Preface

This is our Sunday Ragù, meaning the meat based pasta sauce that we cook on lazy Sunday afternoons, sometimes with leftovers other times with prime ingredients. We usually make 3 to 6 portions, freeze two thirds and consume the rest within the week.

Measurements aren’t really important in this recipe. You must accept that every Sunday Ragù is different, it’s part of the game. What you see in the pictures is representative of the yields talked above.

for anything else ping @fabritravels for impromptu advice.

Prepping

If you feel fancy start with fresh tomatoes. The most badass you can find. Go to the local market and look around. Do you see any badass tomatoes? If so, it may be time to think about cooking a Sunday Ragù.

You need to peel them. If you use canned tomatoes buy the peeled kind. To peel at home, criss cross their top and dip in boiling water for 30 seconds or less. You definitely don’t want to cook them.

Fish the tomatoes out the water and run them under cold water to stop the cooking. Peel the remaining skin. If you blanched right the skin will come off very easily.

Once peeled remove the stem inside the tomato and dice up. Set aside and get ready for more dicing. Shallots, carrots, celery and garlic. (peel them all).

A carrots heavy mirepoix will make the ragù sweeter. I like to do a 2/4th carrots, 1/4 shallots and 1/4 celery. Peel all of them, including the celery’s back.

Beef talk

Grandma would like you to use a 2/3 beef and 1/3 pork mix. Your fancy friends would love 1/3 beef, pork and boar. Delicious. You do you.

Sometimes we do all pork, others we mix fresh ground beef with leftover steak (like in this case where we had a some yummy ribeye).

If you wonder on how lean/fat the beef should be think of a nicely marbled prime rib. If you feel fancy go ahead, do a prime rib ragù (oh boy..)

Herbs are important too. Keep the stems long, you want to be able to fish those out later. Sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano are my go-to combo.

Cooking

Brown the beef with a little olive oil on high heat. What that means is cook it until it’s almost, but not quite, burnt . A good thick bottom or cast iron pot here helps but anything has a medium diameter-to-height-ratio does well.

Keep the heat up paired and your wrist moving (wooden spoon if you wanna feel authentic). After the meat is brown and is sweating fat add the mirepoix and use the moisture to deglaze the bottom of the pot.

The better alcohol you use the better the taste. Having said that you can use any wine, red is best, and in case of desperation a nice beer also does the trick. Add the liquid a little at the time, you now want to lower the flame to medium-high and keep stirring the pot to make sure cooking is uniform.

A glass or two later, you do you. Add the tomatoes and the herbs. We like to throw in some dried porcini mushroom for flavor at this point. Let the sauce cook on low heat for as long as you please. Keep it moist with water, wine or canned tomatoes, you do you. Pictures below will give you some reference.

Seasoning

Don’t season until the sauce is pretty uniform in texture (see picture with the bread piece). You may regret it.

Salt and pepper are basic, build up to taste. We like chilly flakes or ground cayenne and then use Japanese rice vinegar (dark) to re-balance the acidity of the tomatoes, especially canned ones. Traditional move would be balsamic vinegar from Modena, aged really old just a tea spoon.

Finishing

Cook until the oil/fat separates from the water and starts to bubble up to the top. Low heat throughout, covered and with the occasional stir.

There is no such thing as cooking a ragù for too long. Whenever it feels ready it’s done. Doing this a few times helps of course but you’ll see. Give it a try, it’s easier than you think.

You can refrigerate up to 3 days, freeze up to 3 months. Vacuum packing, in mason jars too, triples the shelf-life.

Pro tip

If you are tempted to cut corners (ie. the first step) or don’t want to spent $50 on good tomatoes you can use canned ones. San Marzano are the real deal. Pro tip: pick the can with the worse design on the shelf.

How do you know if you bought a good can? Whole tomatoes, occasional piece of skin, tasty juice.

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Sunday Ragù