bolognese sauce

one of my favorite pasta sauces is bolognese sauce. back in germany, whenever I tried a new restaurant, I ordered their bolognese and decided if it was worth coming back.
it is actually quite easy to make, it just takes some time to cook right – as every tomato sauce. and it is very important to add some sugary which brings us to my ‘secret ingredient’. but we will get to this later.

here is what you need to start with:I try to bring use tomato paste in a tube as i don not have to worry about leftovers from the little cans. even though I read about freezing the leftover tomato paste in little portions. will keep that in mind…

starting with the meat, I season it with salt and pepper and let it brown. once to my liking, I take it out and put it on the side.

I get rid of some of the fat and juice and use the same pan to roast the onions.

those I cut into small cubes and add the garlic to it once they are a little brown. just make sure not to burn either so they won’t become bitter.

I grate the carrots directly into the pan and keep those cooking for a bit. then I add the tomatoes. I use canned whole peeled ones, so I can cut them to how I like it. a lot of times I had a lot of junk parts on cans of crushed tomatoes. you could also use the tomato sauce, depending on if you like chunks in your sauce or not. I add more salt, maybe cayenne pepper or even sambal oelek as I like it a little spicy and use fresh or dried herbs – thyme, rosemary, oregano etc. whatever I have at home.
once everything is cooking nicely, I add the meat again and let it simmer for a while.

to thicken it, i use the tomato paste. make sure to taste it afterwards, it will need some more, especially salt. and as my mom taught me, every savory dish needs a pinch of sugar as well as everything sweet needs a pinch of salt, we now come to my secret ingredient. as I hardly use sugar for anything, I didn’t have any sugar at home one day when I made a tomato sauce. opening the fridge, I had some leftover coca-cola. poured it it, let it cook and am not using anything else since then. might sound weird, I know, but trust me, it tastes great!

for the pasta, I actually like spaghetti best. the sauce has to be rather thick though so it does not run off the pasta all the time and you can enjoy the full thing. depending on the time that I have to cook and how hungry I am, the sauce might sometimes be a little more saucy so elbow macaroni or any other short noodle goes well with it. I still think, barilla is your best choice 🙂