Alison's Bolognese | Home Movies with Alison Roman

There was a period in my life about a year ago where like every guy I had ever met was

like "I make a great bolognese"

I was like "what is it about like men thinking they can just like make a great bolognese?"

and I did have one at my friend Mark's house he's like "oh well I gotta make you my famous

bolognese"

I'm like "what is it with men and bolognese?"

And it was fine

But I was like it's not tomatoey enough it didn't have enough salt I felt like it was

it was like clumpy milky meat

Dan: Sorry Mark

Sorry to that man

David: Do you still know Mark?

Yeah I know Mark he wouldn't be offended.

No this that was like it's like his family recipe sorry to Mark's family

Dan: Do any of the men in this room have a bolognese recipe?

I don't know do any of the men in this room have a bolognese recipe?

Rebecca: My dad makes bolognese

Rebecca's father makes bolognese.

Is it good?

Rebecca: It's fine

It's fine!

[Applause] [Music]

Hello everybody welcome to Home Movies I'm Alison Roman and today we are making bolognese

Bolognese is a traditional Italian pasta sauce that people feel passionately about

There are like sort of defining traits of what makes this a sauce and not just like

a ragù

The thing that makes bolognese a bolognese is a very long cook time

There is meat there is some sort of tomato product there is white wine and there is milk

and I am talking whole cow's milk

Milk from a cow

Anytime you take a classic dish or a classic food item or anything that has existed for

a very long time that's deeply steeped in tradition of course there are going to be

opinions on the right way and the wrong way and how it should be and how you prefer it

how it ought to be how you've had it how you you know dream it to be

And so today we're going to make my version

Dan: Do you want to share what makes your bolognese your bolognese?

Well in my bolognese you can you can only buy meat from a tube

Why does this look like a giant hot dog?

I'm so obsessed with this

David: I wish

You wish?

David: Yeah I love hot dogs

This is too much hot dog

David: What does make your bolognese your bolognese?

So the difference between my bolognese and a traditional bolognese I would say two main

things

The two things are that I don't use celery and carrot instead I use fennel bulb.

The fennel bulb to me does everything that the carrot and the celery should do

The celery is there to provide body and vegetal flavor it provides a lot of moisture in the

form of liquid celery is mostly water

Carrot provides a lot of sweetness and also texture in that it doesn't totally break down

into mush when you cook it

So fennel to me does all of that but in one ingredient and yes you're adding additional

flavor because fennel has a pronounced flavor but instead of shying away from that fennel

flavor we're going to lean into it by adding fennel seed I'm not trying to trick you by

saying there's fennel in this I'm trying to tap you on the shoulder and be like there's

fennel in this

Okay let's get cooking

This bolognese isn't going to cook itself

David: It kinda will

You know what it will it will cook itself it's a pretty hands-off recipe you know what

David you're right

Alright so for bolognese you don't need as much equipment or really any equipment but

you do need a heavy bottom pan or pot with high sides

The reason being is that it makes a lot of sauce it's sort of like an involved and time-consuming

dish to make in my opinion it's not difficult but it takes time it takes like three hours

and you may as well just make a lot of it

It freezes beautifully it's like a very cool thing to bring to somebody when they're not

feeling well or if they just had a baby or if they're immobile for some reason

Coming over with a thing of frozen bolognese like a bag of pasta and a hunk of cheese and

being like "here's how to reheat it" is like a very good gift

I've done it multiple times, recommend it

So the first thing that you're going to do is brown your meat

Step two is adding things like aromatics in my case that's going to be garlic, onions

and fennel

We're gonna add things like chili flake or fennel seed or in my case both and then comes

our liquids and that comes in the form of white wine and the white wine is there to

bring you acidity it's not a make or break but it is something that is traditional and

despite me completely disregarding tradition I do respect it

So I'm using fifty-fifty pork and beef you could use all beef it would be delicious I've

had a lot of people cook this recipe with Impossible Meat and they say it's perfect

so know that it is flexible

Beef fat and pork fat taste very different and I think that the blend of the two is sort

of like a it's not overly beefy and it's not overly porky it's not too fatty it's like

just like a very nice harmonious blend and if you're at the butcher shop or you have

meat in your freezer and you're like "oh I've got all pork" or "I've got all beef" then

that's fine too or if you try this recipe and you're like "I wish it were a little bit

fattier, a little less fatty" you can adjust the ratio of pork also the type of beef that

you're using

I'm using 85/15.

I also like to use an 80/20.

