Read The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook Online
Authors: The Editors at America's Test Kitchen
Tags: #Cooking
The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook (89 page)
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS
A good Bolognese sauce should be thick and smooth with rich, complex flavor. The meat should be first and foremost, but there should be sweet, salty, and acidic flavors in the background. To get this complexity, we built our Bolognese in layers, starting with just onions, carrots, and celery, sautéed in butter. Then we added meatloaf mix (a combination of ground beef, veal, and pork). For dairy, we used milk, which complemented the meat flavor without adding too much richness. Once the milk was reduced, we added white wine to the pot for a more robust sauce, followed by chopped whole canned tomatoes. A long, slow simmer produced a luxuriously rich sauce with layers of flavor and tender meat.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Don’t drain the pasta of its cooking water too meticulously when using this sauce; a little water left clinging to the noodles will help distribute the very thick sauce evenly into the noodles. If you would like to double this recipe, increase the simmering times for the milk and the wine to 30 minutes each, and the simmering time once the tomatoes are added to 4 hours. You can substitute equal amounts of 80 percent lean ground beef, ground veal, and ground pork for the meatloaf mix (the total amount of meat should be 12 ounces). Just about any pasta shape complements this meaty sauce, but spaghetti and linguine are the test kitchen favorites.
5 | tablespoons unsalted butter |
2 | tablespoons finely chopped onion |
2 | tablespoons minced carrot |
2 | tablespoons minced celery |
12 | ounces meatloaf mix |
Salt | |
1 | cup whole milk |
1 | cup dry white wine |
1 | (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained with juice reserved, tomatoes chopped fine |
1 | pound linguine or fettuccine |
Grated Parmesan cheese |
1.
Melt 3 tablespoons butter in Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, and celery and cook until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in meatloaf mix and ¹⁄
2
teaspoon salt and cook, breaking up any large pieces with wooden spoon, until no longer pink, about 3 minutes.
2.
Stir in milk, bring to simmer, and cook until milk evaporates and only rendered fat remains, 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in wine, bring to simmer and cook until wine evaporates, 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and reserved tomato juice and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to low so that sauce continues to simmer just barely, with occasional bubble or two at surface, until liquid has evaporated, about 3 hours. Season with salt to taste. (Sauce can be refrigerated for up to 2 days or frozen for up to 1 month.)
3.
Meanwhile, bring 4 quarts water to boil in large pot. Add pasta and 1 tablespoon salt and cook, stirring often, until al dente. Reserve ¹⁄
2
cup cooking water, then drain pasta and return it to pot. Add sauce and remaining 2 tablespoons butter to pasta and toss to combine. Add reserved cooking water as needed to adjust consistency. Serve, passing Parmesan separately.
Substitute 12 ounces 85 percent lean ground beef for meatloaf mix.
BOILING WATER—WHAT’S THE RUSH?
With many home cooks now counting meal preparation time in terms of minutes rather than hours, waiting for a pot of water to boil can seem like an eternity. (A full boil makes the water as hot as possible—212 degrees at sea level, with many large bubbles constantly breaking the surface.) To speed up the process, many of us in the test kitchen start with water that is hot from the tap, but a few still insist on cold tap water, claiming that it makes a difference to the flavor of foods like pasta. To see if this is really the case, we set up a test.
We brought 4 quarts each of hot and cold tap water to a boil and then added 1 tablespoon salt and 1 pound pasta to each. When the pasta was done, it was drained and tasted plain (no oil, no sauce). Tasters could not discern any difference in flavor. In fact, the only difference was in the time it took the pots to reach a boil—13¹⁄
2
minutes for the hot tap water and 15 minutes for the cold.
Before you reach for the hot tap, though, you might want to consider what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has to say about cooking with hot tap water. According to the EPA, water hot from the tap can contain much higher levels of lead than cold tap water. They say that even cold tap water should be run for a while (until the water is as cold as it can get) to ensure that any lead deposits are “flushed” out of the system. That extra minute and a half doesn’t seem quite so long, does it?
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS
Bolognese gets its big flavor from the braising of ground meat and softened vegetables in slowly reducing liquids—most often milk and wine—and then, finally, tomatoes. To streamline this typically hours-long project recipe into a weeknight dinner—one that tasted like it had simmered all day—we used the food processor to chop most of the ingredients, substituted sweet white wine to offset the acidity of the sauce, added dried porcini mushrooms and pancetta to amplify the sauce’s meaty flavor, and cooked the meat in milk, which helped break it down and soften it to give it that long-cooked flavor and texture.
