This guy is an imposter!
That's not the traditional Ragu.
He's making a quicker version he probably adjusted for those who can't be arsed.
Much better.
Might want to use tomato PASTE and not passata, especially if you plan on cooking it for 2 hours.
The Spaghetti Bolognese question - The Guardian.
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That's not the traditional Ragu.
He's making a quicker version he probably adjusted for those who can't be arsed.
Might want to use tomato PASTE and not passata, especially if you plan on cooking it for 2 hours.
Always remember. Every single dish out there is the result of someone saying "I'm going to do something different."
I plan on using both passata and paste (which I didn't use before).
Two hours should be enough for the flavors to combine and the meat to get tender. Why do you suggest not using passata with that cooking time? Too watery? Tomato flavors not condensed enough? I mean, I'm adding wine and some water anyway. As long as I cook for 30-60 minutes without a lid on top I should be good as far as consistency goes.
Now I'm undecided with the milk, however.
The "butter on pasta" thing sounds counterproductive to me since I want to sauce to stick on the tagliatelle as much as possible.
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Honestly, it sounds great, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
These dishes often started their life as popular cuisine where people would cook what they had on hand, so I never get where the snobbery is coming from.
I guess my bridge too far is carbonara. I‘ll fight people over carbonara, if only because using eggs, pepper and the starched water from your pasta isn’t exactly expensive or complicated while it tastes amazing.
Everyone is agreement that Carbonara must not become scrambled eggs, obviously. So, stove off when putting in the egg/cheese mixture. What I see people still debating over is whether to use whole eggs or just the egg yolks. So far my go-to thing was using two egg yolks and one whole egg (kept the two egg whites and made scrambled eggs with them the next day). I hate throwing away perfectly good food, even if it's just egg whites. Might try just using whole eggs for Carbonara next time. If the temperature is low enough and the pasta water is not too hot either, it should still get creamy without becoming scrambled eggs.
Was zur Hölle?
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you need to ask italian americans, in Italy meatballs are eaten as a secondo; ragù alla bolognese uses minced beef.
Same. Like lately I’ve been adding sautéed spinach to my bolognese and who cares if it’s authentic or not it’s tasty and I love it.
lmao this guy is great. My kind of comedy, thanks for showing me this.
I want him to do a British version of Seinfeld.
Yeah, of course you shouldn’t boil, or particularly cook, the eggs.
Having seen tons of variations (number of eggs / yolks only), I’ve found that for two people, 1 full egg and 2 yolks works great. I generally spend a couple of minutes mixing the eggs and cheese until I get a pretty airy emulsion.
I cut the fire on my bacon sauce a few minutes before the pasta are done, after the water from the pasta has reduced, and add the eggs right before adding the pasta to the pan. That way, when I mix everything in the pan, I don’t cook the eggs too much. It might sound like a lot, but one reason I love carbonara is that it takes 20 minutes start to finish, as you can set everything up while the water is boiling, and making the sauce takes roughly the same time as cooking the pasta.
Check out his Netflix comedy specials. He's my fave comedian atm :)
Galadriel was definitely a gym bro:
"Her mother-name was Nerwen ('man-maiden'), and she grew to be tall beyond the measure even of the women of the Noldor; she was strong of body, mind, and will, a match for both the loremasters and the athletes of the Eldar in the days of their youth."
"In her early youth, she was very willful and of an "Amazon" disposition; and bound up her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic feats."
I think what they're getting at isn't "they think they created meat sauce" and more of "they they they created putting meat sauce on specifically spaghetti noodles vs any other noodle"
Yes, I know! As a European (actually your neighbor up north ;)) that now lives in the US it's been really frustrating to see how Americans have butchered your beautiful cuisine.
The ideal would be that every fork of food has pasta, sauce and meat on them. If you got meatballs, apart from the fact of the variable rawness of the meat inside the meatballs, you can't have that perfect mix.
Thank you for being the one person that makes sense in this thread! Also I appreciate that Don Camillo avatar ;)
I’m from the US and I assume this is just what I call “meat sauce”. Like, brown some ground beef in a pan, toss some sauce in, then mix it with pasta? Maybe saute some peppers and onions while you’re at it? It’s also just “American chop suey”.
