Food - Drink
The Easy Way Ina Garten Elevates Classic Bolognese
By LAUREN ROTHMAN
Pasta comes in a huge array of shapes that can be paired with many different sauces, making it very easy to get creative with your dinner, but classic preparations are classic for a reason. Meaty bolognese is one of the most traditional and most delicious pasta dishes, and Ina Garten knows how to make your meat sauce recipe even better.
Whole milk or cream are common additions to bolognese sauce to increase its richness, and Garten recommends a secret ingredient to pull all the flavors together and add some acidic edge and complexity back into the sauce. In a YouTube video, the chef reveals that she adds over a cup of red wine to her meat sauce in two stages.
Garten pours one cup of red wine into her skillet as she finishes sautéing her ground beef, then adds an additional ¼ cup at the end of cooking to kick the sauce's acidity up a notch. The rich meat and heavy cream in the sauce, which is topped with parmesan after tossing with pasta, definitely benefits from some alcohol to cut through the richness.