How Italians Make Pasta Bolognese

A rich tomato sauce with ground beef and herbs, then tossed with fresh pasta. Classic, comforting, and perfect any night of the week!

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pasta. Bologn. That’s good. That’s a great intro. We’re going to start by making our bologn or bolognes or however you want to say it. And the first step is to preheat our oven since we’ll be finishing this in there later. We’ll start here with this penetta. It’s a cured pork belly that smells a little bit like pushcuto. I’m going to start by slicing it right in half. This can be a little bit challenging, but if you roll it around as you cut it, or even cut sideways just like this, it makes it a lot easier. We’ll be left with two halves, which will then cut up into nice even stick shapes. Try to keep it all together. That’ll make things easier for you. And we’re cutting it this way because I’m eventually going to spin it around and slice it up into nice even cubes. If you can’t find panchetta at your local grocery store, you can also use pushcuto or even bacon. Once that’s fully chopped, I’m going to move over to my burner where I’ve preheated a large heavy bottom Dutch oven. And to this, I’m going to add a splash of olive oil. And then in goes our panetta. You want to hear a good clean sizzle like I did, but nothing too crazy. We’re not trying to burn it. We’re trying to get it nice and crispy and golden brown. So once I’ve evenly spread out all my panetta, just like this, I’m going to leave this here and move back to my cutting board to chop some vegetables. I’m going to get the tears out of the way and start by chopping up my onion. First, I’ll slice down vertically, but not all the way through the onion. And then I’ll carefully slice into the sides of my onion with my knife. And then I’ll chop all the way down the onion like this. If you need to go ahead and run your knife through the onion a few more times just to make sure there are no large bits. And then I’ll follow this exact same process with the other half. Once again, just running my knife quickly through it to make sure there’s no long chunks. I’ll set this off to the side and then run back to check my panetta. You’ll see that some of it’s already starting to get that beautiful golden brown color. But what’s underneath it is the best part of all. This sticky golden brown part that’s stuck to the bottom of my pot right now is the foundation of the flavor that we need in our bolognese. Once I’ve turned these all over to let them crisp up on their other sides, I’ll move back over here and we’ll chop up our celery. First, I’ll trim off the tops. You could save those for a stock or whatever you want. And then I’ll chop it up into sections, trying to keep them all about an even size. And then, if I sit it up like this, I can chop straight down the celery to get two nice sticks like this. And when I cut this flatter piece into three pieces of its own, I have these nice celery sticks that I can cut into similar shapes to the onion. There can be a lot of knife work involved in a recipe like this, meaning you have to chop a lot of things. But this is one of those recipes where you cook to enjoy cooking, not just to make yourself a quick dinner. And dicing up all these vegetables should be a fun part of that. As you can see, the last step here with the celery is to chop it up into a nice even dice. And when you’re done, neaten up your workstation again and then go on back over to check on that panetta. Oh yeah, golden, crackly. It’s almost there. Some of the pieces, like this one here, still have a little bit of fat there that I want to render off and basically melt into our pot. whereas others like this one are ready to go. This is what we’re going for. I’ll give this one final quick stir, making extra sure that any of those fatty pieces are sitting at the bottom of the pot. And then move back on over to chop my carrots. With our carrots, I’m going to start by peeling them. If you’re feeling a little bit lazy and your carrots are already super clean, I guess you could probably skip this step, but might as well give them a quick peel. It’s also pretty satisfying. Clean peeled carrots are so pretty. One of my brothers grows carrots and all sorts of other things in a garden during the summers, but then he gets really mad at us when we try to take them and use them. Why is he growing them if he gets mad about it? I don’t understand it. I hope he doesn’t see this, but I’m just saying. I would love to use some of his carrots. Instead, I have to go get them at the grocery store. Once the carrots are all pretty and peeled, chop off the stems. You could also save this for a stock if you want. And similar to the celery, I’m going to chop it up into thirds like this. Now, be careful with this next part since carrots are round and can easily roll, but I found it’s best if you stand them up like this and very safely chop down like that. That gives us nice flat pieces of carrot that we can work with. Since our goal is to make all the chunks around the same size, we want these vegetables all timed the same when they cook. Once they all look something like this, I’m going to cut them however I can to make nice little matchixs and then eventually cut them into perfect little cubes. If your carrot cubes look anything like this, you did a great job. And now I’m just going to get chopping. Since it’s taking me a little bit of time cutting all of these vegetables, it smells and looks like my panetta is ready. So, I’m going to take a break on this for a second. Pop back over here and I’m going to scoop all of these out. I want to leave as much of that fat in the bottom of the pot as possible. You can see that quite a bit of fat drains off as I lift these up. So, you do want to shake that off before adding these to your bowl. And just make sure you’ve rendered off all that fat before you remove them cuz otherwise I do not like that texture of chewy fat. These are all super crispy. I’m going to stop eating them. I keep eating all of them and I’m going to have none left. One