Ragù
#cooking
Another Italian classic, done "my" way.
In these years, I found out that the vegan and meat version of the thing taste... 95% the same. Because it's more environmentally sensible and also more compassionate, the recipe below defaults to the vegan variant. If you want the meat variant, replace the lentils with 1kg of ground meat (approx. 700g beef / 300g pork).
Also, this also works with a pressure cooker! I'll put some specific pointers in the recipe.
Ingredients (for ~10 servings):
- 1 medium-sized onion (red > brown > white)
- 2 medium-sized carrots
- 1 stalk of celery
- 300g dried green lentils
- ~100ml dry white wine
- 1lt tomato pulp (as plain as possible! no ingredients except tomato)
- olive oil
- salt
- herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme)
Wash the lentils carefully, then soak them for at least 12hrs.
Cut the onion finely; peel the carrot and cut it in small pieces; remove leaves from celery and cut it in small pieces. Set aside.
Add olive oil to a pot (around 4lt in capacity), just enough to coat the bottom of the pot in a thin oil film (approx. 2 or 3 spoons). Put on a stove and heat at medium-to-high heat.
When the oil is warm, add the onion, carrots and celery to the pot and fry until the onion turns of a golden-ish colour. Stir often.
Add the lentils, stirring them carefully to cook them uniformly for 5-ish minutes. Add finely-cut herbs and a pinch of salt. Stir again.
Turn up the heat, and keep stirring. When temperature is stably high, add the wine (it should start evaporating immediately) and let all the alcohol evaporate. Keep stirring.
When all the alcohol evaporated, add tomato pulp. Rinse any leftover tomato in your bottles/cans with a bit of water, and put the rinsing water in the pot. Stir well. Add another, smaller pinch of salt. Turn down the heat a bit, enough to bring the mixture to barely boil again. Stir again. Let it cook for ~5 minutes.
When the mixture starts boiling again, slightly lower the heat and stir. Repeat this for a few times until you find the minimum setting for your stove that still lets the sauce boil. It takes around 10 minutes to do this.
If you're using a pressure cooker, this is when you put the lid on, and cook at minimum heat (but enough to let the pot get into pressure) for 30 minutes. On a standard pot, put on a lid and cook for 1.5-2 more hours, stirring occasionally.
After this, and in general, your aim is to finish cooking the ragù as slowly as possible. Stop when you can see the lentils and sauce are well-mixed and the sauce isn't liquid-y anymore.
Eat it with pasta... or on its own! Usually, I put 4/5 big spoons of sauce per 100g of pasta, and freeze whatever is left over as soon as it cools down. The shorter the wait between cooking and freezing, the better it will preserve.
Source: family recipe