Bolognese sauce

This is recipe of classic Bolognese sauce. You can boil any type of pasta and top it with Bolognese or you can cook lasagna. One of advantages of Bolognese sauce is that you can divide it in portions and freeze it – as nothing will happen to it while being defrosted. Also it can be stored simply in a fridge up to 1 week.

Ingredients:

• 400 g of crushed tomatoes
• 100 g carrot
• 100 g of celery (any part – stalks, bulb roots or leaves), if you can’t find it replace it with carrot
• 100 ml of the cheapest dry red wine (can be replaced with any wine of any color)
• 1,5 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp of dry basil leaves
• 0,5 tsp of oregano
• 0,25 tsp of freshly grounded black pepper
• Frying oil
• 0,5-1 tbsp of sugar, if tomatoes were not ripe enough and you want to make them sound ripe
• A pinch of citric acid or 1 tbsp of lemon juice / 6-9% vinegar if your wine has no sour taste at all

Minced meat:

• 500 g of meat (beef and pork 50/50)
• 100 g of onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 100 ml of water

Out of these ingredients you will produce ~1 kg of Bolognese sauce. If you want to serve it with pasta, you’ll need 375 g of dry pasta.

Equipment:

• Meat grinder or food processor
• Frying pan of 2-liter capacity

Instructions

1. Make minced meat. If you use food processor, crush garlic first. And the water should be added in the end, when the meat had already been minced. If you use meat grinder, mince all ingredients separately and then combine it with water.

Water in minced meat will make the process of breaking clumps (while frying) easier.

2. Grate or dice carrot and celery.

3. Add oil to a pan. Put minced meat in it and turn maximum heat on – don’t touch minced meat at least 2-3 min, so it will become browned where it touches the bottom of the pan (despite of juices and water that will start coming out of it).

Now start stirring minced meat and breaking big clumps. Of course it would be easier to make Bolognese sauce and use hand blender later. But the point is that hand blender turns meat into a thin paste and actually it seems to me that meat kind of disappears this way:

When minced meat was broken into clumps, add carrot and celery. Continue stirring.

4. When minced meat was cooked through, add crushed tomatoes and all the ingredients except wine. Stir and bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes at medium heat.

5. Add wine, stir, bring to a boil, reduce heat to the medium level and cook Bolognese sauce until it reaches the consistence you like (approximately 10-15 min). Remember to stir it from time to time.