90/10 is a little lean for me if I'm being honest

It's a rich sauce there's no getting around it

This isn't like a light, breezy, summer day pasta situation

This is like to me winter, still cold, depths of spring type of meal, food that should be

rich and like you know

My words are failing me but the face says it all

I'm heating up my pot on medium-high heat

I'm gonna add a little olive oil I'm gonna add my meat I'm gonna brown it I'm gonna season

it with salt and pepper

A note on the browning of the meat some people will say it's not necessary they don't know

what it does to the final product they say it takes too long they say it dries out the

meat they say you can just throw the meat in with the sauce and it'll be delicious

I don't think that's true

I think that browning meat and the flavor that it creates with the brown bits and the

Maillard reaction of sort of caramelizing the proteins

Developing flavor that way is like a no-brainer and a very easy way to get a lot of flavor

especially if you're doing it in a dish that doesn't have that many ingredients

You don't need that much oil in the pot but you want enough so that things don't stick

Sticking equals often like scorching and that's that like deep burn-like blackened flavor

that you can't get out of the rest of your food so it sort of protects your pot and your

food from that happening

So I'm just going to add this to our pot and I'm going to add it all at once I'm not like

working in batches or anything

And I'm going to season with salt and pepper

So you're going to get a lot of fat that's going to come out of this meat and that's

wonderful that's a fantastic thing I do not subscribe to the drain your fat school of

thought

The act of making bolognese is effectively a hands-off emulsification process where you

are slowly cooking ingredients to combine the water and the fat to make a creamy delicious

like rich sauce

I think that if you've ever had a bolognese that feels oily or greasy then that's a tell

that they're cooking it too quickly or the ratio of fat and water are sort of out of

whack

Like it should never have like a perceptible layer of like thick fat at the top even though

you'll see at the end of this there's a lot of fat that comes out of this meat

Alright so I'm just gonna periodically break up the meat with the spatula

I'm using just a sort of flat edge wooden spoon which I recommend

I'm gonna let that brown over medium-high heat the fat's going to come out the meat's

going to brown it's going to contract it's going to get delicious you're going to smell

it at which point we will start to add our vegetables which I'm going to cut right now

How beautiful right?

It's like a little octopus

So we're not inspecting every single grain of onion here to make sure that they're even

and all the same uniform size we just do want them to be small

It's been about six-ish minutes and I'm just gonna stir the meat again because it's starting

to brown on one side and during that process I'm going to break it up more and just kind

of make sure it's getting color all over and come back to my knife work

Fennel, finally chopping it too.

It should be the same size as your onions

This is like a real sloppy situation

All vegetables shrink when you cook them because again there's water in them and they sweat

the water comes out but you still want to start with something small

I do like to slice the garlic cloves because I do think like seeing the little slivers

of garlic in the sauce is nice but if you're a garlic crusher or garlic chopper you can

do that too

It's been about 15 minutes so I'm gonna go ahead and add my fennel and onion and garlic

So the reason that I add the vegetables now it's sort of like the meat is about 50% of

the way browned

If you take it all the way brown and then add your vegetables you're like really cooking

the hell out of your meat at like a high temperature

We don't want that.

So this is sort of like adding the vegetables to help the meat brown across the finish line

so you see it's like continuing to brown down there we want that

And just by stirring occasionally the meat and the vegetables will continue to cook and

brown a lot of steam escaping during this time

We're concentrating flavors

We're browning vegetables

We're browning meat

We're softening

We're cooking

There's no like high stakes moment where it's like you got to add the thing at this point

but it's like you know we're going to continue to like sweat the vegetables

You'll notice the volume come down the meat will be fully cooked the vegetables will be

fully cooked and at that point we're going to add our spices

We're gonna add our fennel seed chili flake and then white wine, milk, tomatoes.

It's all happening

Yum delish

Our meat is nicely browned our vegetables are softened you can see how much volume went

down and now I'm going to add chili flake and some fennel seed if you are sensitive

to fennel flavor

You can leave it out but I do think that it gives a really nice flavor

There is occasionally nutmeg in bolognese so it's not uncommon to have like a bit of

a floral spice situation but I'm using fennel seed because this is bolognese my way

I only have a fine red pepper flakes right now but that's fine because you can use that

Bolognese is typically not spicy that's not a traditional sort of hallmark of the dish

but I like just like a little bit

Which again we're going to add now so it has a chance to toast in the fat to like bloom

the spice so we'll cook that for like 90 seconds 2 minutes whatever and then I'm gonna add

the wine

And as per usual when I am talking about cooking with wine I'm talking about a dry more acidic

wine, never a sweet wine you want to avoid anything overly oaky

So I'm adding a full cup of this wine we're on medium-high heat I'm just adding it and

it's gonna reduce pretty quickly you don't want to reduce it all the way you want to

reduce it like halfway

And during this process it's important to take the bottom of your spoon or spatula or

whatever and kind of just like scrape like that we're deglazing you don't want it to

ever taste like boozy or alcohol-y you want it to just be like sort of sweet and acidic