Bolognese sauce is the fancy stuff that you spend all day cooking.
Bolognese sauce is the fancy stuff that you spend all day cooking.
I have been blessed by the loremaster
Confirmed; elves were concerned with aesthetics and function. Men of today have lost their way without the elves example.
Yeah passata is too watery and smooth; it will take a long time to evaporate and condense and you want small tomato chunks here and there!
You may use "pelati".
30 minutes is not enough, let it cook for 90 at the very least. Onion and other vegetables should practically dissolve.
Do not add water right away (or ever in fact, unless you realise it's too dry and going to burn): you want your meat to brown a little, with just oil and soffritto at first. Adding water, or too much liquid at this time, will make your meat boil. Eeww! You don't want that!
This is also why you add wine in small amounts and let it "sfumare" (evaporate quickly) at high temperatures. The pan should be very very hot at this time.
If you really really feel the taste is too..harsh? I guess you may add a little milk but not in the sauce itself; instead stir your pasta with the ragu in a hot pan (as in, pasta should finish cooking in the pan for one or two minutes) and add small amounts of milk and some of the water you used to cook pasta.
But If you're using more carrots the Ragù should be sweet-ish and gentle enough and it shouldn't need anything else.
A small amount of butter won't make the sauce not stick to tagliatelle, it will just make everything a bit smoother. Some like that, but most prefer their Ragu a bit more...stingy?
Let me know how it went, I'm off to cooking some Ragu myself; thread inspired me.
Yep, this man knows his Carbonara (except it's guanciale and not bacon but I'm not sure how easy that is to find in other countries).
One variation I really like in the summer is Carbonara di zucchine; basically the same, but fried/browned zucchine slices with a little onion replace guanciale/bacon. Delicious.
Yes, it's usually one full egg for the and one yolk per person.
You can make meringhe with the whites!
Meatballs (at least in italian american cooking) originated because people often had lower quality meat and less meat in general to make into their meals. They made meatballs and cut them with breadcrumbs and other spices as filler to create more substantial food and go a longer way.
Obviously, this isn't the reason a lot of people eat meat balls nowadays (or in other cultures originally anyways, meatballs exist in a lot of places) but clearly its a dish people grew to like or find comfort in.
Yep, I really hate the general attitudes in threads like these.
Not everybody wants every bite to be the same though. Some people like being able to have a bit with just meat, a bit with a lil meat and pasta, a lil pasta and sauce with no meat, etc. To some people having one meal with one homogenous flavor and texture in every bite is boring and can limit your enjoyment of individual elements of the dish.
Actually, I’m lucky enough to have a Sicilian grocery on my street that opened a few months ago, so I can make it with guanciale. But that circles back to my original point: I wouldn’t fault people for using whatever cured meat or bacon they can find, and making their variations. The best part of carbonara to me is the creamy texture and that can be achieved with very simple, cheap and accessible products.
As a matter of fact we just had Carbonara yesterday and my wife used smoked bacon (!).
Not only that, she cooked it in oil (you're supposed to fry the meat it in its own fat) and onion soffritto. I suspect she used whole eggs.
She also prefers her bacon to remain tender, while I like the meat in Carbonara to be well done and crispy.
I was poking fun at her for killing Carbonara, but the end result was still very good.
And then, I put Grana Padano cheese on pasta with smoked salmon, and I'd rather use regular parboiled rice than fancy Carnaroli for risotto, who am I to criticize.
I think knowledge and respect for the recipe is important. One has to appreciate the various steps, the choice of ingredients and the reasons why throwing eggs and bacon on pasta doesn't make it Carbonara or why Bolognese isn't just boiling some meat in tomato sauce.
Beyond that though, everyone can make variations and simplify the recipe as much as they like.
Thank you. in Germany they have the full blu-ray box set with german/italian audio ;)
I'm northern and have never seen it. Chilli chips, yes, though that's a US invention I would think, or at least I first saw it in American style Diner places.
I mean if we didn't invent it then why are so many people angry at its very existence. You'd think that if us dumb Brits didn't invent it then there'd be no problem with the specific variation of the dish that is Spaghetti Bolognese.
What's awful and terrible about it?