SERVES 4 TO 6
You can substitute equal amounts of 80 percent lean ground beef, ground veal, and ground pork for the meatloaf mix (the total amount of meat should be 1¹⁄
4
pounds). If using pancetta that is sliced thinner than 1 inch, reduce the processing time in step 3 from 30 seconds to about 5 seconds. To obtain the best texture, be careful not to break up the meat too much when cooking it with the milk in step 4. With additional cooking and stirring, it will continue to break up. Just about any pasta shape complements this meaty sauce, but spaghetti and linguine are the test kitchen favorites.
¹⁄ | cup water |
¹⁄ | ounce dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed |
1¹⁄ | cups sweet white wine |
1 | small carrot, peeled and cut into ¹⁄ |
¹⁄ | cup finely chopped onion |
3 | ounces pancetta, sliced 1 inch thick and cut into 1-inch pieces |
1 | (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes |
2 | tablespoons unsalted butter |
1 | teaspoon sugar |
1 | small garlic clove, minced |
1¹⁄ | pounds meatloaf mix |
1¹⁄ | cups whole milk |
2 | tablespoons tomato paste |
Salt | |
¹⁄ | teaspoon pepper |
1 | pound spaghetti or linguine |
Grated Parmesan cheese |
1.
Microwave water and mushrooms in covered bowl until steaming, about 1 minute. Let stand until softened, about 5 minutes. Drain mushrooms through fine-mesh strainer lined with coffee filter, reserving liquid.
2.
Bring wine to simmer in 10-inch nonstick skillet and cook until reduced and measures 2 tablespoons, about 20 minutes; set aside.
3.
Meanwhile, pulse carrot in food processor until broken down into rough ¹⁄
4
-inch pieces, about 10 pulses. Add onion and pulse until vegetables are broken down to ¹⁄
8
-inch pieces, about 10 pulses; transfer vegetables to small bowl. Process softened porcini until well ground, about 15 seconds, scraping down bowl as needed; transfer to bowl with onion and carrot. Process pancetta until pieces are no larger than ¹⁄
4
inch, 30 to 35 seconds, scraping down bowl as needed; transfer to separate bowl. Pulse tomatoes with their juice until finely chopped, 6 to 8 pulses.
4.
Melt butter in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add pancetta and cook, stirring often, until well browned, about 2 minutes. Stir in chopped vegetable mixture and cook until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in sugar and garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in meatloaf mix and cook, breaking meat into 1-inch pieces with wooden spoon, for 1 minute. Stir in milk and bring to simmer, breaking meat into ¹⁄
2
-inch pieces. Continue to cook, stirring often, to break up meat into small pieces, until most of liquid has evaporated and meat begins to sizzle, 18 to 20 minutes longer. Stir in tomato paste and cook until combined, about 1 minute. Stir in chopped tomatoes, reserved porcini soaking liquid, ¹⁄
4
teaspoon salt, and pepper, bring to simmer, and cook until sauce is thickened but still moist, 12 to 15 minutes. Stir in reduced wine and simmer until flavors meld, about 5 minutes. (Sauce can be refrigerated for up to 2 days or frozen for up to 1 month.)
5.
Meanwhile, bring 4 quarts water to boil in large pot. Add pasta and 1 tablespoon salt and cook, stirring often, until al dente. Reserve ¹⁄
4
cup cooking water, then drain pasta and return it to pot. Add 2 cups sauce and 2 tablespoons pasta water to pasta and toss to combine. Add remaining cooking water as needed to adjust consistency. Serve, passing remaining sauce and Parmesan separately.
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS
One of the problems with meatballs is that they’re thought of as smaller, rounder versions of hamburgers. This would be fine if meatballs were generally cooked to rare or medium-rare, as most hamburgers are, but meatballs are often cooked through until well-done. This can leave them flavorless, dry, and dense. Consequently, they need some help to lighten their texture. What we were after was nothing short of great meatballs: crusty and dark brown on the outside, soft and moist on the inside. Buttermilk mixed to a paste with fresh bread crumbs helped lighten our meatballs and added great flavor. An egg was also important for texture and flavor; its fats and emulsifiers added moistness and richness to our meatballs. An egg yolk alone worked best; the white just made the mixture sticky and hard to handle, with no benefits. A mix of ground beef and ground pork yielded meatballs with rich, meaty flavor. As for boosting the flavor further, Parmesan and garlic did the trick. After browning our meatballs in a skillet, we used the flavorful fond left behind as a base to an easy, but flavorful tomato sauce. Simmering the meatballs in the sauce also further boosted flavor—to both the sauce and meatballs.
