Chef Tommy makes the world's best Pasta Bolognese

It’s raining here in Southwest Florida and I’m bored. I could haul my fat ass to the gym – I haven’t been in months – but screw that.

Instead, I'm going to cook my favorite dish, pasta with Bolognese sauce, and show you how to make it.

When I say “Bolognese sauce,” I’m not talking about an Oscar Mayer product swimming in some sort of liquid. I’m talking about a meat-based pasta sauce that was invented in Bologna, Italy, the city's way of redeeming itself for giving the world lunch meat made from pig entrails.

I tried every recipe I could find but none were perfect. So, over the years, I've created my own by borrowing a cuppa this from one and a pinch of that from another, then adding some secret ingredients.

Even honest-to-God Eye-talian-Americans – people who drop the final “a” from mozzarella and the “o” from prosciutto to remind you they come from a culture that serves food so sophisticated that yokels like you and I can’t even pronounce the ingredients properly – have asked for my recipe.

Ready for a culinary adventure? Put on your chef’s hat, roll up your sleeves and let’s go to town – specifically, to Bologna where, in three hours or so, we’ll be sitting in an outside café inhaling pasta topped with a sauce so sinfully good you’ll feel like having a cigarette afterward.

(Note: This recipe makes enough to serve eight. Assuming you don’t know that many people you want in your house at the same time, you will have plenty left over. No problem. The sauce freezes well.)

Step 1: Grate some carrots.

You know that half-empty bag of carrots in your fridge you bought to serve those annoyingly thin people down the street, knowing they’d turn up their skinny noses if you served your standard cocktail hour appetizer of Velveeta® dip and Fritos® Scoops®?

Throw the leftover carrots into your food processor and use the grate attachment to cut them into toothpick-thin slivers. (Yeah, I know it may seem strange we're using carrots but you’ll never taste them and they help make the sauce thick.)

If you don’t have a food processor you can buy bagged grated carrots at most supermarkets. You’ll need 1 ½ cups. If there are any left over, use them as compost – that’s all they are otherwise good for.

Step 2: Do like Popeye.

Get Olive Oyl hot. Pour 3 or 4 tablespoons into a big pot on top of your stove, and turn the heat to medium. You can use virgin, extra virgin, 72-virgin, any kind of olive oil you have on hand. 

Step 3: Slice and dice.

As the oil is heating, dice a big red onion.

Step 4: Cook the vegetables.

I forgot to take a photo of this step so here's a pic of grandson 

Teddy and me at an Eye-talian restaurant in Washington 

last weekend. Teddy says he can't wait to taste grandpa's world-famous 

Pasta Bolognese.

When the oil is hot, throw the carrots and onions into the pot, stir them around so they get coated with it, and let them cook for ten minutes or so. Stir every so often to keep them from sticking to the bottom. The key here is to take your time. There’s no rush. Don't turn the heat up past medium because you don’t want the vegetables to start browning and/or become crispy.

Step 5: Add the meat.

When the vegetables look perky (no longer raw), toss in two pounds of ground beef or, better yet as I have done (above), a pound of beef and a pound of ground turkey. As the meat browns, stir the pot occasionally to break it up (the meat, not the pot) and integrate it with the vegetables.

Step 6: (Optional.)

As the meat is browning ...

... open a can of Cesar Cheddar Souffle, divide in half, place in two bowls and add a handful of kibble to each. (Eukanuba Senior is our house kibble.)

Serve to any small dogs who have crept into the kitchen, attracted by the smell of the cooking beef and turkey.

Bonnie, our 13-year-old dachshund, lives to eat.

Billy Ray, 11, could care less about eating. When he is fed,
he guards his food not because he wants it but because he doesn't want Bonnie to get it.
After 10 minutes or so he loses interest and walks away.
 Then Bonnie sneaks around the kitchen island and eats it.
No wonder she weighs twice as much as he does.

Step 7: Spoon off the fat.

You don’t want your finished sauce to be as greasy as John Travolta’s hair in the movie in which he and Olivia Newton-John sang all those annoying songs so once the meat has browned, spoon most of the olive oil and the meat drippings from the bottom of the pot and put them somewhere safe where the dogs can't get to them.

Step 8: Add some garlic.

You can use fresh garlic and mince it but that's a lot of work and makes your hands, which already reek from slicing the onion, stink even worse, so do what I do – buy a jar of minced garlic and add three or four teaspoons from that to the pot. (Can you imagine working in that factory? Me neither.)

Step 9: Spice it up.

Heap the following spices onto a small plate or bowl:

1 tsp. kosher salt: It is essential to use kosher salt, not uncircumcised salt. (I’m kidding. Use whatever type you have handy. Salt is salt.) Don’t stint on the salt. I don’t care if your doctor told you to reduce your intake. Throw caution to the wind this one time. 

3 tsp. basil: I once bought fresh basil to use in this recipe and while it was a nice touch it was a pain in the ass to chop and I had a lot left over I didn’t know what to do with so now I use dried.

3 to 4 tsp. dried oregano: Is there such a thing as fresh oregano? I dunno.

Lots of pepper: I grind my own because I’m a pepper you’re a pepper, he’s a pepper, she’s a pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too? fanatic.* At least one teaspoon – two if you like. The hell with it, add three.

