Bolognese

[eugene]

I prepare bolognese sauce very often, and I read many recipes of it. Yet I can't understand from experience and from theory what is the best way to cook it using the ingredients that I use.

Q1:
I sautee onions first, then I add celery and then mushrooms.
I have no idea how much time should I spend cooking each ingridient before I add the next, what is the best order to put them, and wether I should use high or low heat when cooking. Please don't tell me to check each time what tastes best. I don't want to make the sauce 50 times with all combinations and reach a statistical conclusion. I don't trust my taste too.

Q2:
When I add tomatoes and wine, should I keep it cooking on low heat or high heat?
If I put it on high heat the sauce will absorb the wine and the tomatoes very fast, at least I assume so. If that's the case, why most recipes recommend low heat?

Thanks.

[Austin_]

Originally Posted by eugene

I prepare bolognese sauce very often, and I read many recipes of it. Yet I can't understand from experience and from theory what is the best way to cook it using the ingredients that I use.

Q1:
I sautee onions first, then I add celery and then mushrooms.
I have no idea how much time should I spend cooking each ingridient before I add the next, what is the best order to put them, and wether I should use high or low heat when cooking. Please don't tell me to check each time what tastes best. I don't want to make the sauce 50 times with all combinations and reach a statistical conclusion. I don't trust my taste too.

Q2:
When I add tomatoes and wine, should I keep it cooking on low heat or high heat?
If I put it on high heat the sauce will absorb the wine and the tomatoes very fast, at least I assume so. If that's the case, why most recipes recommend low heat?

Thanks.

I would reccomend cooking the celery and mushrooms for about 3-5 minutes on medium-heat, until lightly tender. The onions should cook about 5 minutes before that on medium heat, so when they celery and mushrooms finish cooking the onions are nice and caramelized. Turn the heat on low and add the wine and tomatoes. Why? Because if you put wine in a pan on high heat it causes giant flare ups which is incredibly dangerous. I would cook the mixture on very low heat for about 30 minutes, so the flavors can combine in cooking.

[MikeLM]

Eugene-
you said

"I don't want to make the sauce 50 times with all combinations and reach a statistical conclusion."

You should take a look at Cook's Illustrated magazine. That is exactly their schtick. They pick a dish and proceed to test dozens of permutations of ingredients, techniques, timings, and whatever else can be varied, and finally present their taste-tested optimum recipe for the dish with a complete description of ingredients, preparation, and timings.

They publish a lot of cookbooks- collections of recipes from the magazine. They've got some holiday special offers going now, and in my opinion you can't go wrong with any one of their "The Best Recipe" cookbooks. You should ask Santa for it.

I have found everything I've tried from them to be excellent. They also produce the TV show America's Test Kitchen. I don't watch Public Television much, so I have hardly seen it, but it looked interesting.

Mike

[eugene]

Q1.

But onions continue to cook when I add the meat and the wine. Why is it important for them to caramelize after the mushrooms and the celery? They will be eventually caramelized, since the bolognese sauce cooks for 3 hours.

Q2.

If you ignore the danger of puting wine on high heat, or if we talk about milk instead. Is it still better to simmer on low heat? When on high heat, the milk will be absorbed faster, or it will just evaporate?

About the magazine: Very good link, thanks.

[Blueicus]

If you are simmering the onions in a liquid, you will not be caramelizing them, no matter how long you cook them because the liquid will only reach around the boiling point of temperature (note that they will brown in hot oil because the oil goes above the temperature of boiling water).

Secondly, no matter if you're simmering on high or low, the water in the milk will evaporate. If you are cooking to reduce liquids, boiling on high is the way to go, for some items where you want the liquid to be flavourful and don't want debris from everything going into it (like a stock), you want to simmer lower and slower.

With a bolognese, you probably aren't fishing anything out so you should do fine just reducing it as fast as possible... though you may beware not to separate the liquids from the fats in the milk.

[Mannlicher]

The method I have evolved to using over the years, is to cook the onions and carrots first in a little oil. When slightly tender, I add the mushrooms, and cook until they begin to give up their liquid. I remove the veggies, and add a little more oil.
In that, on fairly high heat, I brown my meat. I like small cubes more than the traditional ground. Venison works well, as does pork or beef. Sometimes I will use several together.
When browned, I add a cup of milk, and simmer until most of the milk has evaporated. Cooking the meat in the milk like that makes it work better with the acid in the tomatoes.
I add next , a cup of good white wine, and again, reduce. At this point, I reintroduce the cooked vegetables.
The last is the tomatoes. For this sauce, I like the imported Italian plum tomatoes. I pulse them quickly in the Cuisinart, and then add.
I adjust the seasonings. I prefer dried herbs here, over fresh.
I don't use as much salt as some do, and I don't load it up with black pepper.
When all incorporated, I cook it on low heat for around three hours, adding a little liquid if needed.

[eugene]

Mannlicher, thanks for the recipe, I will try it.

Blueicus, I probably don't get it all.
I thought I cook in liquids like milk and wine so that the meat will absorb them.
Therefore I concluded that cooking on high will evaporate the liquids instead of having them absorbed in the meat.
However you say that cooking meat in liquids is not for adding flavor to the meat, but instead for adding flavor to the liquid itself. Do I understand you correctly?

[Blueicus]

well, okay, the flavour can go both ways, but since you're using ground up pieces of small meat (I'm assuming), it's not going to need to cook the same way a slow cooked lamb shank or pot roast does.