4 Levels of Pasta Bolognese: Amateur to Food Scientist

[liquid pouring]

[meat grinding] [water dripping]

[upbeat music]

Hi, I'm Emily, and I'm a level 1, chef.

Hi, I'm Lorenzo, and I'm a level 2 chef.

Hi, I'm Frank Proto,

and I've been a professional chef for 27 years.

[upbeat drums]

A lot of pasta Bolognese is like an all day

Sunday sauce kind of thing.

And this is really like, get in, get out, and eat dinner.

[Emily laughs]

This recipe is the only recipe my mom knows how to make.

This sauce was a savior feeding all these kids every week.

One of the best times I've had a Bolognese

is I was on a trip with my wife, we were in Bologna.

That's what I'm chasing today,

is that perfect bowl of pasta I had in Bologna.

[bells dinging]

I'm gonna start by making the Bolognese sauce.

So the base of my Bolognese is a mirepoix.

It's the trio of vegetables or the sofrito,

as the Italians call it.

That's-

[All] Celery, carrots, and onions.

Now the onions and the carrots

are gonna give a little bit of sweetness,

a little bit of earthiness.

The celery gives a little sharpness

and takes away some of that acidity.

What this gives us is a nice baseline of the sauce.

First thing I like to do is get my onions out of the way.

What I do is I take my onion,

and I'm cutting across the natural line of the onion.

And then I just kind of go up and over,

almost like you're going over the rainbow, right?

I am going to use the grater,

it just incorporates in the sauce easier.

It'll turn translucent easier,

and look all the pieces are pretty uniform.

I'm gonna go with a little bit of a rough chop

because I like chunks of vegetable in my sauce.

I'm not gonna peel the carrot, it's clean.

I don't peel my carrots, just wash 'em.

You don't really have to peel them.

I think it just looks a little better

in your finished sauce.

I'm chopping my celery,

because it's stringy and you don't want

those strings all throughout your sauce, gross.

Celery I less want chunks in my sauce,

and I want it to dissipate a little more,

but it's also full of water, so it's gonna do that anyway.

All right, mirepoix all prepped.

Here's my mirepoix.

My mirepoix's done, next thing I'm gonna do

is grind some lamb.

I've never heard of a lamb Bolognese.

I'm not sure I'm that brave. [laughs]

I think lamb for Bolognese

is not something people expect to see,

but I think for this sauce, it makes a lot of sense.

It's gonna be super rich.

I'm working with lamb shoulder for a few reasons.

It's got a really nice meat to fat ratio,

and fat equals flavor.

Okay, we're ready, let's grind.

I would not know where to start with grinding my own meat.

I'm not gonna buy a big thing of meat, grind it,

clean a meat grinder, and then make pasta, you know?

I am making a simple ground pork Bolognese.

I think that ground pork is pretty good for this.

If I'm just gonna use one protein,

I feel like pork is great, 'cause it's fatty,

and it gives you that sort of like,

pasta sauce with meat vibe that you think of,

as like just a classic version.

I like using ground chicken.

Who's doing ground chicken?

Come on.

Ground chicken belongs in a lot of other things,

I'm not sure it belongs in a Bolognese.

You won't even know it's ground chicken.

When I grind meat, I like to cut it into long strips,

rather than small chunks.

You feed a long strip in and it goes through.

Another important thing that I like to do is,

have it really cold.

It grinds so much better and a lot easier.

If you're gonna try and run warm meat through this,

it gets gummy.

Now that I have my lamb ground, and my mirepoix,

I can start assembling this sauce.

I'm gonna start off with adding a bit of

olive oil. Olive oil.

Next thing I'm gonna do

is add these dried chili de Arbol,

which are basically just like little Cayenne peppers.

This is something my grandmother would do,

so that's why I do it.

It's a great garnish for later on.

Once they start to smell a little toasty,

they come out, and we put 'em aside for later.

So I'm browning meat first- Browning meat.

because sometimes when I've made Bolognese sauces before

it's like too fatty and oily

and it just like kind of breaks.

And this helps prevent that.

As the lamb cooks, it renders a lot of fat out.

I'm gonna strain most of it out,

but I'm gonna keep some of it to cook my mirepoix.

I'm going to throw in my grated-

[All] Onions.

[Lorenzo] Saute them to get it nice and hot.

[Frank] I'm gonna add my

garlic. Garlic.

[Lorenzo] And then I'll add my-

[All] Carrots.

