Bolognese Sauce
Crockpot Edition
Serves 10
Bolognese Sauce is perfect for batch cooking, forget shop bought jars and packets this is the real deal and can be frozen and used later
Ingredients
- 150g Smoked Streaky Bacon:Roughly Chopped
- 150g of Finely Diced Onion
- 4 Garlic Cloves: Peeled and finely sliced
- 1 Tsp Flavourles Cooking oil
- 150g Peeled and Finely Diced Celeriac: Substitute for Celery Stalks if you wish
- 150g Finely Diced Carrot
- 1 Kg Coarsely Minced Beef: I personally like to use shin of beef as I find the tendons break down and give the sauce a wonderful richness when slow cooked
- 200ml Red Wine
- 2 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
- 400g Tomato Passata: Tomato sauce in the US
- 2 Tbsp Tomato Puree
- 25oml Good quality beef stock
- 1 Tbsp Honey
- 2 Tsp Dried Marjoram or Oregano
- Salt and Pepper to Taste
- 3 Bay Leaves
Instructions
- Pre heat your slow cooker or crockpot to low
- Cook the streaky bacon in a frying pan over a medium heat until the fat has rendered off and the bacon is crispy, should take around 10 minutes
- Transfer the Bacon to the slow cooker using a slotted spoon leaving the bacon fat in the pan
- Fry the onions in the bacon fat until translucent for around 7-8 minutes
- Add the garlic to the onions and fry for a further 2 minutes
- Then turn up the heat under the pan to high add 1 tsp of cooking oil and add the carrot and celeriac and cook for 5 minutes stirring occasionally
- Transfer the carrot and celeriac to your crock pot and stir the ingredients together
- In the dry frying pan sear off your beef mince, do not over crowd your pan so do this in 3 or 4 batches, seasoning each batch with a touch of salt and pepper as you go, after each batch transfer to your crock pot
- Once your meat is cooked you have a frying pan with lots of flavour so keep it on a high heat and add 200ml of red wine scrapping the bottom of the pan to capture all of the flavour
- Reduce the red wine by three quarters and add to the crock pot
- Return the fying pan to a high heat and add the balsamic vinegar and reduce for a minute then add the tomato passata (tomato sauce) and tomato puree, then bring to a simmer
- Add the beef stock, honey and marjoram, then stir and then check the seasoning adding more salt and pepper if required
- Add to the crock pot and stir to combine then add three bay leaves and leave to cook for 4 hours
Notes
- In this instance I served 400g of this sauce with 200g of pasta. I fried up 100g of button mushrooms with a little butter, when cooked added 1 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar and reduced then added the Bolognese Sauce and stirred into the pasta