*This sentence will make no sense whatsoever if you are under 40. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about watch this, one of the most unforgettable commercials from the 1970s.

Dump the spices into the pot all at once, stirring vigorously to distribute them throughout the vegetable/meat mixture, which needs to cook three or four minutes longer.  

Step 10: Shake some Worcestershire sauce into the pot.

Three or four generous plops from a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce will bring out the flavors of everything you’ve cooked so far. Use the liquid to loosen whatever has stuck to the bottom of the pan so you can scrape it up into the meat mixture, then proceed to the next step.

Step 11: Add an 8 oz. can of tomato paste.

Step 12: Promise yourself you won't believe everything you read in the future.

Remove can from meat mixture. Open it and scoop contents into the pot and stir.

Step 13: Add some wine.

Add about half a 750 ml bottle of red wine – Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's or any other cheap wine is fine. I use two 187 ml mini bottles I buy specifically to make this sauce because we’re not red wine drinkers at our house – my wife claims it makes me belligerent. No red wine? White will work fine, too. Once I even used a leftover bottle of that god-awful White Zinfandel stuff we keep on hand for my mother-in-law but I don’t recommend it because it made the sauce too sweet.

Give the pot a stir … turn up the heat to high until the mixture boils … then back down to medium-low and let it simmer for a half hour or so until some of the wine has cooked off.

Step 14: Pour in two big cans of tomatoes.

Eye-talian TV chefs don’t use fresh tomatoes because they know, as do you and I, that store-bought tomatoes – even Beefsteak tomatoes that sell for $3.98 a pound – have no taste whatsoever. So open up two 28 oz. cans of whole tomatoes and pour them in, juice and all. (Note: If you live in my home state of Missouri where the world’s most flavorful tomatoes grow so prolifically that gardeners put them in baskets then place the baskets in their front yards with signs inviting passersby to help themselves, by all means chop them into eighths or sixteenths and throw them into the pot in lieu of canned tomatoes and Fed Ex me some while you’re at it. Readers in the Northeast: You can use fresh Jersey tomatoes if they are in season, which they are right now. In the 35 years I lived in the New York area I never knowingly tasted a Jersey tomato because I couldn’t fathom that anything that grew in New Jersey soil wouldn’t cause instant death but millions of folks apparently think they’re swell so by all means use the equivalent of two 28 oz. cans of them.)

Step 15: Clean your work area.

Dump all the dirty dishes, the chopping board and empty cans, bottles and jars you’ve used up to this point in the sink for your Significant Other (if applicable) to deal with as punishment for complaining that you’re making Pasta Bolognese yet again. Your S.O. should be grateful you want to cook and are capable of turning out something this delicious so it’s only fitting he or she should have clean-up duty because you’ve been slaving over a hot stove all afternoon not to mention you went to the store and bought all the ingredients.

Step 16: Pop some zits.

Check to make sure the sauce is simmering and you're basically free for the next two hours except for stirring every 15 minutes or so, sneaking a taste whenever you do. Each time you stir, gently press a couple of the whole tomatoes against the side of the pot with your spoon until they pop open like zits and all the seeds and gunk inside them comes gushing out.

Step 17: Sweeten the pot.

An hour or so into the simmering process, give the pot a big stir and taste the sauce. If it tastes the least bit bitter, (and it might thanks to the Worcestershire, basil, oregano and/or tomato paste), add some sugar. Start with a teaspoon, stir, then taste it again in a couple of minutes. Still bitter? I am. I lost the election for fraternity president by one lousy vote 41 years, six months and three days ago and I’ve never gotten over it but we’re talking about the sauce here. So if it still tastes bitter, add more sugar a little at a time until it doesn't. Then let the sauce simmer another hour or so. 

Step 18: Add milk.

At this point, if you are in the Naples/Ft. Myers area, call or text to let me know dinner will be ready in about 30 minutes. Then add one cup of milk to the pot. Use whole, 2%, 1%, anything but skim which isn’t milk anyway, it’s white water.

Turn up the heat until the mixture comes to a boil, then turn it back to medium-low and let it simmer while you …

Step 19: Cook the pasta.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how to boil pasta. If you’re so sheltered you’ve never cooked pasta before, you will have fmucked up this recipe long before you get to this step anyway. You can use spaghetti, fettuccine, rigatoni or that pasta that starts with T whose name I can’t remember because you never see it in stores, only at Eye-talian restaurants.

Step 20: Place some pasta on a plate and top it with sauce.

Add some grated Parmesan (capitalized because, like Bolognese, it’s named after an Eye-talian city) or Romano (ditto) cheese and serve with garlic bread.

Step 21: Buon appetito!

Ingredient recap

1½ C grated carrots

1 red onion, finely diced

3 to 4 tbsp. olive oil

2 lb. ground beef or 1 lb. each of ground beef and ground turkey

3 or 4 tsp. minced garlic

1 tsp. salt

3 to 4 tsp. dried basil

3 to 4 tsp. dried oregano

Pepper – lots of it

3 or 4 generous plops of Worcestershire sauce

8 oz. can tomato paste

Red wine – half a 750 ml bottle or two 187 ml mini bottles

2 28 oz. cans whole tomatoes

1 C milk

Pasta (spaghetti, fettuccine or rigatoni)
Grated cheese

Coming someday soon: Chef Tommy's world-renowned beef stew recipe.