- Spaghetti don't match well with ragù
- I'm used to Ragù made in Bologna and the quality is usually lower outside Emilia - Romagna and even more outside Italy
1. That doesn't make it "awful." Denamitea above gave a decent explanation for why people might have some personal preference towards it.
2. How is the quality lower? Ingredients? Method? Something else? Because "it's shit because it's not from a specific region in Italy," sounds like pure elitism.
I mean Spag Bol is not considered high-cuisine here in the UK; it's pretty much what people make when they don't want to make anything special. People almost universally like it and, if done right, it can be genuinely very good. Why it's being made out to be some delicate, refined dish that should be treated with the utmost care, and made with only the finest ingredients, is beyond me.
It's cooking as I type this. I ran out of time yesterday since I was occupied by important stuff.
Finishing my playthrough of Cyber Shadow
As said earlier, I think my soffritto-to-meat ratio is a tad higher than usual but I love it that way (three sticks of celery, four small/medium-sized carrots, three medium-sized onions ... amount of meat: 700g), I blended the soffritto again but not as finely as before, there are still some small chunks of veggies in there instead of it basically being a smooth paste. Had I decided to cook for four hours, I would've gone with finely chopped soffritto maybe but I want it to almost dissolve by the end of the cooking.
Other than that: a glass of red wine, just salt and pepper, a glass of passata, ~1-2 spoons of tomato paste, some water (from rinsing the blender and the passata glass). I will now let it cook it for 60 - 90 minutes with the lid on, then another 30 minutes or so with the lid off (maybe pour in some more water if necessary) until the desired consistency is reached. Five or so minutes before the end I will add half a cup of milk; for science. I need to know the difference.
Edit: Ended up cooking the Bolognese for close to 3 hours overall and it turned out pretty good. I think the milk at the end somehow helped emulsifying the fat that was rendered in the cooking process into a smooth sauce.
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Oh I don't have any ground to stand on, I'm a dirty American who uses whatever's available when it comes to noodles + sauce + meat. Spaghetti, Angel Hair, Rotini, Penne, Macaroni, if it's a pasta and it can convey sauce and meat and cheese into my stomach with it via a fork or spoon I don't really give it a second thought (although despite this, eating Fettuccini with anything other than Alfredo sauce just feels wrong somehow). I just thought their post was more about "why do they think they invented putting meat sauce on X noodle" than "why do they think they invented meat sauce". If the Brits were the first one to actually do it with Spaghetti specifically then bless them, they have my appreciation because I love that shit.
I think one major difference is the long cooking method.
Here in Germany, making Bolognese from my experience growing up was basically frying some minced meat and then mixing into a standard tomato sauce. Overall cooking time maybe 30-60 minutes. It's not the same as condensing flavors and tendering the meat for 2-4 hours. Carrots or celery were usually also missing; it was just tomato sauce with sauté'd onions and maybe even garlic as a base and fried minced meat thrown in along with some italian herbs. I mean, that version is also really fucking good - because how can it not with these ingredients? - but definitely different from the original recipe in both texture and taste.
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Food is food, does it taste good? Yeah? Then enjoy. Bolognese is great, and if you don't like it, that's fine.
I don't understand this need for food purism, and only that. You can like both.
I don't understand this need for food purism, and only that. You can like both.
Here's a somewhat provocative question: Isn't this what cultural misappropriation is? How is SpaghBol or Spaghetti and Meatballs different from shit like this? You take a beloved cultural artifact out of its appropriate context and claim to have "improved" it, no?
The cultural appropriation that people have a problem with is that which takes place within a context of marginalization/oppression of the appropriated culture by the appropriating culture, and which furthers that marginalization/oppression in some way.
Unless you want to argue that this is part of some overall cultural context of marginalization/oppression of Italians by the British, that wouldn't be applicable here.
What about Spaghetti and Meatballs then? The marginalization of Italians in America back when that dish was invented is well-documented, does that apply then?
I don't see how that applies either. Spaghetti and meatballs as a dish was generated by Italian American culture, and while it became popular with the broader American culture, I don't see how it was appropriated in a way that marginalized Italian Americans. (Maybe there's some history I'm not aware of; I don't know.)
I get where you're coming from but they're usually spiced differently than ragu so the shape is not the only difference.
Spaghetti con polpette can be godly if done right...
