How to Cook Spaghetti Bolognese

Speaker: I am going to make a quintessential Italian dish. It's very, very simple, it's Spaghetti Bolognese. I really recommend this for any first time chefs or beginner chefs out there because it's very, very easy, Spaghetti Bolognese. So we have got our few very simple ingredients. We have got our vegetables which are carrots, I have got a little bit of diced celery, two nice diced onions, I have also got some Portabella mushrooms which are diced up. I have got some nice puree tomatoes. We also have some nice beef steak, a little bit of nice dry white wine, of course our beef and again we are looking for 15% fat content, that will make sure that there is enough flavor in there and that it's not too greasy. First thing that we are going to do is we are going to light our gas and we are going to put our water on there to boil. So the first thing we want to do is we are going to brown up our meat. I have got a regular frying pan here or skillet and you can see that it is on a pretty high flame. We want to really get some color on to that meat. So I am just going to put a little bit of olive oil in there. So let's start browning our meat and again we are looking for that nice sizzle when it goes into the pan. Now, we really want to fry and get as much color as possible on this meat and just keep it moving around with the wooden spoon, you will find that that has made it pretty close as you put it in there and the beef has lumps. So we really need to loosen it up. This whole process is going to take about two minutes. You can see that the meat has really taken some color, that's been there for about two minutes. Now, what we are going to do is we will finish breaking up the last two pieces and we are just going to set that aside. So instead of turning my gas off what I am actually going to do is I am going to get to a lower heat and we are going to start sautéing our vegetables. So the pan goes on there. This time we are not looking for that really, really big heat. We want a nice low even heat, so we are going to go in with our onions first and you can hear a small sizzle this time. That will cool again once those onions go in. We really want to try and do this process really quite slowly because we are trying to encourage all those vegetables to spread off and start letting out their nice real juices and the slower it is the better. So in goes the celery. I want to mix that up before we put in our beautiful mushrooms and we will stir that and we need to stir that about every minute. We are going to let those vegetables slowly, slowly soften up on that low heat for about four or five minutes. So now we want to add a little bit of wine and we are going to try and make the wine reduce. So to make it reduce we are just going to turn that heat up a little bit. You can hear that sizzling in the way this great flavor is coming out of all those vegetables. So in goes the wine. Just a regular dry white wine and we are going to put that heat up for about one minute and what that's going to do is that's going to allow all the alcohol to burn off and then they are ready for the next stage. So we can see that white wine has just about evaporated and the next step is to turn that heat back down. We just had that high heat to get rid of the wine and now we want to start one of the biggest part of the Bolognese and that's slowly making it into a ragu, slow, slow getting the flavors out of there. So the first thing I am going to add is a little bit of thyme, fresh thyme or dry thyme. There is no problem with these in dried herbs in Bolognese, they are actually stronger and more pungent. We are also going to add some lovely fresh oregano and we are going to add half of our parsley now and keep half of it for later. So I will give that a quick stir to incorporate it all in there and the next thing is going in are our beautiful tomatoes. So it's very important that you actually have a low, low heat there because we really want to simmer it slowly, slowly. We are also going to add our nice beef stock. Now, I am using a lovely fresh home made beef stock here. So we can see that it has started to come up slowly. We are going to let that simmer now very slowly for about 25 minutes. So now that the main body of the sauce is ready, we are going to go back and we are going to get our lovely beef that we browned up earlier and we are just going to put that into the sauce and you can really see that the Bolognese has started to come together. So once the beef is in there is one more ingredient that's a nice teaspoon of tomato puree. We will just give it a nice stir and it's very important at this stage that the heat is extremely low. We just want to let that come together very nicely and simmer basically for the next hour and that's the beauty of Bolognese. It's a really really slow process since there is an incredible amount of flavor in there. So you can come back to this lovely Bolognese sauce and I don't even need to do anything with it because its on such a low heat. That's really coming together perfectly, it's been on for about 50 minutes. So I know that we have got about 10 minutes of cooking time left and that's a perfect item to start putting our pasta in. The water is really boiling furiously. I just have to do one more thing which is add a generous amount of salt, very very important that you season the water, before you put the pasta in, it's your best way to season your pasta that means that the flavor will go all the way into the center as the pasta cooks. So we just don't get in there. You need a huge volume of water compared to the amount of pasta you are actually going to cook. So just give it a little stir with your spoon at the start. The last thing you want is those big lumps of pasta when they stick together. I have got one more thing to finish before we are ready to plate out and that's grating the Parmesan. So just grate your Parmesan cheese and I am using a Grand Padano Parmesan cheese today that's a slightly younger and it doesn't have the same strong flavor that a Parmigiano-Reggiano which is the older stronger Parmesan would have and I think that our Spaghetti Bolognese is going to be so full of flavor that we won't need it to be honest. So all we have to do now is put our pasta together. I am going to take the pasta off and strain it. Very careful here it could be very, very hot. We have got rid of any excess water, back into the pot. I am just going to enhance this with another couple of flavors which is some nice fresh basil and if you smell that it really has an incredibly favor and the last of the parsley. The last that we keep some of the parsley to the end because it has got that lovely green color and it makes it look so fresh and inviting. So that's just about ready to go in my opinion. We will take it off the heat and we are ready to serve our incredible Spaghetti Bolognese.