[Lorenzo] Yum, yum carrots.

[All] Celery.

[Lorenzo] Counterbalances my spiciness

that I'm gonna be adding.

I'm gonna go ahead and add my oregano and salt.

All right, I'm gonna transfer into a bowl,

and then start with a clean slate,

and start browning my meats.

A lot of Bolognese has pancetta.

Well, no, not me.

I'm going to use hot pork sausage,

'cause I love the spice and the oils that come out of this.

Get my chicken in.

Ground chicken is not the go to for a Bolognese sauce

for the general public. [laughs]

I don't know like what's the chicken

bringing to the party there?

You know what I mean?

But when I add it into my hot sausage,

it'll kinda mimic the spices.

You will never notice.

All right, so I've added my pork back in

and now I'm just gonna like give it a little mash.

So I'm adding salt.

[Lorenzo] Red pepper flakes

[Emily] And I like a lot of

pepper. Pepper.

So we got some oregano here.

A lot of recipes call for bacon,

but I don't always have bacon in the house,

and I kind of feel like smoked paprika

brings some of that bacony-ness when you don't have bacon,

and this is like always on my shelf.

And now I'm gonna add anchovy.

I love anchovies.

This has been a secret ingredient

of Italian grandmas everywhere.

And they're basically gonna melt into the sauce.

I've never heard of it, but I bet it would be good,

kind of salty, umami, fishy?

Anchovies aren't gonna make my sauce taste fishy,

they're just gonna give it this really nice richness,

like lift or oomph.

The next thing I'm gonna do

is actually add in my tomato paste and tomato sauce.

Sure, you can use tomato paste,

but Passata is uncooked fresh peeled tomatoes,

with no preservatives,.

Win-win.

I don't even know what Passata is.

This tomato paste is directly from Italy.

Sometimes you get a tinny flavor

from the tomato paste in cans.

This stuff in the jar is a little bit better.

So I'm just using like

regular canned tomato paste from the store,

you get a good amount of it.

A lot of times it's less than a dollar.

And then tomato sauce.

I'm going to add back in my lovely sofrito,

or my mirepoix.

And I'm gonna add white wine.

I'm using the red wine to de-glaze my pan.

It's gonna give a nice acidity to my sauce

Even if it calls for red wine,

I like to cook with white wine,

because I do like the taste of white wines.

So, you know, you cook with what you like to drink as well.

You could use white wine for this, it's totally up to you.

The sauce will be a little bit lighter.

And I think that the red wine compliments it,

a little bit better than a white.

The wine is nice and cooked off.

I don't smell any alcohol anymore,

and the lamb can go back in.

And then I'm gonna add my chicken stock.

While I'm waiting, what I'm gonna do

is make a bouquet garni, which is a very fancy way of saying

I'm gonna bundle some herbs together and tie them.

I have basil, oregano, some rosemary, and some bay leaf.

I'm gonna add my bouquet garni,

so that the sauce has the flavor of the herbs,

but the herbs aren't part of the sauce.

You're not gonna eat them.

So my sauce has been cooking for about 30 minutes.

It has thickened up beautifully.

So I'm adding pepperoni to give my Bolognese

another kick of spice.

Add like a cup of chicken broth, and a splash of milk.

I add milk because it adds a little bit of creaminess,

and like a little extra like depth of flavor.

And I'm adding ricotta to give my sauce

a little bit of creaminess.

Ooh, ricotta would be nice.

Yeah if you've got ricotta in the house, go for it.

Then maybe bring it to my house, please.

Ricotta is a fantastic substitute for milk.

It's gonna give it more of a creaminess,

and thickness to your sauce.

Parmesan rinds, it's gonna give my sauce

a great cheese flavor without adding cheese to the sauce.

And I'm gonna add some bay leaves.

So I'm gonna let this simmer for like 15, 20 minutes.

So I'm gonna let my sauce gently cook down,

for another 30 minutes.

My Bolognese is cooked for about an hour.

It's reduced, it looks rich.

I'm taking out my Parmesan rinds and my bouquet garni.

They've done their work, they've flavored my sauce,

and now I don't need them anymore.

They're no good to me, throw 'em away.

So the next thing I'm gonna do is make my pasta.

I'm using box spaghetti.

It goes well with everything, it tastes good.

It's easy to make.

I absolutely prefer fresh pasta to box pasta.

Any sauce that you put to it,

doesn't exactly absorb into the pasta as easily.

