Ragu

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daveb said:
I got skooled by a Hazen fan on making what they called "Sunday Sauce" Love the stuff. Are we talking the same thing?

Key ingredient in the Sunday Sauce was a good size chunk of pork. Whenever I buy ribs I get the whole spares and then cut the chine off to make St Louis ribs and give me that chunk o pork. Rest of ingredients/technique tracks.
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Sunday Sauce has the meat taken out and served as the second course after the pasta with sauce. Ragu is meat barely held together as a sauce. So very similar but not quite the same IMHO. Also you don't use sausage in a Ragu.

One other thing I will say is the carrots are one of the most important parts of a good ragu. The sweetness really comes out in a long cook and Ragu is an inherently sweet sauce.
 
^ This
Sunday Sauce or Gravy is an Italian American thing.
It's more braised meats cooked in simple tomato sauce.
You serve the meat first, followed by pasta tossed with the tomato cooking sauce.
Our family used braciole as the meat and add sausage and meatballs 45 minutes before serving.
My grandmother, who was from outside of Naples, sometimes added pork ribs but often just braciole.

This was traditionally cooked on Sundays. The idea is to start the braise before church and have a large family supper in the early afternoon.

The leftover meat shredded into the leftover tomato sauce make a great 'ragu' for Monday!
 
Nemo and Badger, Ok I just picked up some fatty brisket at the market. When you say mince, do you ground beef? Or would maybe rectangular chunks would be better? I'm going to serve it over home made hand cut pasta and tons of parsley.


Nemo said:
Trigaaar asked (in another thread) for my recipee for ragu. I kinda hesitate to post it here because I'm not a pro chef and there are lots of pro chefs here and even a few Italian pro chefs who will undoubtedly know much more about this than me. I'll take this as an opportunity to learn from you guys.

Anyway, here is my recipee. It's my modification of one I found in a Marcella Hazan cookbook. Basically I just made it bigger and increased the proportion of vegetables. Let me know how close I am to authentic or if you have any suggestions for improving it. Or feel free to post your own. I do enjoy making it when I have the time because there's lots of knifework in the soffrito. The different ingredients in the soffrito also allow comparison between knives for various aspects of cutting ability (thinness behind edge, food release, rock chopping, etc...)

To make this quantity, you need a big stockpot.

INGREDIENTS :
Olive oil.
3 large onions, finely diced (2-3 mm dice works well for all soffrito ingredients).
1 kg carrots, finely diced.
Other finely diced veggies can be added to the soffrito (I have used zucchini, yellow button squash and eggplant with success).
1.5 kg high fat minced beef (you can substitute up to about 500g of this with minced pork).
Salt.
About 500 ml full fat milk.
Quarter to half a nutmeg, crushed or grated.
About 500 ml white wine (FWIW, I never cook with wine I wouldn't drink).
2kg fresh or canned tomatoes. Fresh is best if they are in season. Especially if you grew them.


METHOD:
This dish needs frequent stirring.
Sweat the onion over low heat in olive oil for 2-3 mins.
Add carrots, celery and remaining soffrito ingredients and cook on medium for a few minutes.
Add the meat and seperate the grains with a fork. Add the salt and cook until the meat has lost its red raw colour.
Add the milk and simmer on low heat until excess liquid has evaporated (maybe half an hour), stirring frequently.
Add the nutmeg.
Add the wine. Cook until excess liquid has evaporated. I do this on medium heat but I thik that low heat (and longer time) is more authentic. Continue frequent stirring.
Add tomatoes. Cook on low heat until excess liquid has evaporated. Continue frequent stirring. I do this on medium heat if I'm in a hurry. Marcella Hazan's recipee actually says to cook for at least 4 hours on low, adding a little water when it gets dry. This certainly gives a very rich, complex ragu but the quicker version is still pretty nice.

I usually serve with penne because my kids can get it on their fork easily. I think taglitelle may be more authentic. Apparently in Bologna, it is rarely or never served with spaghetti (despite its English language monniker). I also make lasagne with it (sometimes substituting eggplant slices fot lasagne sheets). All of these freeze well and make a quick and easy weekday meal when reheated which is very popular with the kids and contains a lot more veggies than they realise.

Before I was a knife nut, I used a food processor (hangs head in shame). Texture and flavour are much much much better when the sofritto is cut by hand.

How do you make ragu?
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A Ragu Bolognese would traditionally use ground meat, but there are countless ragu recipes that use sliced protein....especially if using something like duck or rabbit.
 
I use ground beef. I think ground beef is actually what is specified in the Hazan recipe. In Australia, ground meat is generally referred to as "minced meat", so that is the term that I used. Sorry for the confusion.

Finely sliced meat or meat minced with a knife would probably work but I suspect that the texture would be somewhat different.
 
If you cook a braising protein low and slow, and shred it when it's super tender, the texture is not that different from ground or minced, but it takes more time. The good thing is that you can choose what cut of meat or meats you're using.
To me Bolognese is minced and in other ragus the protein is cooked down and shredded...but that's just me.
 
