In net contrast to everything stated yesterday about sauce and Italians eating light meals, today we polished up a whole pan of glorious cannelloni al ragù. It was not a holiday, but we innkeepers must work throughout most of the occasions when others celebrate holidays. As a consequence we have to choose a grey, cold and boring winter day and make it “special” by cooking something worth of a Christmas party. In fact, in most Italian homes, a proper ragù is not a sauce for everyday as to make it well you need time and care.
In Italy, ragù is a term encompassing all sorts of meat based sauces, from Ragù alla Bolognese to Ragù alla Napoletana to the miriad of recipes used in virtually every home in the peninsula. Please don’t ask me about “gravy or sauce” we don’t know about that, we call it “sugo di carne” meaning meat sauce, or simply “ragù”. Also, we don’t cook it the whole day. Depending on the amount of sauce and heat power of your cooktop, 1 and 1/2 to 3 hours is perfectly adequate.
The quality of the ingredients is essential of course. I use a mixture of finely minced pork-neck and stew beef, may be a sausage, never chicken. Chicken and pasta is quite unsual in Italy.
My ragù is inspired by my mother Sicilian cooking so, in contrast with the Bolognese, it has relatively more tomato than meat. And because we are in Umbria, we like to drizzle a bit our fabulous olive oil on the plated pasta to enhance the flavor of the sauce. I always make a large pot of sauce and freeze it in batches, it provides a great almost instant dinner for weekdays.
Recipe
Ingredients
- Five 400 g/14-ounce cans Italian plum tomatoes diced or crushed
- 300 gr./ 10 ounces ground meat, half pork and half beef
- 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 stick of celery all finely minced
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 clove
- 1/2 cup white wine
Directions
Using a shallow, heavy bottom pan over low heat, soften the onion, celery and carrot in 3 tablespoon olive oil. Cover. When the vegetables are translucent but not caramelized, increase the heat and add the minced meat stirring quickly until light brown. Deglaze with the wine.
Add the tomatoes with their juices, the bay leaf, the clove and cover again. Cook over the lowest possible heat for at least 1 and ½ hours and up to three hours. Season with salt and black pepper.
Serve ragù with pasta like lasagne, cannelloni, cappelletti, egg noodles of all sizes and also gnocchi and polenta. Note that the rich flavor and pliable structure of egg based pasta combines much better with ragù than spaghetti, penne and other tubular pasta.
Serves 8-10
I shall be trying your ragu’ recipe soon, it’s seems exactly as the ones my family in Italy make where just a few ingredients are used to achieve an ambrosial end product. Grazie per la ricetta!
Prego Gianni, we Italians have the ragu in our blood, isn’t it? Enjoy it!
Stumbled across your blog. I have made this ragu twice in the past two weeks it is so good!
This is my favorite, a classic go-to now. Thank you for this! Simple and beautiful.
thank you Colleen, lovely to know you like it!
Letizia,
Are the carrots and celery northern Italian ingredients? I see them in recipes all the time, but my mother never used them and, as you know, she came from the same part of Sicily as your mother.
Hi Nellie, this is an interesting question. My mother used onion in her tomato sauces but celery and carrot in meat broths and to cook beans. I think their tomatoes where so flavorful that they didn’t feel the need to use all ths aromatics all the time. I wish I could ask her! <3