Bolognese Sauce, Anyone?

[Valerie]

I've made Bolognese sauce in the past, but not very often (I used a recipe from Cook's Illustrated, and liked but didn't love it.)

I'm in the middle of reading Heat, which was written by Bill Buford and chronicles his time working in Mario Batali's kitchen at Babbo. I just finished the chapter where they discuss ragù (an example of which is Bolognese) and it made me want to cook it immediately. I went online and found Batali's recipe for it at epicurious.com, but most of the reviews from people that had made it said that it wasn't very good.

So my question is: does anyone have a really good recipe for Bolognese sauce?

[Yelena]

I have made a version of Batali's bolognese sauce that I really liked - it used ground veal, pork, and beef, as well as pancetta. I found that the different kinds of meat really made the difference in terms of richness. I think this is the one: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recip...

I find it to be an easy standard recipe!

[Valerie]

Thanks, Yelena. I had to look up the term "brodo", which I now understand is stock. Does it matter what kind you use (chicken, beef, veg, etc.)?

[Yelena]

I generally use chicken stock, unless another stock is specified because it has a more neutral taste. If I use store-bought stock, I generally dilute it with water because there's generally a lot of salt (if it calls for two cups of stock I might do one cup stock, one cup water). I tend to use beef stock only in recipes where beef is the main ingredient (beef stew, etc.) because it has such a strong taste. In this recipe, veal stock would probably be fantastic, but that's harder to come buy and I usually have less of it hanging around my freezer.