I made this wonderful pasta bolognese last night. I pretty much took this recipe for bolognese sauce and ran with it. I compared it to a lot of other similar recipes and added some other ingredients from them. For example, I used ground pork instead of ground beef. I added one whole fennel coarsely chopped instead of the celery. I also added two fresh tomatoes coarsely chopped when I added the carrots and fennel. To thin out the sauce a bit near the end I slowly stirred in 1/4 cup of vegetable stock.

Sauce is simmering ©EverydayCookingAdventures 2013

Finally I added a nice helping of coarse sea salt for the last couple minutes of cooking. I served this with cheese ravioli. After my additions I feel like it came out tasting quite delicious, hearty, and flavorful. My additions didn’t add any extra time to the recipe so it still was done in just under an hour. We had enough leftovers for lunch today too and it reheated quite nicely. Here’s my bolognese: #giadadelaurentiis #bolognese

Simple Bolognese Sauce©EverydayCookingAdventures 2013

Simple Bolognese

Recipe by Giada De Laurentiis

Prep: 10 min
Cook: 45 min
Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 celery stalk, coarsely chopped
• 1 carrot, coarsely chopped
• 1 pound ground chuck beef
• 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
• 1/4 cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, chopped
• 8 fresh basil leaves, chopped
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano

Directions
1. In a large skillet heat the olive oil. When almost smoking, add the onion and garlic and saute over medium heat until the onions become very soft, about 8 minutes.

2. Add the celery and carrot and saute for 5 minutes. Raise heat to high and add the ground beef. Saute, stirring frequently and breaking up any large lumps and cook until meat is no longer pink, about 10 minutes.

3. Add the tomatoes, parsley and basil and cook over medium low heat until the sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper. This will take approximately 30 minutes. Finish bolognese with Pecorino Romano.