I have to admit that the Bolognese sauce was always my favorite sauce for pasta since I was little. I remember that every time I went to Italy with my parents, they went crazy with me because spaghetti with ragu and tramezzini were the only thing I ate, not because I was a choosy eater, but because I really loved bolognese sauce. When I came to study here, I learned how to prepare it, but I don’t really know which recipe is authentic because I’ve read many recipes in the Italian cookbooks of “authentic” Bolognese sauce and most of them were different. Some use bacon, some sausage, different types of minced meat, with or without celery, I even saw somewhere a cup of milk on the ingredient list… well,  I tried some of those recipes and sincerely they were all great, so I think that you can follow the basic recipe and then you can experiment with other ingredients to give your personal touch and make it just as you like. That one ingredient I love to add and you won’t find it in the “original” recipe is the nutmeg, just a pinch freshly grated nutmeg… Well if you try it let me know what you think.

In the “original” recipe, it is recommended to use the high fat cuts of beef (fatty cuts are tastier), but you can use any cut and it should be minced beef and pork meat although I use only minced beef meat. Another thing that is different in my recipe is that I don’t use Mortadella (large Italian sausage made of pork meat). You will almost always see spaghetti with bolognese sauce although in the typical Emilia-Romagna recipe they use noodles, but I usually prepare it with spaghetti or even penne rigate.

I can say one thing I know for sure and that one is that the longer you cook it the better, it will melt in your mouth. I usually prepare large quantities, just because you need to cook it for a few hours and I don’t always have time to prepare it, but I love to have some bolognese sauce ready in case I don’t have time or when I’m not in the mood for cooking (well I think it happens to all of us, right?). So I store it in the freezer in small air tight containers. As you can see on the photos the sauce on the plate and the one in the jar have a different consistency and that’s because I used them for preparing different recipes. The one on the plate I used for Lasagne Alla Bolognese and the one in the jar for Spaghetti Alla Bolognese, because if you want to prepare lasagne with this sauce I recommend you to let all the water evaporate and lasagne will be tastier, if the sauce is too liquid it will ruin the lasagne. And yes, I almost forgot to say that I cook it in a large pot and not this one on the photo which I used only for making these photos. It would be really unhandy to cook the bolognese sauce in a large skillet. 🙂

Enjoy your pasta and if you like let me know what you think about this recipe in the comments section below.