In all honesty, I'm not sure if I even knew what a bolognese was before watching cooking shows. I may have learned that the main difference between a bolognese and a meat sauce sauce is in a bolognese, the tomato or tomato paste is just an ingredient to the vegetables and protein, but not the main event, where as in a meat sauce, the ground beef is just added to an already made sauce. I think it has to do with what is in it and the thickness as well. While I know it originated from a part of Italy, Bologna. in the mid-west, I certainly didn't grow up with it on the dinner menu as bolognese. I made it last night and in true fashion didn't take a good picture, though the little portion here is my leftovers. I had a ton of noodles left and some will go into a spicy noodle dish for a lunch and the remainder with the leftover bolognese for another future lunch. The photo above is from the following site: Everything there is to know about Spaghetti Bolognese.
Mine had:
A handful of chopped baby carrots, probably totaling 3/4 of a cup
1 chopped yellow onion
1/2 pound of ground beef, fried and drained
About 7 cherry tomatoes, a few sliced large button mushrooms, and a few pieces of zucchini- as that's what I had left
a couple tablespoons of olive oil
2-3 tsps garlic powder
2 tsps Italian Seasoning
2 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp black pepper
(these are guesses-I don't measure seasonings)
All the veg and seasoning cooked down to soft before I added the ground beef back. I then added a splash of milk and a small can of tomato paste. It was bland so I added more garlic, pepper, and a dash of salt. Then it was thicker than I liked, hardly spoonable, so I added some water, about 1/2 cup, and let it simmer. If I had veggie broth I would have added that instead of water to keep the flavor without adding anymore salt. The verdict-it was pretty good for not being what we typically eat on top of spaghetti. It used up a lot of lingering vegetables. It easily could be made vegan by increasing the veg, particularly the mushrooms, or using a vegan meat. It didn't take that long to cook and made a hearty meal. I'll play around with it again in the future, but thought I'd share another use it up kind of non-recipe meal.
I am going to make "penne a la vodka" today for dinner. I like pasta with meat sauce too. I need to add chopped beef to my grocery list. Thanks for reminding.
ReplyDeletePasta with a yummy sauce is one of my favorite meals. It was always youngests as well, then about to years ago she decided she eats it too much, so we only have perhaps one time a week.
DeleteOne idea would be to consider adding a bit of butter, which tends to make any type of red sauce much richer in flavor.
ReplyDeleteThat would be smart. I ill tuck that away for my next culinary attempt!
DeleteI alternate between a bolognese and a meat sauce all the time. It just depends on what veggies I need to use and the time I have. I usually cook the bolognese a lot longer than I do a meat sauce. As far as TheHub knows, it's just spaghetti night regardless of the sauce.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if my husband thought much difference either other than it was so much thicker-not really a sauce, more a topping. I thought we would have more leftover than we did, so he must have liked it.
DeleteIn Italy they use way less sauce than we do (in the UK/US). It hardly touches the sauce and it's kinda nice when you realize that the pasta is the star of the show not the sauce. It has certainly changed my way of making bolognese. They also finely cut up carrots into the sauce - but I never bothered with that as I don't like carrots anyway!
ReplyDeleteI did have the carrots in mine-I love carrots, plus had some to use up, so a no brainer for me. i will experiment with other options since it went over so well.
DeleteI usually double any recipe so would have several more meals from the sauce LOL. A pantry staple for me is diced tomatoes. You know we never had spaghetti as a child and I rarely made it for my family but I have always liked any kind of pasta and sauce.
ReplyDeleteSince it was more a clean out the refrigerator and less a recipe, I didn't have ingredients to double, though I thought I would get more sauce left than I did.
DeleteWe loved spaghetti when I was a child. It was a special day for us even if we had it every two weeks or so. Ours had lots of celery, onion, and mushrooms. Of course, it had ground beef. Once, after I had married, I was home and Mama was making spaghetti. As I stirred it to help her, I asked where all the chunky stuff was, thinking it would not be good. She said she was tired of people picking stuff out and complaining, so she put it all in the blender. I was not accustomed to smooth sauce...lol...but it was delicious. The youngest children were picky. We three older ate the chunky spaghetti and enjoyed it. I could eat spaghetti every day.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if I would like celery in the sauce-maybe. I don't think of celery with pasta or tomato sauces, but I could be spot on wrong. Your mom was clever to blend to avoid the picky eating.
DeleteI just make up my sauces from scratch depending on what I have in the house. I use ground chicken, or chorizo sausage, or extra-lean ground beef, a can of fire-roasted tomatoes plus a bit of tomato paste. I throw in all the veggies: onion, green onion, bell pepper, mushrooms, cauliflower (chopped small), broccoli, and celery.
ReplyDelete