more. Let’s get our meat. Here we have ground beef and here we have ground pork. And together, this is a really nice bolognese blend. We’re going to go straight into our hot panetta oil with the ground beef. And then right away with that ground pork and because it’s so much meat, I’m going to turn this up to medium high and start to break it all apart. As I break it all up into tiny little bits here, I’m not only combining these two meats, but I’m also scraping the bottom of my pot to get all of those delicious bits of flavor that I pointed out to you earlier. That’s all flavor that we develop from cooking that panetta, and that is going to be hugely important in giving us a delicious sauce. I’ll let this finish cooking while I come back over here and finish chopping up my carrots. It feels at this point like we’ve been cutting vegetables for way too long, but the nice thing is you can just jump back and forth to your stove. I think that’s another cool thing about this recipe is that you can be really smart about how you do it and that way you’re rarely ever sitting around. If you’re ever looking for a really fun dish to make with a bunch of friends or family or whatever, this is a great one. Especially if you make homemade pasta, everyone can get involved. The whole house is going to smell really good and it’s a really popular recipe that pretty much everyone I know really likes. These three vegetables that we just chopped make up what’s called a soprito. It’s the Italian version of mea. And it all means the same thing. Onion, celery, and carrot. We still have just a little bit of chopping left with this garlic. But luckily, it’ll be nice and easy. I’m just going to rough chop this garlic. Our bologn is going to cook so long that everything’s kind of going to melt together by the end. So, this garlic will be soft and tender. You don’t have to do that classic tiny tiny mince that you might normally have to do with garlic and other recipes. This will do just fine. If your beef looks cooked by now, you can go ahead and add your garlic. And then all of your vegetables. Carrots. And I got my celery. And then finally, I’ll add in my onions. I’ll hit these with a generous pinch of salt. Then some fresh cracked pepper. Please don’t use dry pepper ever. It pains me when I watch someone making such a beautiful recipe like this. And then they use dried out pepper that has no more flavor and hasn’t had flavor for the last 3 years. I’m still over medium heat here, maybe medium high. I’m going to let all these vegetables sweat and get a little bit softer. You’ll know you’re good to move on to the next step when those onions start to get a little bit translucent. Oh no, how did I leave a big piece of carrot while our vegetables cook, and I can’t even begin to tell you how great this kitchen smells right now. We’re going to make what’s called a bouquet garnier. It’s a French term. Really, it’s just a bundle of herbs. And the reason we do it is so we can get all the delicious herby flavor without having to dig them out afterwards. Instead, it’s in one nice bundle like this. Really easy to do and a great technique that can save you lots of time in the kitchen. I’ll set this aside and grab my wine. What’s really cool here about this bottle of wine is that it’s from the region in Italy that Bolognese is originally from. And while we’re not making a classic traditional Italian Bolognese, and you’ll see why in just a few moments here, it’s still fun to use some of the ingredients that this dish might normally be made with. It’s a great sound. I’m going to measure out one cup of my wine. And before I pour it in, I’ll give this one last little stir. Oh, and this is great that I’m showing you this. Those crackly bits on the bottom, those are bits that we need to scoop up again right now. So, I’ll pour in my wine. This is called deglazing. What happens here when we add a liquid is it makes it really easy to scrape off whatever’s stuck at the bottom of the pot. And often times, what’s stuck at the bottom of the pot is lots and lots of flavor. So, as you can see, when I now pull this wooden spoon through my pot, the bottom is and should be totally clear. That means all the flavor has been swept up into that meat and into our vegetables. So, we’re continuing now to build layer after layer of delicious flavor. You’ll know this step is done when you can drag your spoon through without any liquid closing in on the middle there. So, while I let this finish up for a few more moments, I’m going to come over here and open up my tomatoes. The fact that we’re adding so many tomatoes here is what makes this an Italian American recipe instead of the true traditional Italian bolognese. When it looks like just about all your liquid is gone, you can go ahead now and add in your tomatoes. Stand back so you don’t get splashed. Then some beeftock, which I’m first going to use to wash out my can of tomatoes so I get all that tomato goodness and don’t waste anything. Then I’ll add the rest of my beeftock. You could also use chicken stock if you want. It’s okay if you’re mixing different flavors of meat. Tastes just as good. And then we’ll add in our milk. This is what would be used to make bologn traditionally in Italy. So that’s why we’re adding some in here. Oh, it’s so good. Then we’ll add back our crispy penetta. But I just can’t seem to stop eating. By the way, if you have one of those nosy people who keeps coming and grabbing stuff off your kitchen counter or eating stuff while you cook, hide it. I’m telling you right now, hide that because they will eat all of it. And to finish things off, we’ll add in our bouquet garnier, which will sit on the top and drape all of its delicious flavor and essence in to our bologna here. And once it comes up to a nice gentle simmer, we’ll add on our lid, leaving just a small crack in there for anything to escape so that the sauce can continue to thicken up as it cooks. And then into the oven it goes for 3 to 4 hours. I know it’s a while, but you can drink the rest of your wine while you wait. While that cooks, we’re going