So from then we add our milk and our tomatoes this is just a full regular 28-ounce can of

crushed tomatoes and you can see the texture it's like not a puree but it's just pulverized

And then we're gonna add 2 cups of whole milk and 2 cups of broth, water, water and Better

Than Bouillon, any combination of that

I'm going to use water and Better Than Bullion so I'm just going to add 2 cups of water to

this

Sometimes when you add it if like the water is cold and the milk is cold or anything it'll

kind of seize and you can see like the bits of milk but it'll incorporate and smooth out

so don't don't be alarmed but it's not much to look at

I'm going to add a good spoonful of the Better Than Bouillon this is sort of like extra credit

I make this often without any stock or bullion but because I have it and because I love it

it's going in

I mentioned this earlier off camera but it bears repeating.

These stoves: I call this a regular-ass stove, mid to bottom of market, apartment stove top

that serves all of my needs just fine but it is difficult to get a very very low simmer

So even though I'm on like low visually I always check to see if I can get a little

bit lower

Any sort of like rapid boiling for a sauce like this is going to give you like tighter

meat that doesn't quite break down into that like luscious tenderness that we're after

So do the best you can with whatever stove you have and just go to like the lowest possible

heat that you can

Okay welcome back it's been about two and a half three hours-ish on very very low heat

and our sauce is frankly gorgeous

It's beautiful, it's thick, it's luscious, it's creamy, it's meaty, deeply savory, just

the right amount of salty, not too heavy

And if you can see like there's no thick layer of fat at the top of the pot

There's not like when you braise a brisket or short ribs and you can see that like big

thick sort of like thing of fat on the top that doesn't happen here because we've been

slowly simmering and gently stirring and that whole sauce is sort of like come to this emulsified

promised land

I am going to boil my pasta and we're gonna eat some bolognese.

Yay!

I keep going to look at David but he's not sitting where he normally is sitting which

makes me feel unsafe David: David's gotta charge his laptop

He's gotta charge his laptop

He broke Rebecca's laptop charger today.

That's the drama on the Home Movies set today

Dan: Cut to confessional

David: I didn't break sh**

Okay this pasta is fun already I love this shape I love love it I love it so much I want

to marry it

it's called fusilli col buco.

It is basically just one very long corkscrew

I like this because as you'll see when we cook it the like spiraliness of it sort of

like catches the sauce in a way that I find really pleasant

But I also really love making this and serving it with rigatoni

Frankly you can eat it with whatever you want I truly do not care

Alright so we'll just give this a sec and see you in a few minutes

Alright so our pasta's cooked.

Per usual I'm gonna drain the water

I'm just gonna sauce it in the pot that I cooked it in

Bolognese isn't like a skillet pasta i.e. pantry pasta or shrimp scampi that you want

to like create sort of a more concentrated skillet sauce and then like use your pasta

water, carbonara

To kind of stretch it out and make it like silky and smooth it's already there

So I'm going to mostly drain like 95% of the water from this pot leave a little splash

at the bottom and then ladle in my sauce afterwards because the sauce is like thin enough to where

it should coat the pasta and I'm not cooking the pasta in the sauce after the fact

Dan: looks fun in there

It is fun look at that shape.

Can you even?

Mm so good.

Really good

David you're going to be so pleased

David: I can't wait

You're all going to be pleased he's just been talking about it

Each strand properly coated

I'm gonna add a little bit more chili flake and a little bit more pepper

Have you ever had so much fun?

We haven't parm'd in a minute

I'm gonna parm

David: Mm that's cool

David: It's not too much fennel at all

Alison: It's like a suggestion

David: Yeah it's like oh is there fennel in there question mark

Alison: There is

David: It's not too fatty, it's like fatty but it's not oily.

But you did emulsify the sauce you know

Alison: I didn't do anything cooking did it

David: Yeah science

Alison: Science and heat and time

Also if anyone asks can you make this like in an instant pot or whatever

I don't have the answer and I'm not going to say no but don't do that

We're not doing bolognese like ack Kathy it's Tuesday I need to like make dinner wow I have

30 minutes

Don't make bolognese then and don't begrudge the bolognese for taking so long don't be

like ugh I wish this recipe didn't take so long it's like there are a million recipes

that exist in the world that can be made in 30 minutes this is not one of them

This is like a long sort of practice in patience and the alchemy of cooking and how nice that

can be to appreciate in and of itself

David: I think you look like The Rock but blue

I've done The Rock for Halloween as like a lazy Halloween costume

David: You dressed as The Rock for Halloween?

Well because he's wearing a fanny pack and maybe it's like this or like this

We'll put it up