Get the Flavor of Slow-Simmered Bolognese with this Recipe from Ina Garten

I like a good Bolognese—honestly, I believe I could eat the hearty classic Italian spaghetti sauce every day if it weren’t so time-consuming to prepare. However, the slow-simmered, meat-based sauce is currently only served on exceptional occasions in our home.

Bolognese is a rich and delicious sauce from Bologna, Italy, that derives its wonderful taste from the long-cook process of sweating, sautéing, and braising each ingredient, beginning with the beef. Various Italian aromatics are also added in stages, with enough of time between each addition to allow for proper cooking.

Bolognese may take 3-4 hours to cook, which makes it wonderful but not ideal for a weekday supper. In other words, it demands a lot of time and patience, which I don’t have on a typical Tuesday evening. But I should have known Queen Ina had a solution to this predicament.

The Barefoot Contessa has long been my go-to for great, simple dishes, so when I saw Weeknight Bolognese in her Barefoot Contessa How Easy is That? cookbook, I was instantly drawn to it. If Ina Garten promised a great Bolognese in less an hour, I knew I had to give it a try. Here’s how things went.

There are as many Bolognese recipes as there are chefs, because everyone adds its own twist. However, most people will agree that a mix of onions, carrots, and celery is a good place to start. Ina’s recipe, however, omits the typical mirepoix in favor of garlic, oregano, and red pepper flakes as flavor shortcuts.

However, Ina agrees that beef is the key element in bolognese. She calls for beef sirloin in her recipe, but she also suggests ground chuck, turkey, or pig as alternatives.

The remaining ingredients are basically cupboard basics like olive oil, dry red wine, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, nutmeg, fresh basil, heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, and orecchiette pasta.

How to Prepare Ina Garten’s Weeknight Bolognese

Begin by heating the olive oil in a big skillet. Cook the beef for 5 to 7 minutes, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Once the beef has browned thoroughly, add the garlic, oregano, and hot red pepper flakes. Continue cooking for another minute or so to bring out the flavors.

To deglaze the pan, add some wine (save the rest for later). The crushed tomatoes and tomato paste are added next and cooked for around 10 minutes.

While the sauce simmers, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and prepare the pasta according to the package directions, leaving it slightly al dente because it will cook another few minutes in the sauce. While the pasta is boiling, combine the nutmeg, basil, and cream in the sauce and allow to simmer.

When the pasta is done, add it to the sauce with a slotted spoon (save part of the pasta cooking water). Allow the pasta and sauce to boil together for a few minutes, stirring in the conserved wine and cooking liquid as required to make a sauce that gently coats the pasta. If desired, serve warm with grated Parmesan and chopped basil.