and some salt. Remember
05:04that all sauces should be too strong, because their flavor will be diluted by the rest of
05:09the food.
05:10Drain the pasta, and I just do a couple big spoonfuls of sauce per portion with a little
05:14fresh herb in there — that's parsley. Grate some cheese on top, and I like to drizzle
05:18some raw olive oil on the plate. Now, that's damn good, but let me show you a variation.
05:24Sometimes I spoon some sauce into a pot and drizzle in some heavy cream. Boil it until
05:28the cream thickens, and throw in the pasta and some fresh basil, and that is sweet and
05:33sour and meaty and velvety and rich all at the same time.
05:37Once the rest of the sauce cools down a bit, I just smear it into a whole bunch of ice
05:41cube trays. You could freeze it in a big plastic bin or something, but this makes it so easy
05:45to thaw out exactly the amount that you need. Throw them in the freezer, come back the next
05:50day, and just twist to release them and dump them into a giant Ziploc bag.
05:55Then, when you get home at the end of a long day, you just grab three cubes per person,
06:00throw them in a bowl and microwave until thawed, and while it's still hot, put in a
06:03little bit more balsamic. That really brightens it back up again after it's been in the freezer
06:07for a while. And again, that hot sauce will boil off the harsh nose of the vinegar.
06:13Just throw that on your pasta, and you've got a deeply flavored, slow-simmered, home-cooked
06:17meal in like 10 minutes, or however long it took to boil the pasta. I don't know what
06:21I would do without this stuff. It's great.
06:23I had some extra that I didn't freeze, by the way. I am gonna use that to make my lasagna,
06:28which is going to be the next video that I edit.