Hi all! I’m in the mood for a project meal and want to try Kenji’s Bolognese. I just got Food Lab (yay!) but I noticed the recipe on the site is different – the book has less gelatin and liver, more wine, etc. Has anyone tried both that can compare? It looks like the site’s recipe was updated 10/23 so I’m tempted just to go with the newer version.
[https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-bolognese-sauce-recipe](https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-bolognese-sauce-recipe)
by Szq1114
2 Comments
I haven’t tried both, but I can attest that the online version is stupendous. It freezes like a charm, too. I keep it in pints in my freezer and it makes a fast Michelin star weeknight meal.
If you’re using either veal or a thick homemade chicken stock, you can get away with skipping the gelatin entirely, but it’s so quick and easy to do that I recommend being a gelatin maximalist, in all my years of fiddling with this recipe I’ve never encountered “too much gelatin” as a problem. My preference is to omit the veal (expensive and not very flavorful) and instead use an equal mix of beef and pork (ideally ground at home to control the fat content), do use homemade stock, and add gelatin anyway. Especially if you’re adding more wine.
My guess about the liver is that Kenji has gotten pushback over the years, because I certainly have. Fish sauce, anchovies, chicken livers, a bunch of Kenji’s go-to “umami bombs” he insists won’t be noticeable in the final dish, and my partner and I do not taste it in the quantities he recommends. However, some palates are more sensitive than others, and I’ve definitely had guests wrinkle their nose and straight up ask “is there *fish* in this?” or “what’s that. . . metallic taste?” I started dialing down those ingredients for sensitive palates, until I realized I was dialing down to quantities that I couldn’t taste at all, so now I just omit the really potentially offensive umami bombs and try to find replacements. For this specific recipe, I’ve started tossing a rind of parmesan into the sauce as the umami bomb, and I’ve never gotten a complaint about that.
On the wine, I favor the “more is more” approach as well. It just takes longer to reduce. The book is less concerned with saving time than the website is, Kenji has talked before about how editors trying to maximize traffic like to shorten cooking times however they can. For that reason, generally speaking I think the book and Kenji’s YouTube channel are both more honest representations of what Kenji thinks is truly best (or in the case of the YouTube channel, what Kenji thinks is the most efficient use of labor for a given quality of product).
I also do think red vs. white does have a slight but noticeable difference in color. Final product-wise, using red wine produces a sauce that is darker red, white produces a sauce that is more a reddish-orange. I prefer the slightly darker shade made with red. But that may just be because I drink white and would rather drink it than pour it in a sauce 😉