Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Bolognese Meat Sauce



This recipe is modified from a cook book I got when we traveled to Italy. It's simple and straight forward and has been my favorite meat sauce ever since.

Ingredients:
1.5 lb ground beef
.5 lb un-somked bacon, chopped
2 brown diced onions
2 cups diced celery
2 cups diced carrots
4 cloves
1 cup chicken stock
2T tomato paste
1T black peppercorns

Directions:
Crisp the bacon in a dutch oven saucepan or pot. Scoop out the excess fat from the bacon. Add ground beef and cook until the meat turns a nice brown color. Add vegetables and cook for 5 minutes under medium heat. Add tomato paste, cloves, black peppercorns and just enough stock to cover the mixture. Bring up to boil then turn to low heat and simmer for 2 hours.

The secret is the more it cooks (without burning), the better it will be. Add more stock or water if it needs but without exaggerating. The sauce should be moist but not liquid.

I like to freeze half of it for when I don't have time to cook.


The Simplest BBQ Pork Ribs

Ingredients:
3lb  Pork spareribs or baby back ribs
1 bottle of any store bought BBQ sauce you like

Directions:
Put ribs in the slow cooker covered just enough cold water over them. Add 2-3T salt then cook for 4 hours in high temperature just as the meat is about to fall of the bones.

Finish cooking in the oven:
Preheat over at 400 F. Put the rib on baking sheet and generously apply bbq sauce on the ribs.  Bake for about 20 minutes. Flip the ribs twice and reapply sauce during cooking.

Finish cooking on the grill:
Generously apply bbq sauce on the ribs and cook them in the mid low heat for about 10 to 15 minutes. Flip the ribs twice and reapply sauce during grilling.