Ragù

Though the terms bolognese and ragù are often used interchangeably, bolognese is in fact just one type of ragù, geographically specific to Bologna and justifiably famous, but only one version of a technique that, like so much else in the Italian kitchen, exists in countless slightly different versions, depending on where we find ourselves on the boot. In a sense ragù is like a dialect of the Italian kitchen. Spoken dialects are still strongly regional in Italy: Sicilian is very different from Venetian, which is different from what’s spoken deep in Puglia’s Salento, but they are all recognizably Italian nonetheless. Just so, all ragùs share a basic structure that tells you they’re Italian even when what you’re eating in Napoli is so different from what you might be served in Genova or Padova or Verona—but it’s all ragù. Indeed, ragù is found all over Italy, in every province, in every village and town, and if the technique is basic, the flavors, aromas, and ingredients change from one region to another, often from one household to another, to yield an astonishing variety. A book could be written, and perhaps it has been, simply on ragùs.

We love spending lazy winter Sundays at home with a pot of ragù simmering on the stove, warming the house and scenting the air. It might take a couple of hours to cook a true ragù, with the depth of flavor that comes from long, slow cooking, but the effort itself, once started, is minimal—just keep an eye on the pot, don’t let the ragù dry out or burn, and the slow cooking will work its magic to transform tough fibrous dark meats into tender fragments melded with aromatic vegetables and a glaze of tomato. We often make big pots of the sauce and freeze it in smaller portions, providing easy dinner solutions in the months ahead.

So what exactly is ragù?

One authoritative Italian-English dictionary translates it as “stew”—which it most definitely is not, unless you define stew as a meat-based mixture cooked very, very slowly for a very long period of time. But a true ragù, meaty and dense with many layers of flavors and aromas, is one of the most glorious productions of la cucina Italiana, and you certainly can’t say that about stew in the Anglo-Saxon kitchen. Call ragù sauce instead, because in almost every instance that we’ve experienced, ragù is made to be a sauce or condiment for pasta—often, because of its richness, a sauce for the Sunday pasta that is the cornerstone of the Italian week and the crown of the Italian family table.

At its most basic, ragù is meat (pork, beef, veal, rabbit, wild game, duck), ground or chopped or, especially in the south, a whole piece rolled and tied, cooked very slowly with some kind of liquid (tomatoes most often, occasionally wine, sometimes stock, sometimes just plain water) and some kind of vegetables (onions, garlic, carrots, parsley, celery, herbs) until the meat is so tender that it falls apart and the chopped vegetables dissolve into the liquid. At that stage the ragù is thick and unctuous, suitable to coat pasta, in whatever shape. (And ragù isn’t always made with meat—there are a couple of vegetarian recipes in our collection as well, and they are fully as rich and complex as the more typical meat ragù.)

Once you’ve understood the basic concept of ragù, deciding what to cook, what to combine, what flavors to use, becomes easy, based on the amount of time you have and the availability of ingredients. It’s a great way to extend small pieces of meat to provide for a number of people, and it’s also a terrific technique for tenderizing cheaper, tougher cuts such as oxtail or chicken livers. At Sara’s restaurant Porsena, she makes a tasty ragù with the rib meat trimmings from pork racks used just down the street at her pork-sandwich bar Porchetta. At Porsena too prosciutto trimmings and scraps are used as a base for ragù in place of more usual pancetta or guanciale. Toasted in the pan with aromatic vegetables at the beginning of the whole process, these pork bits add richness to the overall sauce.

Ragù varies in texture, depending on whether it is made with ground meat, with small pieces of meat that fall apart as they slowly braise, or with meat on the bone—the bones adding richness and gelatinous consistency to the overall sauce, then being removed before the sauce is finished. It also varies in flavor, depending not just on what kind of meat goes into it but also on whether you use a simple soffritto of onion-garlic-carrot-parsley or add different vegetables, leeks or shallots, for instance, or wild mushrooms, whether fresh or dried. As for aromatics—bay leaves are almost required in northern Italy, a pinch of sun-dried oregano in the south, rosemary and fennel pollen in Tuscany, sage in Umbria, juniper with wild boar, aromatic flat-leaf parsley universally.

Here’s how Sara describes making ragù in her restaurant:

I like to play around with the texture of ragù and because I have a big kitchen, an industrial meat grinder, and a full-time prep cook, I might make a duck or rabbit ragù with ground raw meat. (If I’m cooking at home without all that help, on the other hand, I’m just as happy slowly cooking the meat until tender, then picking the meat off the bones and mixing it with aromatic vegetables and cooking liquid.) When constructing a ragù, I decide what seasonings will go into the first step, slowly cooking vegetables in a little olive oil or in cured pork fat from prosciutto scraps or pancetta, then which herbs to add with the vegetables—rosemary, bay leaves, sage, as well as parsley and maybe even a little grated lemon zest. If I want a hearty southern ragù, I might crumble a couple of dried chili peppers in too. Once the vegetables have wilted and become translucent, I add water or wine, just a cup or two, perhaps with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste diluted in the liquid, and let the vegetables cook more briskly until just a couple of spoonsful of liquid are left and the vegetables are really tender and well cooked. When the liquid is cooked away, I add the meat, raw if it’s ground meat, or seared first in olive oil if it’s in chunks. At this point either more liquid is needed or, in the case of the ground meat, its own juices might be sufficient. If I’m using canned tomatoes, I add them after the meat has begun to brown. Then I put a lid on the pot and either slow braise it at about two hundred degrees in the oven or simmer it slowly on top of the stove.

Our chef friend Cathy Whims, from Nostrana restaurant in Portland, Oregon, made an interesting point about ragù when she visited us in Tuscany. Looking at a gorgeously mahogany-colored ragù with a half inch of red oil on top in our local butcher shop, Cathy said, “That’s how you know it’s done—all the fat has been cooked out of the meat and it’s just shimmering on top.” It’s a good point.

It all sounds simple, doesn’t it? And it really is. All it takes is time, and much of that time is spent simply waiting while the ragù slowly turns from a bare assembly of raw meat and vegetables into the most sumptuous, flavorful, elegant, and seductive sauce imaginable.

NOTE You’ll find a few more recipes for hearty ragùs in the Autumn chapter as well.