I love using tagliatelle pasta.

A beautiful, flat, not majorly wide noodle.

I've got a beautiful pot of boiling water.

Ah!

That was hot.

I'm making a handmade orecchiette,

which basically means little ears.

I prefer to do handmade pasta, I feel like it's a dying art,

and I want to kind of bring it back.

The texture is better.

That'll hold your sauce really well.

The pasta I'm making is a semolina dough,

it's basically four ingredients.

Semolina flour is made from a hundred percent durum wheat.

It makes a nice firm, chewy pasta.

Double zero flour gives my pasta

a little bit of that silkiness,

everything needs salt for flavor and just some water.

I'm gonna add my salt to the water just to dissolve it.

I just find that I get better dispersion of the salt,

when I add it to the water.

So the first thing I need to do is salt my water.

Pretty generous, sea salt, not crazy,

'cause I'm gonna also be using this water

to incorporate in the sauce later as well.

And I'm just going to dump in my spaghetti,

and then I wanna like break it up a little,

so it doesn't all stick together.

Anytime I cooking fresh pasta,

I always constantly stir the pot, because it will stick.

I'm looking for a soft pliable dough that isn't super dry,

because when I stretch it out,

I want it to grab my board a little.

Now that the dough is not wet and sticky anymore,

and it's starting to come together.

I'm gonna just dump it out into my board.

Then I'm just gonna start to pull it together.

So I'm just gathering all of the flour together

to form a ball of dough.

When I press the dough and it bounces back,

that means I have some decent gluten development,

and that's all that I'm looking for.

I'm gonna wrap my dough

and let it rest for about 20 minutes.

I'm gonna let this boil, I wanna say like 12 minutes.

I will double check the package.

The nice thing about box spaghetti

is it tells you what to do.

10 to 12 minutes.

We'll go on the 10 side, maybe even nine.

So I'm gonna boil this fresh pasta

for about two to three minutes,

so it gets a nice chew to it, and it's not mushy.

Now it's time to roll these pastas out.

I don't want my cutting board to be floured at this point,

because when I squish this down and pull it

to make the orecchiette shape,

I want my cutting board to hold on to the pasta.

So I get it around my finger, I open it up around my thumb,

and then I have a really nice orecchiette shape.

I've never seen orecchiette with Bolognese,

but I bet it works.

They're wonderful for holding sauce.

They have a little bit of a cup on the inside,

and on the other side, they have a little bit of a dome,

that has all these little ridges that grab onto the sauce.

Just kind of relaxing and mesmerizing, right?

The way that I check my pasta, other than tasting it,

is like you can kind of pick it up and see how floppy it is.

This isn't quite there yet,

and you can tell 'cause it doesn't fully flop.

This is pretty close.

Let's get outta the water.

Outta the water!

I would say that this pasta is ready to go.

It's very floppy now and ready to ride.

Now I'm gonna drain my pasta.

All right.

Eep.

Oh God, I'm so clumsy.

I feel like I can hear like bumbling music as I do this.

You know, like as I keep dropping noodles. [laughs]

So I'm gonna save some of this pasta water,

for when I plate,

so I can get a nice consistency of the sauce

that I'm actually looking for.

I'm gonna cook this pasta once my sauce is ready.

Fresh pasta definitely takes

less time to cook than dry pasta.

It's fairly dense, so it might not take 10 minutes.

It'll probably take six or seven.

And now I'm ready to put it all together.

I have a pot of boiling water here.

I want this to be sea salty.

I'm gonna throw my pasta in, just all at once.

Give it a quick stir, so it's not sticking to the bottom,

and then I can heat my sauce up.

You want to have just enough sauce, to coat your pasta.

It's almost like dressing a salad.

I'm gonna take a little bit of my basil,

and I'm just gonna tear that in here

for a little bit of brightness and freshness.

Because I made fresh pasta,

I want to have everything ready to go.

I don't want this pasta to sit at all.

I want it to go directly from the water, into the sauce.

So that I keep that nice chewy texture.

So, take some of my pasta.

I'm gonna combine my beautiful tagliatelle fresh pasta.

Whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops.

[Emily] Here, we're gonna put a little

pasta water in here. Pasta water.

[Emily] Just to loosen everything up.

[Frank] My pasta is cooked

about 3/4 of the way right now,

and I'm just gonna let it finish in the sauce.

