Top sauce.
Photo: Rupucinskis
Depending on the context, this sauce can become a bologna sauce, a lasagna filling, or a chili. I usually make a large amount of the sauce because it can be frozen and kept in the fridge for months, but it usually disappears before it gets to the cold freezer.
The composition:
- Three packets of ground beef (Total 1.2 kg)
- Three cans of canned tomatoes.
- Beef broth (you can also use cubes)
- Lots of onions.
- A little garlic.
- Oil, butter, spices.
- A glass of dry red wine.
Minced meat.
Photo: Rupucinskis
Preparation:
First, fry the garlic in oil. When the garlic is brown, take it out of the pan and put the meat instead. There is a lot of meat, so you need to cook it in at least two pans. If there is no second pan – you can fry in several passes. You don’t need to fry the whole block of meat in one pan at once – it will ooze, stew and, in a word, it won’t be what you need.
Minced meat.
Photo: Rupucinskis
When the meat is browned, transfer it to a large pot and add the canned tomatoes and broth. There are people who have enough patience and time to make a real broth, from meat and vegetables, all due respect. However, boiling broth takes so much time that modern people have been choosing to use bouillon cubes for almost a hundred years.
Add butter and finely chopped onions to the pan in which the meat was fried the day before. Sauté until soft, then add half a glass of red wine. Mix the onions and put them in the pot next to the meat. Also, add pre-fried garlic by finely chopping it or squeezing it through a garlic press. The pot is covered with a lid and stewed with calculation – the longer, the better it will be. At least an hour. I usually simmer for about two hours until the onions are completely dissolved. This way I avoid the judgmental stares of my kids because they don’t eat onions (they think they don’t eat onions). Shortly before removing the pot from the heat, add spices – mostly basil. Ready.
The sauce is ready.
Photo: Rupucinskis
The said sauce can be used to make lasagna. Can be mixed with pasta to make the legendary “Pasta Bolognese”. And if the sauce is mixed with cooked rice, corn and beans, you will get delicious Mexican chili.
For demonstration purposes, we will make a “Bologna” sauce, and the word “Bologna” is deliberately put in quotation marks. As you know, only the sauce that comes from the Bologna region of Italy can be called a real bologna sauce, and everything else is just a sparkling meat sauce. I will avoid culinary arguments at the dinner table because talking with your mouth full is not polite.
When the preparation of the sauce is nearing the end, we start boiling the pasta. The standard recipe calls for spaghetti, but being an artist and a free thinker, I allow myself to deviate from bourgeois clichés. Penne rigate and rigatoni are better choices because the grooves in the sides of the pasta and the tunnel in the middle are where the sauce catches and more sauce means more flavor. Boil the pasta for a minute less than indicated on the package. When the time comes, drain the water and mix the meat sauce with the pasta. That’s right, in one pot. Let it mix. Let the flavor soak in. Let the pasta finish cooking while in the hot sauce. Do not serve the sauce on a plate with the pasta or on top of the pasta. Only novice photographers and members of responsive mom forums do this. We mix everything together in one pot.
We serve immediately. I’ll be smoking hot. Add grated cheese and greens. We take a picture, publish it on social networks and get to work. Enjoy your meal!
