Big-batch Bolognese
Cooking time
Prep: 25 mins Cook: 1 hr, 30 minsSkill level
EasyServings
Serves 12Whip up a huge batch of bolognese that's fit to feed a hungry crowd, or freeze half for a speedy midweek meal
Nutrition and extra info
Additional info
- Easily halved
- Healthy
Nutrition per serving
- kcalories
- 295
- protein
- 34g
- carbs
- 13g
- fat
- 12g
- saturates
- 4g
- fibre
- 4g
- sugar
- 11g
- salt
- 0.87g
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 6 smoked bacon rashers, chopped
- 4 onions, finely chopped
- 3 carrots, finely chopped
- 4 celery sticks, finely chopped
- 8 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 tbsp dried mixed herbs
- 2 bay leaves
- 500g mushrooms, sliced
- 1½ kg lean minced beef (or use half beef, half pork mince)
- 6 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
- 6 tbsp tomato purée
- large glass red wine (optional)
- 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp sugar
- parmesan, to serve
Buy Ingredients
Buy the ingredients for this recipe now via:
Want to know how this works? Read all about it here.
Method
- Heat the oil in a very large saucepan. Gently cook the bacon, onions, carrots and celery for 20 mins until golden. Add the garlic, herbs, bay and mushrooms, then cook for 2 mins more.
- Heat a large frying pan until really hot. Crumble in just enough mince to cover the pan, cook until brown, then tip in with the veg. Continue to fry the mince in batches until used up. Tip the tomatoes and purée in with the mince and veg. Rinse the cans out with the red wine, if you have some, or with a little water, then add to the pan with the vinegar and sugar. Season generously and bring to a simmer. Simmer slowly for 1 hr until thick and saucy and the mince is tender. Serve with pasta and Parmesan.
Recipe from Good Food magazine, October 2010
Comments, questions and tips
Comments
As well as being a great way to add some extra veggies to the menu it was a lovely meat sauce. I made this as per recipe except I substituted half the chopped tomatoes for passata as we are a saucy family lol. I don't generally cook with wine but added it this time and I couldn't taste it but the overall dish was good. Makes huge amount for us more than 12 portions in my house.
Made a huge batch for the freezer. Followed the recipe except for the wine, and unlike an earlier reviewer, I don't think the end result suffered for omitting the wine. This was lovely. Used a mixture of beef and pork mince. I did have the rindy bit of a piece of parmesan left over so I threw that in as I have done before and it gives a slightly richer end result. Excellent!
To Mik
I appreciate you want a recipie for spag bol but this is just a recipe for bolognaise sauce for adding to recipes like lasagne spag bol etc...It makes quite a lot too. So maybe you should ask how much bolognaise should I add to my pasta as you must already know how much pasta you need per person..look on the pack :0).
Didn't add the wine, to try to be more economical, but I felt the whole dish was lacking something. Kept aadding more seasoning towards the end of the cooking time to try to help and added beef stock cubes, but it didn't really work. We are not into rich food, but this was definately lacking something!
My children are not lovers of veg so I left out the mushrooms and put a slightly reduced amount of veg into the food processor before frying. I also used 5*500ml of pasata instead of the tomatoes. Used fresh herbs (unchopped) and retrieved them after cooking.
Result was brilliant with happy kids and Mum! Sure to become a favourite.