A ragù that is more meat than tomato, built slowly on a soffritto, given milk and white wine and a long, unhurried afternoon. And yes, we should talk about the spaghetti.

Let’s deal with the pasta question first, because it is sitting there and we both know it.

The people of Bologna will tell you, politely but firmly, that their ragù does not belong on spaghetti. In 1982, the Italian Academy of Cuisine went so far as to have the official recipe for ragù alla bolognese notarised and deposited at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce, a culinary act of a seriousness that most countries reserve for constitutional amendments. In April 2023 they updated it. The registered recipe specifies tagliatelle: wide, flat, eggy ribbons whose surface area catches and holds a meat sauce in a way that smooth, round spaghetti simply cannot.

They are right. Tagliatelle is better with this sauce. If you have a pasta machine or a willing afternoon, make fresh tagliatelle and the whole thing will reward you beyond what I can put into words. If you don’t, dried tagliatelle is a fine substitute and a significant improvement on spaghetti. But if you have grown up calling this dish spaghetti bolognese, if it is the thing you make on a cold Sunday when the house needs feeding and comfort is the brief, then spaghetti will do the job with warmth and without judgement, and I have made it that way more times than I have made it the “right” way. I am simply asking you to consider tagliatelle first.

Now, the sauce. Because the pasta, in the end, is almost beside the point.

The version most of us grew up with is a tomato sauce with mince in it. A real ragù bolognese is a meat sauce with a little tomato in it, and that reversal is the whole key. The registered recipe calls for more than double the quantity of meat to tomato, and the dish should finish dense, dark and rich, tasting mostly of beef and pork and the sweetness of a soffritto cooked long enough to lose its edges. The tomato is there to add depth and a little acidity, not to dominate.

The other things most people leave out, and shouldn’t, are the pancetta and the milk. Pancetta goes in first, rendered slowly until the fat runs out and the pan is already fragrant before anything else has arrived. The milk goes in after the wine, and it does two things: it tenderises the meat over the long cook, and it rounds the flavour, knocking back any sharpness and giving the finished sauce a quality that is difficult to name but easy to notice. The first time I made a bolognese with milk I was sceptical. I have made it without since, once, by accident, and could taste the difference immediately.

The third thing is time. This is not a dish for a Tuesday evening with twenty minutes to spare. It wants two hours at an absolute minimum, and three is better. In those three hours it goes from a pan of browned meat and vegetables to something that smells like it has been cooking since yesterday, which is, in fact, the best possible version of itself: leftover bolognese, reheated the next day, is reliably better than it was on the day it was made.

My version is informed by the tradition and adapted over many batches cooked at home. I use a mixture of beef and pork, which gives a better balance of flavour and fat than beef alone. White wine rather than red, because the registered recipe leans that way and I find it keeps the sauce brighter. And the soffritto, the onion, carrot and celery cooked down in butter and olive oil until they are almost unrecognisable, receives the attention it deserves, which is about fifteen minutes of quiet cooking before the meat arrives.

Bolognese alla Lara !

Serves 4. About 30 minutes’ active work, then 2 to 3 hours on the hob.

Ingredients

For the ragù

• 100g pancetta, finely chopped
• 30g unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 carrot, finely diced
• 2 celery stalks, finely diced
• 300g beef mince (20% fat, coarsely ground if possible)
• 150g pork mince
• 150ml dry white wine
• 150ml whole milk
• 200g tomato passata
• 1 tbsp double-concentrated tomato paste
• 300ml warm beef stock
• Sea salt and black pepper

• 400g tagliatelle (or spaghetti, if you must)
• 50g Parmesan, finely grated, plus more on the table

1. Render the pancetta. Put the pancetta in a wide, heavy-based pan or casserole over medium-low heat and cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the fat has rendered and the pancetta is just beginning to colour, about 8 to 10 minutes. This is the flavour foundation. Don’t rush it.

2. Soften the soffritto. Add the butter and olive oil, then the onion, carrot and celery. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes until completely soft, sweet and lightly golden. Not browned, not caramelised. Patient.

3. Brown the meat. Turn the heat to medium-high. Add the beef and pork mince and break up with a wooden spoon. Cook, stirring, until all the pink has gone and the meat is beginning to catch and colour at the edges. Season generously with salt and pepper.

4. Add the wine and reduce. Pour in the white wine and stir well, scraping up anything caught on the bottom of the pan. Let it bubble and reduce until the wine has completely evaporated and the pan smells sweet rather than sharp, about 5 to 8 minutes.

5. Add the milk and reduce. Pour in the milk and stir to combine. Let it reduce fully over medium heat until it has been absorbed into the meat, about 8 to 10 minutes. This is what softens the texture and rounds the flavour. Do not skip it.

6. Add the tomato and stock. Stir in the passata and tomato paste, then pour in about half the warm stock. Stir well, bring to a gentle simmer, then reduce the heat to its lowest setting. The surface should barely murmur.

7. The long cook. Cook uncovered, or with the lid very slightly ajar, for a minimum of 2 hours and ideally 3, stirring every 20 to 30 minutes and adding splashes of the remaining warm stock whenever the sauce begins to look dry. By the end it should be rich, dense and deeply coloured, with the fat beginning to separate at the edges in a thin orange line. That is exactly right. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

8. Cook the pasta and finish. Cook the pasta in generously salted boiling water until al dente. Reserve a large mugful of pasta water before draining. Add the drained pasta to the ragù in the pan with a good splash of pasta water and toss together over low heat for a minute or two, so the sauce clings rather than sits. Serve immediately in warm bowls, with Parmesan grated over generously and more on the table.

On the meat: fat matters here more than almost anywhere else in cooking. Do not use lean or extra-lean mince. A 20% fat beef mince, coarsely ground if your butcher will oblige, makes a ragù with far better texture than fine-ground lean beef, which tends to clump and dry out over a long cook. Ask the butcher to coarse-grind it, or use the coarser setting on a KitchenAid if you grind your own. The pork adds sweetness and moisture; it is not optional.

On the tomato: the sauce should finish as a meat ragù, not a tomato sauce. If yours still looks and tastes predominantly of tomato at the end of two hours, it has not cooked long enough, or there is too much tomato in it. The registered recipe is deliberate about restraint here, and the instinct is right: this is a ragù alla bolognese, not a pasta al pomodoro with mince in it.

On making ahead: this sauce is one of the few dishes that genuinely improves overnight. Make it the day before, let it cool, refrigerate it, then reheat it gently with a little splash of stock or water to loosen it. The flavours settle and deepen in a way that the freshly made version simply cannot replicate. If you are making it for guests, make it the day before and spend the time you would have spent hovering over the hob doing something more enjoyable instead.

On leftovers: any extra ragù freezes well for up to three months. Defrost overnight in the fridge and reheat gently. It also makes a very fine lasagne, a thought worth keeping for next time.

This is my own version of a very old recipe, cooked and adjusted over many batches at home. It is informed by the registered recipe of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina and by the accumulated wisdom of the many cooks who came before me, none of whom agree on every detail, which is rather the point. Not a paid or gifted feature.