Authentic Italian Bolognese Sauce Recipe (2024)

Authentic Bolognese sauce, also known as "ragù alla Bolognese" is a meaty sauce that has been simmered for hours, allowing the flavors to meld together perfectly. Hailing from the northern Italian city of Bologna, this slow-cooked sauce is a classic accompaniment to egg pasta, and the official recipe has been registered with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce and the Accademia Italiana della Cucina.

This traditional Bolognese recipe has been perfected over the years and is widely considered the original.

An earlier version of this recipe can be found in the first Italian (language) cooking book "La scienza in cucina" by Pellegrino Artusi published at the end of the 19th century.

The recipe was called Maccheroni alla Bolognese and was not a tomato-based sauce.

It wasn't until the 19th century that tomato sauce became a common ingredient in the more affluent Italian cuisine.

The traditional bolognese sauce uses three types of meat: beef, pork and bacon, onion, celery and carrot flavored with dry white wine and stewed in tomato sauce and broth for many hours.

The ragù bolognese can be served with fresh egg pasta, but also with gnocchi or polenta.

Ingredients

• olive oil
• onion finely diced
• carrot finely diced
• a stalk of celery finely diced
• bacon: it should be finely minced in a food processor
• lean ground beef
• lean ground pork (you can use Italian sausage)
• chicken livers are an optional ingredient and add a new dimension to the dish
• tomato sauce: for best results, I recommend using Mutti tomato sauce
• vegetable broth: personally I prefer to use chicken broth as it adds thickness to the sauce
• dry white wine
• whole milk
• fresh homemade tagliatelle
• heavy cream only if you are serving it with dry pasta

Instructions

1. Stir fry with a wooden spoon the bacon with the olive oil at medium-high heat

2. Add the diced onion, carrot and celery to make a soffritto

Hint Both the bacon and the vegetables should be finely chopped. You can use a food processor

3. Add the ground beef and the pork

4. Stir the meat until it is all brown

5. Add a glass of white wine and let it evaporate

6. Add the tomato sauce and the stock and stir

7. Simmer at low heat for 3-4 hours adding stock if needed

8. If you use the pressure cooker, cook for only 35 minutes

9. Add the milk at the end and stir

10. If the sauce has too much liquid, simmer to reduce it to a thick sauce

11. Serve with fresh tagliatelle or make a lasagna

Hint: Fresh tagliatelle should boil for only 3 minutes. Season the pasta immediately as soon as it is drained from the water.

To find out more, read the article: 38 Tips to cook pasta like an Italian

How to serve it

You can use this pasta sauce in many different ways.

The traditional way to serve it is with fresh tagliatelle, but you can also serve it with homemade gnocchi, adding plenty of Parmesan cheese.

The most common use of Bolognese sauce is for lasagna, and if you want to make it the most straightforward way, use the no-boil lasagna sheets. The recipe is in the article lasagna with Bolognese sauce and bechamel.

Bechamel is a white sauce also called a white roux, it is a creamy white sauce made with butter, flour, and milk.

The Southern Italy lasagne di Carnevale uses ricotta instead of bechamel.

Besides lasagna, you can use this Bolognese sauce as a filling of eggplant parmesan, arancini, rice timbale, baked pasta or in the Italian potato pie Gateau.

The benefit of using a pressure cooker

A good Bolognese sauce should cook for 3-4 hours, while it only takes 30 minutes with a pressure pan.

It is very convenient if you make it for a weeknight family dinner.

If the sauce is too liquid, you can simmer until it thickens.

Other recipes I make with the pressure cooker are brown stock, chicken stock, fish stock, pulled pork or artichokes

Bolognese vs Ragu sauce variation

In the United States, Bolognese sauce is currently used to indicate a generic pasta sauce made with meat.

Still, technically a generic pasta sauce made with meat should be called Ragu, not Bolognese.

Ragu in Italian is a pasta sauce made with meat stewed for a long time.

It is a more versatile recipe definition and can have many variations and different names.

Ragu is an Italian word with French origins (ragoût main dish stew), as many other Italian recipe names.

It goes back to the 18th century when Maria Carolina of Austria, the wife of Ferdinando IV di Borbone, king of Naples and Sicily, had a passion for French cuisine and hired French chefs to prepare the meals at the palace.

You can find the Napoleatan ragu in the recipe Souther Italy lasagne di Carnevale

For more information about the history of Italian cuisine, you can read the article: History of traditional Italian recipes by regions

The traditional Bolognese recipe instead is a specific type of ragu (ragu alla Bolognese) originally from the city of Bologna in the region of Emilia Romagna, Northern Italy.

While there are slightly different variations of the Bolognese sauce, generally speaking, the ingredients are very specific.

The recipe was registered at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce by the academia italiana della cucina in 1982.

The meat in the Bolognese is a mix of beef and pork; bacon is mixed with the sofritto, it is flavored with white wine, and a glass of milk is added to the sauce to make it creamier.

Other Italian meat sauces

You can make a ragu with many different types of meat

In this lamb ragu I use shanks as its cartilages melt in a nice creamy sauce when cooked for a long time.

You can also check the Neapolitan ragu I use in this Sauthern Lasagna di Carnevale

If you want to know more about the different cuts of meat and how to cook them, you can read the articles:

• Beef Cuts Diagram for French and Italian Recipes
• Pork Cuts Names And How to Cook Them
• Lamb Cuts (in French and Italian)

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