Ragù Sauce

A slow cooked sauce that uses the cooking process to combine all the ingredients into a blend of unique flavors. Made from ingredients that cook for 3 to 4 hours, the traditional Italian ragù included the cooking of bits of beef with chicken livers and unsmoked pancetta to be combined with tomato purée, mushrooms if desired, onions, celery, olive oil, seasonings, white wine and a stock base. As the meat cooked with the other ingredients it began to soften and absorb all of the other flavors, turning into a fully flavored sauce providing only a mildly pronounced tomato taste.

Variations of the traditional ragù sauce have evolved to include carrots, sautéed shallots, and depending on taste, either cream or milk and cheese. Typically the meats used in the sauce were diced, later to be minced or ground from meats such as beef, lamb, or pork, used individually or in combinations, such as beef and lamb. Made as either a tomato-based red sauce or a cheese-based white sauce, ragù is served as a base sauce for cooked pastas such as lasagna or ravioli in addition to many other pastas. This sauce may also be referred to as Bolognese sauce, a classic ragù sauce of Bologna, Italy.