Making a rich, traditional ragù alla Bolognese is not complicated. It’s not fancy. It’s not mysterious. But there is one specific step, that most people outside of Italy completely miss. Without it, your sauce is not bolognese. It’s just a meat sauce.
That one step is what transforms everything. The flavour becomes deeper, the acidity softens, and the sauce develops a creamy, rounded, slow-cooked richness that makes you close your eyes after the first bite.
And if you have been following chefs online who skip this step, rush it, or overload the sauce with garlic, herbs and spice… I’m sorry to say it, but they are not making Bolognese the traditional way. Let’s fix that.
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⏱️⏱️TIMECODES⏱️⏱️
0:00 Introduction, The Secret to Authentic Bolognese Sauce
0:33 It All Starts with the Base – The Soffritto
1:10 Two Ways to Cook Bolognese – Lid On vs Lid Off
2:15 Pre Order My First Cookbook: “Authentic Italian”
3:02 Choosing the Right Meat
3:57 Balancing Wine and Tomato
5:11 The Secret Final Step
6:58 How to Serve Bolognese Properly
8:03 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
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🎬 #VincenzosPlate is a YouTube channel with a focus on cooking, determined to teach the world, one video recipe at a time that you don’t need to be a professional chef to impress friends, family and yourself with mouth-watering #ItalianFoodRecipes right out of your very own kitchen whilst having a laugh (and a glass of vino!).
33 Comments
This is a solid video with the right advice. I never understood people who would look at me like I accidentally ran over their puppy when I would add milk to my Bolognese. These so called "Italians" would tell me they had never heard of it no matter how many times I told them how my Italian great grandmother made it this way. She did not speak a word of English clearly, but you knew what she meant when she said it in angry sounding Italian.
With ragu I always think it's important to point out just how varied it is across Italy: White duck or poultry ragu in Veneto, the classic Bolognese, the Tuscan Variation with herbs and heavier red wine, the Neapolitan tomato one, Genevese and so on. the diffrerent styles tell you so much about the regions…in fact, I think there is a pretty good youtube video in which these differences and their relation to the regions are explained in that idea somewhere 😉
I like to cook down the sauce in a 350 degree oven, which gives even heat all around the pot instead of a hot spot like a grill that can cause burning.
Thank you for the tip with the milk. I will try it.
I've made your Ultimate Bolognese recipe twice with tagliatelle, and it is absolutely magical. Thank you from Missouri, USA.
Why don't you want to brown the meat? When the meat is only grey I think it's missing some richness that you can create with the Maillard reaction. Have you tried it? I am interested in the reason for the grey cooked meat.
You also teached me to add parmigiano rind. But I will add Milk next time.
Sweat and cook off sofrito separately,
Brown off the mince completely,
Then add. Don't add raw meat to the sofrito.
My sons are strong oposers of chunky pieces of anything in their sauce .so I start withe soffritto , put the passata and a little bit of chianti in it and let it cook for lets say a then hour or two . After that I puree the whole thing . I then do the minced meat with a good amound of olive oil on a medium heat and put it in the pot afterwards ,at the milk and cook the whole pot another 3- 4 hours . We eat bolognese with bronzo Spagetti or bronzo Linguini because the sauce can grip on the pasta better 😊 oh ,and I always put the bark(?) Of a parmenggiano cheese in it !
I have, more or less, successfully recreated the Tuscan duck ragu (ragù di anatra) eaten at Buca San Giovanni in Florence. 😊 My motto is: when not in Italy, let it come to you!
Vincenzo, your channel is amazing and you are too ! Grazie mille per le tue recette. I don’t agree on the meat that should not cook too much though. My technique is to take the soffrito out and cook meat with a quite high heat to have a Maillard effect. Afterwards, I put the sofrito back in, add tomato paste, stir well and after, the wine that should completely evaporate before you add the passata (indeed not too much) and sometimes some stock.
At home I use milk to soften the meat and add a reduced red wine for the last hour of cooking. Good to know it's not unheard of in bologna.
Vincenzo have you ever tried simmering the sauce in a low oven (150c)? The heat from the top and the sides is really nice for adding some richness.
