If you are partial to Italian cuisine, oreven if you just like pasta, you should like spaghetti with bolognese sauce. This dish is somewhat reminiscent of the pasta with goulash that we are used to. But still, it is not just pasta and not goulash at all. This is a real Italian dish, which is very popular among the natives and is gaining more and more popularity here. However, in order to cook real Italian spaghetti with bolognese sauce, you need, firstly, to buy the “right” spaghetti, and secondly, you need to be able to cook them correctly. And, of course, you need to cook the bolognese sauce itself correctly. Let's try?
Choose and cook spaghetti
The taste and quality of spaghetti is determined by the varietieswheat from which they are prepared. Only durum wheat is used to produce real Italian spaghetti (which does not make you fat). Russian manufacturers label such spaghetti as group A. In addition, real spaghetti contains only water and flour. Of course, the authenticity of the durum flour indicated on the package can only be determined in laboratory conditions. Therefore, we will take the word of the domestic manufacturer. However, when choosing group A spaghetti, we will still pay attention to some nuances. Firstly, such pasta is sold only packaged. Secondly, they also differ in appearance. This pasta is a pleasant amber color, translucent with visible inclusions of dark dots on the surface. They do not boil too much, and the water after them remains transparent. So, having chosen spaghetti, we must boil them correctly. We take a large saucepan and pour water into it at the rate of: one liter of water per one hundred grams of spaghetti. Now put the pan on the fire (maximum) and wait for the water to boil. To make it boil faster, add a few pinches of salt to the pan. Then slowly lower the spaghetti into the boiling water so that it fits completely in the pan, and wait until the water boils again, then reduce the heat (to medium). Cook the spaghetti, stirring constantly (check the cooking time on the package). When the pasta is almost ready, pour it out of the pan into a colander and let the excess water drain. Serve immediately, pouring it over or mixing it with the sauce. Therefore, the sauce should already be prepared by this point.
Classic Bolognese sauce
Prepare a classic sauce in our realityis quite problematic, because it contains pancetta (Italian bacon), which is difficult to find here (if at all possible). However, for such a sauce you need the following ingredients:
- 300 g of pork and ground beef (raw);
- 100 g of Italian bacon
- 1 stalk of celery;
- 1 onion head;
- 1 carrot;
- 1 cup of milk or cream;
- 1 glass of red table wine;
- 800 g of tomatoes canned in their own juice;
- 30 g of butter;
- 3 garlic cloves;
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil;
- A bag of spicy Italian herbs;
- Pepper, salt and nutmeg (ground).
Preparation:Wash and clean the vegetables, then chop them very finely. Chop the pancetta as well. Then pour olive oil and butter into a saucepan and fry the bacon and vegetables in it (for about ten minutes). After that, add the minced meat to the frying and continue frying for another ten minutes, then pour the milk into the saucepan and simmer the sauce over low heat. When the milk is absorbed by the minced meat, add red wine to the sauce and continue cooking until our dish thickens. Do not forget to stir the sauce all this time. The next step in preparing the sauce is adding tomatoes and spices to it. Mash the tomatoes into a pulp, mix with all the spices required by the recipe (add them to your taste) and put them in a saucepan. Then reduce the heat to minimum, cover the saucepan with a lid and leave the sauce to simmer for two hours. How long? But that's how it's supposed to be according to the recipe. And if the sauce has time to thicken too much, then add a little hot water to it. Actually, after this time, the Bolognese sauce is considered ready. And you can serve it with spaghetti.
Adapted Bolognese sauce
In any country, every overseas recipenecessarily goes through an adaptation period. That is, over time, it acquires a form that is quite acceptable for the inhabitants of this country, and its ingredients are replaced by familiar products or disappear from the recipe altogether. Bolognese sauce was no exception, the recipe of which Russian housewives adapted to their own tastes and capabilities. Ingredients:
- 300 g ground beef;
- 1 head of onions;
- 1 carrot;
- 4 tablespoons of tomato paste;
- 1 cup beef broth;
- 3 tablespoons chopped parsley;
- 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil;
- Salt and spices.
Preparation:To prepare the Bolognese sauce, it is better to use freshly minced or simply chilled minced meat, but not frozen. And instead of real beef broth, you can take a bouillon cube and dilute half of it in a glass of hot water. So, wash the carrots, peel them, grate them and sauté (over low heat) in a frying pan with vegetable oil. Note that we sauté the carrots, not fry them, that is, we do not let them brown. When the carrots are half cooked, add finely chopped onions to the frying pan and continue sautéing everything together. After the vegetables become soft, put the minced meat in the frying pan. Increase the heat and fry the minced meat, breaking it into grains and making sure that it does not stick together into large lumps. When the minced meat is ready, put the greens in the frying pan and add the tomato paste diluted in the broth. Cover with a lid and simmer the sauce for at least half an hour (but better longer). Pour the prepared sauce over the hot, just-cooked pasta and serve spaghetti with bolognese sauce.
For reference
To bring some clarity to our understanding of traditional Italian cuisine, let us note that:
- Scrupulous Italians serve this sauce exclusively with tagliatelle (a kind of Italian noodles). Spaghetti is already our interpretation of Italian pasta with Bolognese sauce.
- This sauce is also used to make the famous Italian lasagna bolognese.
- To prepare real bolognese sauce, any small things are important: the size of the sliced products, the quenching temperature, and the order of the ingredients.
- Professional chefs spend at least four hours preparing sauce for Bolognese. As a result, all the ingredients of the sauce (except for minced meat) dissolve in it.
- Even for the classic Bolognese sauce, milk is considered an optional ingredient. It is often replaced with beef broth.
- Italian pasta with Bolognese sauce is served separately with grated Parmesan cheese.
- Its name was given to the sauce at the place of "invention", which is the city of Bologna.
- The recipe for the classic Bolognese sauce has an officially recommended composition, and is recommended by the Bologna delegation at the Accademia Italiana della Cucina (Italian Academy of Cuisine).
What an interesting sauce! Cook Italian pasta with it, cook our favorite spaghetti, cook with pleasure. Enjoy your meal and creative mood! We recommend reading:
