Alison Roman declared a universal truth when she observed that every man - every father, older brother, uncle, or grandfather - has a bolognese sauce of which they are inexplicably proud. The result is usually a sauce that is ‘fine’. Not mind-blowing, but not bad, nothing worth the gusto the man boasts about his cooking.
My own father falls into this category. While Mum would cook six evenings a week, Dad would make his ‘special’ bolognese on the Sabbath. The secret ingredient? The same secret ingredient that accompanies most weeknight bolognese sauces: pre-made sauce in a jar.
So I want to tell the dudes to get over themselves. But I also want to say, and I mean this quite genuinely: I’ve perfected bolognese sauce and holy shit you need to try some.
To state it plainly, this tastes like home. Even if you’re not Italian, you were never fed this. This is hot, deep, reassuring food. It taps you on the head and sends you to bed. It tells you everything is going to be okay.
It’d be wrong to say (and yet I just did) that I perfected it. Instead, I paid attention to people who knew what they were talking about and followed instructions. Revolutionary.
For most Aussie households, bolognese has become a shorthand for a meat-based tomato sauce. There’s nothing wrong with a lot of the available jar sauces, and they shorten the cooking time considerably. Most are loaded with salt, and none accomplish the depth of flavour that a pot of sauce achieves from sitting on the stove for an hour or two.
Yes, an hour or two. This was my biggest mistake with bolognese sauce. I assumed that ‘spag bol’ was a quick and easy meal. It is. It’s among the most leisurely weeknight dinners I can find. You just need to do all your prep about ninety minutes beforehand.
Once I moved away from jar sauces and began making my own, I was mystified by my sauce problems. Too watery. Too oily. Too few vegetables. Too many. On a particularly depressing evening, when it was just me and the kids, I combined cooked pasta with a warmed-through can of tomatoes. While not inedible, it was bright, flavourless and unsatisfying. I questioned so much about my life that evening. Who was I? What type of father do I want to be? And if I was going to make this meal every week or so for most of the rest of my life, I should get it right.
So I went on a journey. And you can do worse things in your life than dedicating an hour to watching bolognese videos from experts. Suppose you want the same playlist I went through. In that case, I’d recommend, in no particular order: Alison Roman, Gennaro Contaldo, Nat’s What I Reckon, and most importantly Anna Del Conte with Nigella Lawson, in a video that I tragically can no longer find.
But, to get to the core of it, start by sweating a chopped onion in a generous amount of olive oil on medium heat. Add a chopped carrot, a couple of chopped garlic cloves, and a chopped celery stick or two. Add salt and let that soften (it’ll take a little while). Then, add 500 grams of mince. (This is making enough for about four people, by the way.)
Now, this is where things can go disastrously wrong. Bolognaise is really about flavourful meat. That’s the depth in the sauce. And for that, you need fat. Don’t buy lean or, God forbid, as I have, ‘extra lean’. To save costs, supermarkets often pump this meat with water, which either comes out in the cooking and steams everything, or remains in the sauce as flavourless mush. Buy full-fat mince, the best quality you can find. If you can, buy half beef and half pork, as is traditional. I know Coles now does a bolognese mince that suits us just fine. If we had the cash and the time, we’d search for something organic and higher quality. But we don’t, and here we are.
Add the mince and break it up. Salt it. Now let it cook on medium heat and watch it brown. If it’s catching at the bottom, add another drop of oil. All the fat will start to leak out of it, which is fantastic. Don’t move on until that fat’s disappeared. The meat and veggies will soak it back in again. That’s the flavour.
Add half a cup of white wine and let it bubble away and pretty much dissolve too. Again, you don’t want to move on until that moisture has disappeared. We rarely have wine around the house (because we’ve either drunk it or moved on to harder liquor), so I put in a splash of white wine vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. Not the Italian thing, but it’s never served me wrong.
Almost all recipes will ask you to put in a bay leaf at this point. The flavour is subtle but worthwhile. I find other woody herbs, such as rosemary, cut through too much, but I invite you to disagree with me.
We’re almost there. Now we just need passata. Not canned tomatoes, not tomato paste, but passata in a jar. Add five-hundred mils and let it start to bubble.
Now, the controversial topic of milk.
Yes, in the traditional recipe, you add milk. It needs to be full-fat dairy milk, otherwise, you’re missing the point. Some suggest adding as much as half a cup here, right at the start of the slow simmering process. As you leave the sauce for an hour or more, everything will thicken, and your sauce will emulsify beautifully. Creamy, rich, to die for. I’ve also seen - and have done - a tablespoon or two of milk about five minutes before you’re done. I prefer the more-milk, more extended version. See what you prefer.
You’re done. Walk away, and don’t stress about time. Check on it occasionally. If it’s thickening too much you can add a bit of water. Nothing is stopping you from leaving it blipping away for half a day if you wanted - it’ll only taste more complex and deep. When you’re ready, cook your pasta (salt the water beforehand until it tastes like the ocean - I’m not kidding).
In my autistic childhood home, food items were always kept separate from each other. So we would have pasta, and then the sauce beside it or on top of it. I kept this habit up, and I shouldn’t have.
When your pasta’s done, take a mug and fill it with water from the pot. Put it to one side. Then drain your pasta, and in whatever pan makes sense, combine the sauce and the pasta together. Stir. The sauce will probably be too thick and not coat the pasta properly. Add a splash of the water, add more if you need, and stir until everything combines. Some chefs add a nob of butter here, or another dash of oil. I find this doesn’t need it. But should you want to be incredibly decadent, I would never stop you.
A fresh herb at the very end can be a great contrast to the rich sauce. Basil and thyme are the favourites.
I may be kicked out of suburban Australia for this, but I don’t think a handful of cheap cheddar cheese improves this dish. My children disagree. Do as you please. But please also taste this before adding cheese.
Is it mind-blowing? Probably not. But it’s stable, robust, and nostalgic. This is the only dish I can think of that I become consistently excited about, no matter how regularly I eat it. And yes, putting some left over sauce on a toasted sandwich the next day for lunch is compulsory.
Happy eating.
PS. In our mildly gluten intolerant household, we’ve come to embrace gluten free pasta and don’t mind it. Of course there’s vegan or vegetarian versions of bolognese sauce. To achieve a meaty texture and flavour, they usually combine some lentils with some re-hydrated dried porcini mushrooms. They don’t taste the same, but they are equally enjoyable in their own right (no, really).