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Bolognese Meat Sauce

This Bolognese sauce is a family recipe of one of our readers and is used in our Lasagna Bolognese recipe. Slow cooked for at least a couple of hours, the sauce is deep, rich, flavorful and worth the extra effort.

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Bolognese Meat Sauce Recipe

Ingredients

  • 2 oz. Diced pancetta, finely chopped
  • 1 Medium Spanish onion or yellow onion, finely chopped
  • 1 Stalk celery, finely chopped
  • 1 Carrot, finely chopped
  • 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 11 oz Ground beef
  • 4 oz Ground pork
  • 4 oz Ground Italian sausage
  • 1 freshly ground clove
  • Dash of freshly ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 lb peeled and chopped tomatoes (or 1 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes, packed in water)
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Method

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1 Make the soffritto. Combine pancetta, onion, celery, and carrot in sauté pan with butter and cook over medium heat until onion turns pale gold.

2 Add the beef, pork, sausage to the soffritto, and increase the heat to high; cook until browned. Sprinkle with the clove, cinnamon, and pepper.

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3 Stir in tomatoes, bring to a simmer and reduce the heat to medium. Cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. If you are using whole canned tomatoes, break them up as you add them to the sauce.

4 Add milk and season with sea salt. Then turn down the heat and simmer for 2 and 1/2 hours. Stir at least every 20 minutes. Whenever the sauce gets too dry and starts sticking to the pan, just add 1/4 cup of water and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

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5 Comments

Just a question, what's the milk for? sort of like using cream, only not so rich?


Note from Elise: yes, the sauce is definitely rich enough without using cream.

Posted by: Maravillas García on March 9, 2007 2:31 AM

Serves how many, do you think? It has 21oz of meat, so comparing it to the Quick Bolognese recipe, it should serve between 3 and 4, right? Is the reason for the unusual amount of beef that these numbers make a nice ratio of meat to vegetables?

It should serve 4, easily. No idea why the numbers are so unusual. It's an old Italian family recipe from a reader, so perhaps that's what happened when they translated grams to ounces. ~Elise

Posted by: Ryan on July 30, 2008 7:12 PM

Is it necessary to use the clove and cinnamon? I have used things like these and all spice in the past and was not a huge fan of the flavor. I want an authentic bolognese though so should I add them?

I think you should do whatever you want. You might want to try it out with smaller quantities of those spices. ~Elise

Posted by: Lauren on October 1, 2009 7:52 PM

Elise, I made this last night to serve with farfalle pasta. I have been searching for the perfect Bolognese recipe for nearly a year and THIS IS IT! It was DELICIOUS! I hope you will consider posting just the sauce recipe by itself under 'pasta'. I made it as-is EXCEPT I used ground cloves and cinnamon, plus I added garlic with the onions (can't make anything without garlic) and instead of using 1/4 cup water to thin the sauce, I used 1/4 cup red wine. It was WONDERFUL! Thanks for ANOTHER great recipe! :)

Posted by: Tina on November 9, 2009 5:08 PM

I like the above, and is similar to what I've been doing for years.

Two potential changes: That recipe needs at least a half cup of chicken livers... cook them in the sauce and then mash them against the sides of the pan to disappear. Second point - keep some rich brown beef stock handy instead of water... or veal stock is also a good choice for a velvety finish.

Posted by: Randall on December 24, 2009 11:54 AM

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