The Best Pasta Bolognese You’ll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101
I'm Lish styling I'm a professional chef and today I'm going to show you the real way to make banaz we are talking silky Savory comforting Bolan this is Bolan 101 the misconceptions of Bolan are pretty much that it's just a meat and tomato sauce the layers of flavor in this recipe are everything from browning the meat to adding the vegetables to making sure that you caramelize the tomato paste to reducing the milk to adding the wine all of it has a purpose it takes time and patience but really it's not [Applause] complicated a dutch oven is perfect for a sauce like this because it cooks for a really long time the bottom is nice and heavy so that you prevent scorching I'm going to get her going over medium highish heat add a good amount of olive oil to the bottom of this pan so our oil is dancing in the pan it's moving freely leaving ribbons I'm going to start with my ground beef I'm using 8020 here and I'm going to start to Brown that as this beef is cooking I'm breaking it up with a wooden spoon cuz I want all of that meat to be nice and fine so that it clings to the pasta I'm not going to cook it fully here because I'm going to add the vegetables and as those cook the meat will continue to cook and start to Brown so it's again just layering all of these flavors you can see there's even some fat rendering out from the meat onion finally chopped a carrot finely chopped as well the carrot adds sweetness and then a rib of celery because again it's just the magic of the Trinity the Mira season with some salt because we're building our flavors here each ingredient deserves to taste the best that it can and that means each ingredient needs salt so you layer along the way I like to hand dice all of my vegetables you can also do it in a food prep there's no shame in that game so now we're going to let this cook until the meat starts to Brown a little bit this should take about 5 to 7 Minutes B is not a sauce that you want to start on a Monday night at 8:00 p.m.
It takes time it takes patience but the building of flavor is worth it and it all comes from the technique my meat is starting to get a little bit of color on it and the vegetables are starting to soften so this is only going to take a couple more minutes to get just that Whisper of golden brown on the meat vegetable soft all the way through so I am pretty much there there is starting to get some Browning around the edge a little bit of garlic goes in about two cloves I add it after sweating out the vegetables and Browning the meat a little bit cuz you don't want to overcook and brown the garlic and risk it tasting bitter I'm scraping up all the bits that might be sticking to the bottom a little bit getting the spoon around the side couple minutes longer while that's cooking I'm going to crush some tomatoes so I have a can of San Marzano tomatoes that I'm going to hand crush and honestly it helps with finding out if there's any of those pesky nubbins left like you can see right there that's actually the little nubbin from the Tomato you don't want to bite into that canned tomatoes are picked at their Peak and canned at their Peak so you always know that you're going to have that consistent in seasoned tomato flavor I'm starting to get the Browning at the bottom of the pan which is exactly what we want so now tomato paste double concentrate about a/4 cup or so goes into a little cleared section of the pot because we want to toast it we want to bring out all the caramelly goodness and the natural sweetness of the tomato paste and we do that by adding heat to it and cooking it in some of that oil that's already in the pan you can already see the tomato paste is nice and toasted and the color changed now I'm mixing it back into the meat that brown goodness at the bottom of the pan known as the fond is starting to stick even more so now it's time to deglaze it so that we don't Scorch it so now we add the milk milk is a pretty classic ingredient when it comes to making Bolan milk used to be there just for tenderizing the meat because the cut of meat that they would use was so tough now we keep it in there because it balances out the acid of the tomatoes it adds sweetness and richness to the sauce and it still tenderizes the meat slightly leaving you with a very very silky mouth feel when you eat the sauce so this is going to go until the milk is practically completely evaporated and reduced you want to give it some attention as it does this it's going to take about 20 minutes you want to keep stirring the bottom so that you don't burn the bottom of the pan it's going to start to look a little almost separated and that's okay that's what you want actually everything's going to come together in the end it has been about 20 minutes and when I tell you that I could stop right here and eat it I'm not lying the milk is almost entirely evaporated but it's changed the look of the meat it seems silkier it seems more velvety I can scrape the mixer to a side and there's not liquid left that's your indicator that you're ready for the next step I'm going to add about a cup of red wine to the mixture this is going to add depth of flavor it's going to add acid it adds a little character in backbone it's layering those flavors so now we're going to let the wine reduce it's been about 10 or 12 minutes we're back pretty much to the same spot that I was with the whole milk it leaves a little clean space in the bottom of the pan it's still so silky look at that so now at this point I'm going to add my hand crushed tomatoes over the back of the spoon so that it doesn't Splash I'm going to Nestle in a little aromatic bay leaf adds almost the grassy eucalyptus note to it so I just use dry bay leaf so now this the secret ingredient is the parmesan rind which is completely edible and we're going to throw it in the sauce so that all of that nutty goodness from the cheese all of that flavor goes into the sauce so I'm taking about half of that rind nestling that in there along with the bay leaf tuck it away I'm going to see where we're at on seasoning I'm going to add just a little bit of salt because it's going to reduce so I don't want to season too much now but I still want all of the ingredients to taste the best that they can now I'll let it simmer for about 2 hours you still want to give it a stir maybe every 15 20 minutes or so just to prevent it from burning at the bottom of the pan so this sauce looks perfect right now it is reduced you can see that it's all about the meat the texture is beautiful and silky this is going to be perfect picked up with some tlell or Papa Del any kind of thicker flat noodle perfection the marriage of the sauce and pasta together you toss it together so that the sauce coats the pasta it's not just on top it's a whole dance that happens in the pan that makes the magic happen the sauce B is ready to use however you want to use it however I want to use it and in this case it's going to be with pasta tly a tell generously season our pasta water this is your one opportunity to season your pasta the pasta is going to absor absorb the water so I'm just going to drop in some fresh tlell here two bunches a flat wide pasta is the best to use for this sauce because it clings to the pasta incredibly well while the pasta Cooks I am going to warm up some pasta sauce our bolog in Italy you would never get pasta that just has sauce plopped on top it's always tossed it needs to coat the pasta I'm going to turn on this burner warm the sauce up a little bit I'm adding a little bit of pasta water just to loosen it and help warm it through it's probably maybe about a quar of a Cup's worth pasta should be close let's see what we got love pasta in oh my goodness so imagine if you just put the sauce on top then you have to take the pasta you have to take some sauce you have to make your bite right this way every single piece of pasta is coated in the sauce this is the love people little bit more pasta water cuz we want it to coat well little bit of olive oil so you really just want to toss the pasta around you can do this with tongs or you can do the flip if you don't feel comfortable with the flip don't worry about it tongs are your best friend you just want to make sure that the pasta is coated in the sauce we are about there I'm going to add some paragano regano to finish at the end here once this is added in I'm going to turn off the heat because you don't want to continue to cook the cheese you just want to toss it with the pasta oh my God all right we're ready to plate look at this huh every strand is coated in the sauce I mean oh yeah just a little Nest a showering of Parmer this is my perfect bowl of pasta bologan yes let me tell you the flavors of this bolog it's sweet it's Savory you taste every single step the flavors that you've built throughout the process you took your time you did it right and it shows this is a pasta sauce that I have made many many times in my career in my life and it never gets old to me this is the real way to make Bol and it really pays off
