Baked Italian Meat Sauce
A strictly Americanized version of a Ragù alla Bolognese, commonly referred to as an Italian Meat Sauce, or Spaghetti Sauce.
Unless you think Chef Boyardee from a can is some fine Italian food eating, you probably have your own version of an Italian Meat Sauce, and this dish has to be one of the most widely replicated yet variate recipes in US cuisine. And to be clear, this isn’t a true Italian pasta sauce.
Tomato based Italian sauces in classical Italian cooking carry a lot of names for variations on a theme. First, you have Marinara, which is a robust Italian sauce made with tomatoes, onions, and herbs, with large amounts of garlic, oregano, basil, and even chili pepper. But Marinara sauce has no meat.
Then, you have sauces with meat, which are loosely referred to as a Ragù. There are two general classifications of ragù: Bolognese and Neapolitan.
Bolognese recipes generally consist of ground meat, usually beef, but pork, veal, and chicken are also used. The classic recipe calls for pancetta, a mirepoix of onions, carrots and celery, tomato paste, meat broth, red wine, and finished with a small amount of milk or cream. There are no herbs with the exception of bay leaf, at least not in the version of this sauce proclaimed official by the Italian region of Bologna in 1982.
Neapolitan recipes use whole meat, usually beef, veal, pork, or all three. It contains much more onion compared to Bolognese, and includes lots of herbs, mostly basil.
There are, of course, many local regional differences of all of these loosely defined recipes: white wine versus red wine; lard or butter versus olive oil and so on. Strangely, none of these Italian tomato based pasta sauces contain mushrooms. I qualify mushrooms as a non-negotiable ingredient to any worthwhile tomato based pasta sauce.
In America, many of these recipes have been revised if not bastardized to something that one will not find in southern Italy. But at the end of the day you have what I have: a very personal adaptation of a broadly defined recipe for tomato based Italian Meat Sauce, and a steadfast belief that mine is a good interpretation. It’s a recipe that I have been making quite literally for decades and it has evolved over time. My version has elements of all three of the Italian classifications of tomato based pasta sauces, and I promise, it is delicious.
I also believe mine is fundamentally different than most American versions of Italian meat sauce for four reasons:
Unlike most versions of tomato based Italian sauces that are simmered on the stove, mine is baked in a covered cast iron Dutch oven for eight hours, allowing the gravy to amalgamate into a rich, dark reddish-mahogany color, with wonderful depth and character. This method of cooking locks in flavor-releasing steam, and keeps you from having to add liquid to the sauce as water evaporates, further diluting flavors. My method concentrates flavors, and nothing ever sticks or burns.
I use green onion, not white or yellow onion for the same reason that you can easily enjoy a raw green onion with a little salt, whereas white or yellow onion are seldom enjoyed in their raw state except as an accompaniment to something else, such as a hamburger. I think green onions add a certain dimension of garden freshness to the sauce since I use not only the white root portion of the onion, but the flavorful green stems as well.
I add green and black olives, and green and red bell pepper to my sauce, and I don't care whether anyone considers this to be an affront to "true" Italian cooking. I figure if it's good enough for a pizza, it's good enough for a meat sauce.
Finally, I use ground beef and mild Italian pork sausage. I either buy it in link form and remove the casings, or I buy it whole. This gives the dish an added zest and robustness that plain ground pork can't deliver.
I will say that Italians are right about one thing that most Americans get wrong: don't put the sauce on top of the pasta. Put it in the pasta. By that, I mean, put your cooked, well-drained pasta in a mixing bowl and ladle in the sauce. Toss to combine, coating all the strands of the pasta before putting it on a serving plate. Then add a little more sauce on top. You'll appreciate the difference this technique will bring to the dish.
Oh, and one more thing for you Italian meat sauce snobs out there. While I use a lot of fresh ingredients, I am just fine with canned diced tomatoes, and instead of using plain tomato sauce as a base, I use a commercially made brand of pasta sauce, generally Rao’s Home-Style Bolognese. I simply choose to use a more flavorful tomato sauce as a base.
Italian Meat Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef (lean to fat ratio of 80:20)
- 1 lb mild Italian sausage (either whole or links)
- 6-8 green onion, chopped
- 2 6-oz cans mushrooms (like, Green Giant)
- 1 small green bell pepper, cored and diced
- 1 small red bell pepper, cored and diced
- 4 tbsp fresh minced garlic
- 1 4- 1/4 oz can fine chopped black olives (like Lindsay or Early California)
- 1/4 cup pimento-stuffed sliced green salad olives (like, Early California)
- 1 6-oz can tomato paste (like, Contadina or Hunt's)
- 2 14.5 oz cans petite diced tomatoes (like, Hunt's)
- 1 26 oz jar prepared Italian sauce (like, Rao's Home Style Bolognese)
- 3 cups dry red wine, preferably Chianti
- 4 tbsp dried crushed oregano
- 4 tbsp dried crushed basil
- 3 tbsp dried thyme
- 2 tbsp garlic power
- 1/4 tsp dried red pepper flakes
- 4 whole bay leaves
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
- 5-6 tbsp olive oil for cooking
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.
- If you bought Italian sausage links, slice them open lengthwise and remove the sausage from the casings. Discard the casings.
- Putting your cast iron Dutch oven (at least a 4.5 quart size) on the stove, heat it on medium high, then heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil until shimmering. Add the ground beef and Italian sausage. Chop and stir the meat with a spatula until all the beef and sausage is crumbled and the pink is gone.
- Remove the meat to a platter with a slotted spoon, draining the grease away as you go, and then pour off all but 2-3 tablespoons of oil, or add more olive oil to the pan if needed.
- Add the green onions and sauté for 4 minutes.
- Add the green and red bell pepper and sauté for 6-8 minutes until the peppers start to collapse and the onions are beginning to caramelize.
- Add the fresh minced garlic and continue to cook for a minute, stirring constantly so the garlic does not burn.
- Add the mushrooms and olives and sauté for another 2 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste and half of the oregano, basil and thyme, and stir all of this together. Allow the vegetable mixture to slightly brown and bubble a bit, stirring constantly to make sure nothing sticks and burns.
- Add the two cans of petite diced tomatoes, the prepared Italian sauce and the red wine. Stir well to combine.
- Reintroduce the ground beef and Italian sausage to the Dutch oven, including any accumulated juice from the meat and stir some more.
- Add the rest of the seasonings, including the garlic powder, red pepper flakes and the four whole basil leaves, and stir all of this to evenly disburse the seasonings and combine all of the ingredients well.
- Bring the sauce to a simmer. Then, put on the lid and place the vessel in your pre-heated oven. Cook for one hour.
- Reduce the heat to 250°F and continue baking the sauce for another seven hours.
- Remove the bay leaves before serving with your choice of pasta.
Notes
- Place a baking sheet under the Dutch oven to catch any spillovers, especially if your sauce is at the brim. Mine always is.
- Pay attention to the size notations on the jar of meat sauce you buy. While this recipe calls for 26 liquid ounces of sauce, which is 3.25 cups, many commercial sauces will denote their ounces by weight. So, a 26 liquid ounce jar of sauce might very well say 36 ounces by weight on the label, which is confusing, if not a little misleading.