A good homemade meat broth (beef/chicken, the kind used for tortellini 😉) instead of water gives it a completely different kick. 🚀 Just tomato paste, diluted with meat broth, the result is a tomato-colored ragù, but very dry.
Another small variation, not from the original recipe but very good: instead of pancetta, some ground/minced prosciutto shank, the final part of prosciutto (usually leftover from the butcher that he sells-off, ask him). This add fat and salt. Be careful not to add any more salt if you use this and already salted meat broth 🧂
always added wine first and long ago learnt the secret of milk. chicken livers seem a great idea, will have to try with my next bolognese. [btw, i'm also a heathen and add mushrooms, but i love mushrooms!]
I knew you were going to say soffritto (I actually mouthed it before you said it)! 😂
I always make it the same way as the video you did with your friend chef friend David and have never looked back – bellissimo! 👌
Yesss! I've done it correctly all the time. The soffrito is the holy trinity.. Personally, I just chop my soffrito EXTREMLY finely, and gently cook it on medium/low heat. Onions need time to become sweet. If it's extremely finely chopped with a food processor, it will melt away anyway. Sopffrito should not browned, just cooked gently in extra virgin olive oil. Greek, or Italian olive oil is the best.
I'm someone that needs more vegetables in my diet, and bolognese is such an amazing carrier of vegetables that you can't really tell they're there if you're a fussy eater, so I do move away from the traditional recipe by adding chopped spinach and washed lentils from a can. I've also tried it with red kidney beans instead of lentils in the past. I know it's not traditional Vincenzo, but it's healthier and still delicious! Everything else, I do exactly like you say in this video, but I'm going to try my next batch with lower fat meat, because it is tasting a bit greasy. Meat is unfortunately super expensive in England right now, so I've been buying high fat meat.
It's amazing how much chefs put the wine in after they added the tomatoes. Big mistake!
I've never used milk, but I do use a bit of noce moscato (nutmeg). It gives it a bit of an edge. Might be an Umbrian thing because all my family do it!
Once all the ingredients are added to the pot and brought to a simmer, I've tried the method of placing the pot, covered, in the oven and letting it go there for three or four hours, then removing the lid to dry up the sauce. It works well, and no need to stir. And yes, finishing with a little whole cream milk it the master touch.
And besides pasta, a ragu bolognese is also really nice on top of a plate with boiled potato cubes with green beans. I don’t know if Italians would do that, but it tastes great. I ate that last Monday with the sauce that i left over from Sunday.
Make Nonna proud! 👵📖 Order my "Authentic Italian" cookbook here: https://www.vincenzosplate.com/authentic-italian-cookbook/
Beautiful chef! When I was young I had an Italian chef who showed me this method. I still make my bolognese this way today.
When I do a bolognese a usually start in the late afternoon and once I have it together I cover it and put my dutch oven into the oven for 4 to 5 hours and then put it in the fridge overnight. the next day I pop it back into the oven for an hour or two to gently reheat it. Then I put it onto the stove for the last hour. I use the same technique for my pasta alla genovese.
I once used heavy cream
Cause I was out of milk, it ruined it! Too thick, dampened all the flavour. Stick to milk people!
One of my favourite memories is watching my daughter when she was really young dig into bolognese on parpadelle after I spent hours making it. She’d quietly eat without saying a word, wiping her mouth and hands with napkins that were complete destroyed by the time she was done. Then she’d get up and dish out some seconds. Seeing her so happy with something I put so much work into was a true joy.
You don’t get a feeling like that with store bought garbage in a jar.
Excellent advice, as always. Grazie mille Vincenzo!
The reason most ppl in america mess it up is adding too much tomato. No other reason.
The Nonna from Bologna? Is that anything like the Muscles from Brussels? 😆
In our filipino spaghetti sauce, we use Sprite or 7up along with bana(well I use tomato sauce but usually forced to use banana ketchup for some reasons). Boiling the sauce more than hour because boiling it for less than 30 minures is just for cooking show. Onions need to melt or else it aint a pass for me.
Beautiful haircut❤
ty fr sharing that some variants don't have wine.
Many people don''t do alcohol for religious or health or allergy reasons. I know that it is supposed to evaporate, but still.
Whats bolognese? Is that carbonara?
Yes to the white wine 😊