Pastor Ryan's Bolognese Sauce

I've been eyeing up this bolognese recipe from The Pioneer Woman's website ever since it was posted. I knew I had to make it post haste and try its deliciousness, so I threw it on my menu plan for this week. I love, love, love homemade pasta sauces, and this one looks amazing. Pioneer Woman has never steered me wrong, so I'm assuming this will be awesome. Although I guess technically it's not one of her recipes, but I still assume it will be good. The post for the recipe on her website has great pictures of the process, if you want to check them out.

Ryan’s Bolognese
1 1/2 cups grated carrots
1 large red onion, diced
1/2 cup olive oil
2 pounds ground beef
2 tablespoons dried oregano flakes
2 tablespoons dried basil flakes
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 cups red wine
2 tablespoons Worcestershire
salt
pepper
2 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes
1 cup milk
Fresh Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven or skillet over medium heat. Add grated carrots and onions and cook for a few minutes. Make a well in the center of the mixture, then add in the ground beef. Cook for a few minutes until brown, gradually stirring it into the carrot mixture. Throw in oregano and basil. Use fresh if you have it; if you don’t, it’s fine.

When the meat is browned and combined with other ingredients, make another well. Add tomato paste and let it heat. Add garlic and stir to combine. Make a well in the center of the mixture and add red wine. Stir together. Add Worcestershire and stir. Add canned tomatoes. Finally, pour in milk, stir, and let simmer for 30 minutes to 2 hours—however long you need.

Serve with pasta and a generous sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

*****

Did I mention I love homemade pasta sauce? I've pretty much stopped buying the jarred kind because it's really so easy to make your own and you can control what goes into it. And it just tastes so much better. The husband has another hockey game to watch tonight, so it will be nice to get this sauce going in the afternoon so all I have to do at dinner time is throw in some pasta to boil.

There's a bread recipe on PW's website also by Pastor Ryan that looks amazing that I think I'll make to go along with this. Either that or Barefoot Contessa's Garlic Ciabbata Bread which is without a doubt the best garlic bread I have ever had. My mouth starts watering just thinking about it. I think I'll go with Pastor Ryan's and make it a Pastor Ryan/Pioneer Woman dinner all around.

*****

This was yummy sauce. I added in two cups of wine, and I think one cup would have been enough. My sauce only got to simmer for one hour because I got a later start on it than I had planned (see my reason for not making the bread!), and I really would have liked it to simmer longer. I was worried for awhile because it seemed too liquidy (is that a word? Not sure...watery, soupy, etc.), but it thickened up in the end. I hate watery sauce so I was a bit apprehensive. But it all worked out. This was definitely good sauce, but I don't think it was the end all be all of spaghetti sauce. I'd make it again because it was tasty and fairly easy to throw together. Oh, I ended up using kitchen shears to cut up the whole tomatoes. Had I been thinking, I would have cut them up while they were in the cans instead of once they were already in the pot. And this made a TON of sauce. We ended up having leftovers for dinner on Sunday night because there was so much of it. So we had Saturday dinner, Sunday dinner, and I probably put about half of the pot into the freezer today. I'd say if you didn't want to eat this for days or freeze it or serve it to a crowd, you could easily cut it in half.

Mmmm...sauce simmering on the stove:


Just to keep things interesting, I took a picture of dinner on the boy's frog plate: