One of the hardest dishes that you can make is ragu. Most people refer it back to gravy. Any idea why? Great grandmothers when they came here, they said, “Oh, gravy. We’re going to make a gravy.” I’m going to show you how to make a southern Italian. And we followed the ragu from scratch. The process should take no more than 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours. This is not a 7-hour process. What we did was we took our beautiful canned tomatoes and we uh kind of pureeed them down. So, that’s going to cut the cooking process by probably half. In the pan right here, you’ve got some olive oil. You can choose to do this with onions or uh garlic. I like onions in this one. We’re going to take two whole onions. We’re cooking this ragu for 15 people. So, we got a very special lady today who’s turning a very special number in her part for her party. So, we’re going to work on this. So, we’re going to start by basically brazing all the onions. And what we’re going to do is any meat that has not been cooked, the steak pieces here. We’re going to sit down there with the sausage, brown them. I pre-cooked the ribs a little bit. We’re going to put them in as well. I also pre-cooked the meatballs to slowly get to speed the process. If you’re doing this at home and you want to do this one by one, it’s fantastic. Eat your thing. A little tomato paste. That’s a little bit of cheating. And of course, wine. Always cook with good wine. And we’re going to be roasting multiple channels today. Whole process of getting this ready should take no more than 25 30 minutes. Once you have it in, it’s kind of like set it and forget it. Keep it all. Keep going around and just don’t start ducking bread in. With the onions and olive oil, we’re going to add just a little bit of sea salt, a little bit of pepper, a little bit of the red pepper flakes, and add a little more sea salt. You will you’ll be able to salt it up as you go. So, we’re going to do this for about 5 6 minutes. Once the uh the onions brown up, we’ll start adding the meat. Okay. So, the onions are somewhat ready to go. So, what we’re going to do right now is we’re going to take tomato paste. You don’t have to go nuts in this. This is just to give it some more concentration. I usually do one small can just to give it a little bit more color and more emphasis on what I’m trying to accomplish. By the way, everybody has a red. Us Neapolitans tend to do it a little differently than everybody else. So, can of tomato paste is in there. We’re just going to give this an old stir and get a little bit of that red flavor in. Look at that. Oh, that’s good stuff right there. You don’t even need to put any meat in there. Just eat this. And now we’re going to start the meat process. Probably a few pounds. This about 5 lbs. 5 to 7 lbs of meat. And the meat, all we’re going to do is let it brown. And now we’re going to leave this for a second, right? Let that kind of start through. The meat’s going to kick out some of that juice. We’re going to take the beautiful one sausage in again. One per per person. Get everything covered. You want to tell me what goes on next? The red wine. Oh, red wine. Red wine. Everybody does it differently. What I would suggest is whatever you got lying around the house. Maybe you got some pork chops in the freezer. Um, you know, just use that the half a bottle of red wine. We’re going to take pieces of spare ribs. Whole process. So, this should take about 2 and 1/2, 3 hours. And we don’t have to spend all day Sunday sweating it out. Okay. No need to do that. Let that sit for a minute. And then what we’re going to do is going to take this Beautiful, beautiful tomato. Now, before anybody asks, I’m going to explain it. These are my California plum tomatoes. We just ran them through. Nothing in. No salt, no pepper, no basil, no nothing. Just simple as that. Okay, you ready? That’s the money shot right there. about 45 minutes. What we’re going to do is we’re going to come back in here and we’re going to basically remove all the meat because obviously the meat’s going to cook. If you keep it on high for an hour, the meat’s going to cook. But right now, all that flavor profile is going in there. The meat. Now, you didn’t see me add meatballs in because, as I said to you before, I prepped the meatballs before. So, the meatballs can go in basically an hour before you serve it. that way. Just as you can see, this is a big pot for 15 people. It’s a lot of food. So, all we want to do is just give it a nice little quiet stir, right? Mix in the red wine with a paste. Look at this man. That, my friend, is a ragu in the making. You got a party, you need me to make you one, all you do is call me. Zando will make you a ragu. That right here is about 15 people. Just bring it home just like that. Uh you uh make some pasta and give everybody. So I’m going to come back to you in about an hour. We’re going to take the meat out in an hour. See how all that meat is doing. In the meantime, cappuccino time. It’s all right. Smell this. So now the tomato is starting to get just the way a ragu is supposed to and it’ll thicken up throughout time. So what we want to do now is start taking the meat out. This is going to be meat that you’re the guest will be eating later. [Music] Once you got about an hour to go, we’ll throw all the meat back in. And that’s when you just let kind of the finishing process take over. Um, right now what we did is we just put all that meat in. So like the sauce will kind of have a nice a nice rendering and they’ll be a perfect flavor when they when they eat the pasta later. [Music] I’m going to get all the sausage off. I want to give it a nice stir. Now, we left most of that those chunky pieces of beef in. [Music] We’re going to hit it with a little more salt. Good to go. [Music] And now we taste [Music]
