This recipe is so easy to make, you wonder why you were not making pasta sauces from scratch all along. Forget any of the ready made sauces that are full of excess salt, sugar, preservatives and other factory chemicals. Start making your bolognese with your own authentic flavour!
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- Oil or Butter
- Garlic
- Onion
- Ground Beef / Minced Beef
- Dried Italian Herb Mix (dried garlic, tomato, basil, oregano, parsley, onion, bell pepper, marjoram)
- Tomatoes (Tinned whole or diced)
- Tomato Paste
- Pasta (Spaghetti)
- Salt & Pepper
Preparation:
- Cook pasta as per direction of packet
- Dice onions
- Dice or mince garlic
Method:
- Add oil or butter to pan on medium high heat
- Fry onions until starting to caramalise
- Add garlic and fry until caramalised
- Add ground beef (meat) and fry until all the meat is browned on the outside, breaking up the meat and frying at the same time
- Add salt, pepper and dried Italian Herb Mix and mix thoroughly until seasoning is even throughout the meat
- Fry until the meat is cooked throughout
- Add tomatoes and mix
- Bring to the boil and simmer to reduce the sauce
- Add required tomato paste until sauce thickens
- Season with extra salt and pepper
- Serve on a bed of cooked pasta
- (optional) garnish with fresh herbs like basil
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to good for you living. This video is part of the cooking basics series where I’m going to show you a simple 2 step method that’s going to allow you to cook delicious meals with ease. Today we are making spaghetti bolognese, the sweetness of the tomatoes make it a favourite for everyone, especially the kids. So quickly the 2 step method, first it’s about oil and water, so you separate your ingredients that you are going to cook in oil and those that you are going to cook in water. and Second everything is a salad, so if you know how to make a salad, you’ll be able to make this without a problem. Most recently I made two Asian style dishes but this spaghetti bolognese is going to show you that the 2 step method works almost everything. So I hope that this is going to be good for you and let’s go to the kitchen.
First fire this pan up over a medium heat and let’s have a look at our ingredients. Starting with our oils we have diced onions some ground beef, minced garlic and some dried italian herb mix. Moving to our water ingredients we have tomatoes, tomato paste and some pasta. Ok this is ready so we’ll add some generous amount of butter, our natural oil and straight away we’ll put in our onions, and we’ll saute these over our medium heat. It’s about 1 minute and it’s nicely caramalised you can tell be the changing colour to a light brown and the aroma is unmistakable, we’ll now add the garlic and give it a quick saute. Your frying time will depend if you’ve sliced, diced or minced the garlic. I like to use butter because it’s a good fat that is naturally separated, avoid chemically extracted oils like canola or vegetable oil, coconut oil is the very best but butter is also good here because the frying is done on a relatively low heat. Once that has sauted and again we can do this by checking the colour and aroma, you add your ground beef. I’m actually using minced kangaroo meat I like it because it’s a game meat, kangaroo is an active animal that is low in fat.
Ok the meat is all brown and we are almost ready for our water intense ingredients. But jsut before that we are going to season the oil. Turn down the heat a little bit and add some salt, some pepper and finally some dried italian herbs. Oh the aroma of the gralic and the herbs is so mouthwatering. Give it a quick fry and mix, we don’t want the fine dried herbs to burn so the turning down of the heat is essential here. Fry it with alot of movement, make it quick and straight away we will add our tomatoes, this is just tinned tomatoes, you can use chopped fresh tomatoes but you will have to cook them for longer. I’m going to break up the tomatoes just to speed up the process, bring it to the boil and adjusting the heat now so it’s more like a simmer. You see traditionally the pasta sauces simmering away for hours, if you have time then that is the best. What simmering does is reduce the water content, it becomes less water downed, the flavour intensifies and the same time thickens.
ok that’s been simmering away for a good few minutes, what so good about a slow simmer is that it’s not violently disrupting the meat and other ingredients and drawing out too much liquid for the actual ingredients, so we’ve tossed and mixed this around like a salad, it’s time to refine our salad dressing, which is this tomato based sauce. This is a quick 10 minute home made pasta sauce so to thicken it we are going to need to utilise a little cheat, what I’m doing is adding a good heaped tablespoon of tomato paste and we’ll just mix that through and straight away the sauce becomes a blood red thick and chunky sauce. And now I want to give a little taste just to check the flavour. If there is not enough flavour there are a few options, you can add some salt, some sugar, or some spices or just let it simmer for longer. I’m going to add a pinch of dried herbs jsut to balance the flavour and colour, if you ahve time let it simmer and taste every so often adjusting the flavour gradually.
So like a salad I have prepared a bed of spaghetti just like a bed of lettuce, adding my sauce, that’s about it. The 2 step principle working on a tomato based pasta, starting with our oil ingredients, moving into our water ingredients, tossing our ingredients around like a salad and refining our salad dressing. This took over 8 minutes in total and the finishing touch is adding some freshly ripped basil leaves. Mmmm mmm, that smell of fresh basil, yummo!
There you have it spaghetti bolonese, that’s the quick version but just as simple as those ready made sauces minus the excess salt, sugar, preservatives and other factory chemicals. If you are after a more authentic flavour use fresh tomatoes, fresh herbs and some white wine. And instead of tomato paste, you are going to have to reduce your sauce, that means letting it simmer for a good couple of hours or maybe even more. What the simmering action does is evaporates the water, it intensifies the flavour and makes your sauce thicker. You use the same 2 step principles. First it’s about oil and water and remember everything is a salad so keep it simple. The versatility is there try to use different cheeses, try to use different meats maybe some meatballs and use some different vegetables. Here is your chance to experiment and start your own signature dish. Visit good for you living dot com leave a comment, like my videos, send me a recipe challenge or just say hello. And remember living it’s good for you.