Italian Bolognese recipe

I love Italian food. It’s one of my two go-to choices when picking a restaurant, and if I had my way I would eat spaghetti for lunch at least once a week. So, when we studied Italy, I was extremely excited to try a new Italy recipe, Italian Bolognese. So, let’s get started on another round of geography lessons with an Italian Bolognese recipe.

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This all started with Case for Italy

I picked up the Case for Italy book, and flipped to the back and printed out the recipes. That’s right, recipes, first for tiramisu, and second an Italian bolognese recipe. So, let’s go and see how it went. Since this is right in my bailiwick, the recipe actually went pretty well.

 

Italian bolognese ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 pound hamburger meat (though substituting Italian sausage would be amazing)
• 6 tablespoons white wine (I may have used cooking sherry, I honestly can’t remember, I substitute this ingredient with all sorts of stuff all the time)
• 1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes (the original recipe said tomato pulp, so I think this is roughly equivalent)
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste*
• basil
• salt and pepper to taste

*While buying this version of tomato paste costs a bit more, I like that I can just use 1 teaspoon, and not end up with a mostly full can I’ll throw out.

 

Italian bolognese recipe

My kids criticize my handwritten recipe cards because I often leave out steps I assume you know. I’ve discovered I sometimes do that in these recipe posts, so this is me trying to make sure I don’t do that.

1. Heat butter and oil in pan, then cook the onion.
2. Add the meat and cook until brown.
3. Stir in the wine, and then the tomato pulp, and tomato paste. Let cook together for a minute or so.
4. Add basil, salt, and pepper to taste. I think I ended up with significantly more basil than they intended because I like basil.
5. Simmer for 2 hours stirring occasionally.
6. Serve with noodles and shredded parmesan cheese.

As you can see, I probably added a bit more than 1 teaspoon. That’s probably closer to two tablespoons of basil.

What? I like my spices.

I also used this as a chance to play around with my pasta maker. I really like this, and I tend to make excuses to use it, and sometimes end up with a stressful night, as I didn’t necessarily have the time to make noodles from scratch, but they taste so good.

This was wildly popular with Jeff, who really likes a heavy meat sauce. I’ve grown to dislike heavy meat sauces, so I wasn’t as big of a fan of it. The kids were vaguely indifferent to the recipe.

Doesn’t it look delicious?

Italian Bolognese recipe

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Italian bolognese recipe for a great Cooking Around the World recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 pound hamburger meat
• 6 tablespoons white wine
• 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste

Instructions

1. Heat butter and olive oil.
2. Cook onions until translucent.
3. Add hamburger meat and cook until brown.
4. Stir in the wine, crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste.
5. Add basil, salt, and pepper to taste.
6. Simmer for 2 hours stirring occasionally.

Notes

Serve over cooked noodles with shredded Parmesan.

More cooking around the world

• Andorran Chicken Cunilo
• Monaco: Herb Fougasse bread
• Luxembourg Potato Cakes
• Spanish Paella
• Spanish Chicken in Sherry