to make some fresh pasta. Specifically, I’m going to be making papadell. I’ll start by making a well with my flour in the center of my cutting board. You want to create a nice open space that’s large enough to put in your eggs. Into this well, I’m going to crack in two whole eggs. And after the two whole eggs, I’m going to grab four yolks. One, two, three, and four. Next, I’m going to break up all of my egg yolks and start to whisk them inside this little makeshift bowl. And I want to do this without breaking the edges of my flour. And if you don’t have time to make fresh pasta, which I totally understand, you can certainly buy some dry pasta. But I just think there’s something about fresh pasta that’s unbeatable and it’s fun to do while your bologn is cooking in the oven. Once you get a nice even mixture with your yolks, you can start pulling in some of that flour from the outside to slowly incorporate it. Don’t move too quickly here cuz if you do break through that well, you’re going to be chasing egg yolk all across your cutting board. Instead, just gradually pull and mix it in and watch that egg yolk become thicker and thicker and thicker and eventually you’ll have a good understanding of when you can fully mix everything in without it spilling. Now is the time when I like to bring in my bench scraper, which helps to pull everything together just so we don’t forget about our sauce that’s over there in the oven. You’ll want to go over there about once an hour to check on it and give it a quick stir. Just make sure everything’s cooking well. And then you can go back to whatever you were doing. Once you’ve brought it all together and it starts to kind of look like weird scrambled eggs, that’s when we move in with our hands. We’re now in the stage that I call the Italian grandma method. To finish up the dough, you’ll want to scrape up literally everything from your cutting board. If you’ve done this correctly, it’ll look spotless, just like mine right now. And then we’ll begin to knead. Use your body weight to push down into the dough each time with the heel of your hand. And then use your other hand to bend the dough back up on top of itself. We’ll continue this process for 5 to 10 minutes. Once your dough looks nice and smooth like this, we’ll cover it up in plastic wrap or a plastic bag, whatever you prefer, and let this rest between 30 and 60 minutes before rolling it out. But I’m not going to make you wait. So, look, it’s been rested. To roll out our fresh pasta, I’ll start by lightly flowerouring it and then cutting it in half. Then I’m going to grab our bottle of wine and roll it a few times back and forth until it gets somewhat thin. The important thing here is that it’s thin enough to roll through your pasta roller for the first time. So, as long as it looks something like this, you’re good to go. Now, I’ll turn on my machine and start feeding it through. Once you push it through the first time, that’s when you can start tightening your machine to make the pasta roll out thinner. And as you do this, and the pasta gets thinner and thinner, you don’t want to poke your fingers through. You have to be very gentle. I’m going to go all the way to setting number six on my machine. And that’s going to give us the perfect thickness for making our papadella. Once we finish rolling out our first sheet, I’m going to make sure it’s well fled. And then I’ll do the exact same process with my other sheet, but I’m going to do this one faster. One of the coolest parts about rolling out fresh pasta is how it automatically folds itself at the bottom like this. I’ve always found that to be really fun to watch. We’re done with our machine. I’m going to make this part fun and cut my own pasta here. I don’t normally do this, but I thought it’d be really fun, especially since we have the time with our bologni still in the oven. Once you have a good baseline piece, you can use that as a ruler to cut the rest. But this is the most fun part about cutting pasta by hand like this. It doesn’t have to look or be perfect. So, there’s really nothing you could possibly do to mess it up at this stage now. And you know what? I’m not even going to measure anymore. I’m just going to start cutting. One of the fun things that I do every time I make pasta is also try to make it in different shapes. Sometimes I don’t think people realize how many pasta shapes there actually are. And supposedly they’ve all been created for a reason. Some are better at holding sauce. Some are just more beautiful. But you could also argue that some are pretty useless. And I probably wouldn’t disagree. If you want to be really professional now, you can lay out a few of your pieces like this. Make sure they’re nice and fled up. And then you can kind of fold and roll them over the top of themselves so that they can sit all nice and ready to cook. Our pasta is done. And I’ve fast forwarded a little bit here so that our bologn is also done. I’ll shift this off to the side. Then I’ll grab a pan. You’ll see why in just a minute. And finally, I’ve got my hot salted pasta water. This is all going to come together quickly. First, I toss in my pasta. I’ll give that a nice stir, and that’s going to cook in literally seconds. Now, for this middle burner, I’ll turn the heat to medium and add some of my amazing Bolognese right into that pan. I’m especially going to make sure we have plenty of liquid. Already, my pasta here is basically fully cooked, but we’ll finish it off by tossing it right in here. This will allow our pasta to finish cooking while also absorbing some of that flavor from our bologn. And if there weren’t so many people watching right now, I’d probably eat this right out of the pan. But we got to make it look nice. This smells out of this world. So now I’m simply going to add on some of our meat and vegetables. I just had to literally close my mouth cuz I think I was about to drool onto the cutting board. And to finish it off, I’ll give it a nice shower of Parmesan cheese. And that is how you make bologn. It was so hard to walk away from that just now. I miss it already.