Marcella Hazan’s Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style

If there’s one ragù bolognese you should have in your repertoire, it’s this one: Marcella Hazan’s Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style from her 1973 The Classic Italian Cookbook: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating. (The book, out of print, is included in the more recent Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.) Our adaptation veers only slightly from Hazan’s original, using a pound of ground beef, rather than 3/4 pound, and a touch less tomato, so you only need one 14.5-ounce can, rather than 16 ounces, which would mean opening a second can (or using only part of a large one). Of course you can use a little more; the recipe is very adaptable and forgiving. Hazan’s original calls for simmering the sauce for 3 to 5 hours; if you want to cook it longer, Hazan wrote that it can go up to 7 hours (we’ve never waited that long with this one.)

In a May 2020 story, we used turned to it to sauce handmade pappardelle noodles inspired by Evan Funke’s American Sfloglino cookbook.

The sauce can be doubled; extra sauce freezes well. Use it to sauce Fresh Handmade Pappardelle, Fresh Handmade Pasta Using a Pasta Machine, just about any dried pasta. You can also use it for lasagna, or on polenta (you can swap it for the mushroom ragù in our Polenta with Wild Mushroom Ragù recipe).

This is the style of ragù bolognese made with milk; if you’d like a ragù bolognese made with both beef and pork that does not use milk, you may prefer Lidia Bastianich’s recipe.

Makes 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 cups of sauce, enough for six servings.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, diced small (about 1 cup)

2 medium carrots, diced small

2 stalks celery, diced small

1 pound ground beef

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup milk

1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg (optional)

1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes

Instructions

1. In a Dutch oven or other deep pot, melt the butter with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until the onion is just translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the carrot and celery and cook gently for 2 minutes.

2. Add the ground beef, crumbling it in the pot with a fork. Add the salt, stir and cook only until the meat has lost its raw, red color. Add the wine, turn the heat up to medium high, and cook, stirring occasionally, until all the wine is evaporated.

3. Turn the heat down to medium, add the milk and the nutmeg, and cook until the milk has evaporated, stirring frequently.

4. When the milk has evaporated, add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly. When the tomatoes have started to bubble, turn the heat down until the sauce cooks at the laziest simmer, just an occasional bubble. Cook, partially covered, for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally, and adding a little water when necessary. Taste and correct for salt.