I think a brisket braised long and low till it falls apart would be an amazing ragu
 
parbaked said:
If you cook a braising protein low and slow, and shred it when it's super tender, the texture is not that different from ground or minced, but it takes more time. The good thing is that you can choose what cut of meat or meats you're using.
To me Bolognese is minced and in other ragus the protein is cooked down and shredded...but that's just me.
Click to expand...

To be a d!ck here... but bolognese is just a form of ragu from the bologna region... hence why quite often it is called bolognese ragu... (or is that what you were saying).

And also you can use sausage meat in a ragu... you can use any meat in it.

Heaps of options really
 
If using brisket, cook first, let it cool, then fine dice. But you def want some ground pork in there for texture and flavor.

Save any animal fat, use it to fry tomato paste.
 
parbaked said:
If you cook a braising protein low and slow, and shred it when it's super tender, the texture is not that different from ground or minced, but it takes more time. The good thing is that you can choose what cut of meat or meats you're using.
To me Bolognese is minced and in other ragus the protein is cooked down and shredded...but that's just me.
Click to expand...

How would ypu cook the meat in this situation? Slow braise? Slow roast? Sous vide? Pressure cooker?

I'm thinking that a beef cheek or beef shin ragu done this way could be woth a try.

Some great ideas and concepts in this thread, I'm glad I started it. Thanks guys. Keep it comming.
 
Mucho Bocho said:
Nemo and Badger, Ok I just picked up some fatty brisket at the market. When you say mince, do you ground beef? Or would maybe rectangular chunks would be better? I'm going to serve it over home made hand cut pasta and tons of parsley.
Click to expand...

I think you could quite safely dice it then flake it when it's spoon tender at the end of the braise. Parsley is excellent for lifting the finished dish
 
I use leftovers from work. Roast eye fillet or cube roll and pork loin. Mince, fry with plenty of oil until dry and crispy, and rehydrate with red wine.
 
Brisket flat deserves to go through the mincer. Save the point for smoker.
 
malexthekid said:
To be a d!ck here... but bolognese is just a form of ragu from the bologna region... hence why quite often it is called bolognese ragu... (or is that what you were saying).
Click to expand...

That is kinda what i was saying. Like most things Italian, there are regional differences.

In the North they tend to use minced meat, milk and a smaller amount of tomato, as there is much less tomato in the North. Some older recipes use only tomato paste. Ragu Bolognese is the classic example of this style.

In the South, ragu is made with whole cuts of meat braised in a tomato based sauce. They don't use milk. In this style the meat is often removed and served separately from the tomato sauce, which is served with pasta. Ragu Neapolitan is the classic example of the Southern style ragu.

Ragu Neapolitan is the basis for the Italian American Sunday Gravy.
 
Ragu Neapolitan (Sunday Gravy) for two:

P1030288.jpg


Beef shank, pork shoulder and sweet Italian pork sausage...side of salsa verde...
 
So I peeled the fat off the flat, large cube then mince. Cooked the Ragu four hours yesterday outside on a very low simmer, reduced 1/5? Cooled it. Going to pull it out this week for an easy weekday meal

Was a fun easy intuitive dish to make. Something different and simple.

Parbaked, now that looks like a comforting meal from by Italian grandmother. We would have had a wilted bitter green and lots of American white bread and butter. You know the rule was, you had to have a piece of bread for every pork chop. [emoji6]
 
Mucho Bocho said:
So I peeled the fat off the flat, large cube then mince. Cooked the Ragu four hours yesterday outside on a very low simmer, reduced 1/5? Cooled it. Going to pull it out this week for an easy weekday meal

Was a fun easy intuitive dish to make. Something different and simple.

Parbaked, now that looks like a comforting meal from by Italian grandmother. We would have had a wilted bitter green and lots of American white bread and butter. You know the rule was, you had to have a piece of bread for every pork chop. [emoji6]
Click to expand...

I reckon if I caught a flight now I'd make a midweek dinner
 
When the weather turns in the northern hemisphere, try swapping out ground meat for oxtail; dropping the milk and upping the wine & tomato ratio.
 
My daughter (14yo) normally does not like anything with tomato in it. She made an exception for this. Finished off all of her plate and half of mine.

Sooooo good! A nice bourbon barrel aged Zinfandel to go with it and done.
 
Not criticizing but the next level for your daughter is to make homemade pasta. Its really not that bad if you do it in stages, don't try to roll it out by hand, fools errand for weekday meals. I make a big batch of dough, then portion in balls, freeze. Then use as needed, they defrost in a few hours too.

I'll roll the pasta sheet in advance of the meal then slice them up into wide noodles one of my fancy knifes. The mouth feel and visual plating of hand cut noodles is very special.

Better yet, ask your daughter to crank the pasta machine, then let her cut the noodles to what ever she wants. Making home made pasta with mom and DH will plant a seed deep in her psyche that she will cherish for the rest of her life.


That is if you've got the patience to deal with kids in the kitchen ;-)
 
Sorry but what the h€ll is Bourbon barrel aged Zinfandel? The vast majority of Zin (like any red wine and many whites) would be barrel aged (as opposed to stainless or concrete eggs or amphora) but I don't know of any non-fortified wine that would be aged in barrels that previously held anything other than regular table wine if they were put in used barrels and not new oak.
 
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