And what's gonna happen here,

is that the starch from the pasta

is gonna help thicken my sauce a little,

and let it coat a little bit better.

So now my pasta and my meat sauce are perfectly combined.

I'm gonna plate it up.

It looks so good, I just got this kid smile on my face.

This is a nice portion of pasta.

You generally tend to put a big bowl of pasta

in front of people, you don't need any more.

The sauce is super rich, the pasta's dense.

So I don't wanna have a huge bowl of pasta.

Next up, garnish.

So I'm garnishing my pasta with grated Parmesan,

the real stuff.

So I'm just gonna take a little bit of Pecorino Romano,

it's super sharp,

and I'm gonna put a little Parmesan on too.

Parmesan is much more nutty.

I'm using a shaker of Parmesan cheese,

just because it's easy to get, it lasts forever.

One always has it around.

I call those Pringles cheeses.

The kind that's on the shelf

and who knows how long it's been there.

I also have fresh parsley.

[Emily] I have chopped parsley,

I just think it adds a nice little bit of freshness.

You know, it's simple.

I prefer the basil, but parsley, that's pretty good.

[Lorenzo] And beautiful, fresh basil.

I'm crumbling the fried Chile de Arbol on top,

for a little bit of heat.

Go for it, I love spicy food

And this is my spaghetti Bolognese.

[picture snapping]

And this is my spicy pasta Bolognese.

[picture snapping]

And this is my lamb Bolognese with handmade orecchiette.

[picture snapping]

[lighthearted music]

I'm very excited to eat this.

It's like, it's classic.

It's gonna be ugly.

Let's do it.

[Emily laughs]

That works.

But that chewy beautiful bite of a pasta

is just heaven.

One of the things that sticks out to me right away

is that the meat is super rich, but it's not super strong.

The pasta, like I said, holds on to the sauce.

That is exactly what I wanted it to do.

You're good. I love you.

It's a perfectly good weeknight Bolognese,

and what did it take me?

Half an hour, maybe 45 minutes.

Go away, don't watch me while I eat. [laughs]

[dramatic boom]

Pasta Bolognese is a pasta dish

served with a slowly cooked aromatic thick meat sauce,

named for the place that made it famous, Bologna Italy.

Let's see how each of our chefs made theirs.

[dramatic music]

Emily used pork in her Bolognese.

Pork is the meat of hogs and is typically lighter in color

because of a lower myoglobin concentration,

which is the oxygen rich biomolecule

that gives meat its color.

Lorenzo used a combination of ground chicken,

and hot Italian sausage.

Ground chicken is a mild meat,

but the addition of hot spicy Italian sausage,

gave a really nice flavor combination to his Bolognese.

Frank used lamb that he freshly ground.

Grinding meat yourself,

means that you're not consuming a combination of meats

from various animals,

as may be the case with commercial ground meat.

[dramatic music]

Emily made her Bolognese with a classic milk base.

Instead of the traditional milk,

Lorenzo added ricotta, which is not a true cheese,

in that it isn't made from casein proteins from the milk.

Traditionally, it was made from the watery byproduct

of making cheese curds, which is twice heated,

which promoted coagulation,

and precipitation of the proteins in the whey.

Which were then scooped out and called ricotta.

Frank elevated his Bolognese by using a Parmesan rind,

from the thick outer portion of a wheel of cheese,

which is a great way to use something

that might otherwise get thrown out.

Adding dairy in the form of a cheese rind,

adds saltiness and aids in thickening,

because of the additional

concentrated proteins and starches.

[dramatic music]

Emily used a box of dried spaghetti, made with semolina.

Spaghetti is extruded through dies, dried, boxed,

and ready to use.

Lorenzo used fresh tagliatelle.

Fresh tagliatelle is made with flour, eggs,

and sometimes additional yolks.

It's soft, and supple, and cooks very quickly,

because it has a higher water content

than Emily's dried pasta.

Frank made his own hand shaped orecchiette pasta.

He used a combination of double O flour,

which is very finely ground, and semolina,

a more coarsely ground flour,

combined with enough water to make a firm dough.

The advantage of the combination of flours

is that the double O flour has high elasticity for kneading,

and semolina has additional protein,

which makes maintaining the shape

of the orecchiette more reliable.

Pasta Bolognese is so satisfying,

with so many combinations and options.

Next time you are making this delicious dish,

for a party of 2 or 20,

we hope you'll take some of these tips

from our three fabulous chefs.