Spaghetti Bolognese
I learned how to cook as a student, and spaghetti bolognese is the quintessential student food: It's made from inexpensive ingredients, it feeds a lot of people with only two pots, and it creates large quantities of leftovers that reheat beautifully. I've given you a very basic outline here, but the joy of spaghetti bolognese is experimenting with new things to add to the sauce.
You'll need
- Two big pots
- A colander
- Cooking oil
- Stock cubes
Ingredients (for 3-4 portions)
- 500g beef mince
- Two onions
- A 400G tin of tomatoes
- 400g of spaghetti
- About 125g of mushrooms
- Three cloves of garlic
Method
- First, prepare your vegetables. Peel and chop your onions and chop your mushrooms into pieces about a centimetre big. Peel and chop the garlic too.
- In the most non-stick of your pots, pour a little oil. Heat it, and add the mince. Fry it until it is brown, making sure to stir it if it starts to stick to the bottom of the pot.
- Once your mince is browned, add in the chopped onion, mushroom, and garlic. Give it a good stir to get it all mixed up and fry it on a low heat until the onion is clear.
- Add the tin of tomatoes and a crumbled stock cube to the sauce. Let it simmer gently. You want to give it at least twenty minutes and ideally half an hour or more. It's important the sauce gets time for the flavours to mingle.
- Check in with the sauce every ten minutes or so. Give it a stir and make sure it's not burning to the bottom of the pan. If it is, add a little more water and cover the pan to stop it evaporating.
- Quarter of an hour before you're due to serve, boil the kettle and fill the other saucepan with water. Bring it back to the boil, and then add the spaghetti. You'll want to stand the spaghetti up in the water with one hand at first, or it'll hang over the edge and catch fire (this did happen to me and I felt like an idiot). Once the spaghetti's softened, you can push it into the water a little until it's all in.
- Boil the spaghetti, uncovered, for twelve minutes or however long the packet says. Give it a taste when you're about to serve -- only you can tell how firm you like your spaghetti.
- While the spaghetti boils is a good time to check the taste of the sauce with a spoon. If there's not enough flavour, add a pinch or two of salt. If it's too watery for you, mix a teaspoonful of cornflour with a splash of water in a tumbler, add that to the sauce and stir it well -- it will thicken nicely.
- When it's all ready, put the spaghetti on a plate and add the sauce.
Variations
Of all the recipes I know, spaghetti bolognese is the one that most rewards you playing about with it to find what fits you best. What I've given you here is a base to start with, but there are all sorts of other things you could try adding to the sauce:
- There are numerous good vegetarian and vegan alternatives to mince. You don't generally need to fry these -- you can just add them to the sauce as it cooks. If you're doing this, I find a teaspoon of marmite will help add a richer, more savoury flavour to your sauce that veggie mince often lack. Lentils work well too as an alternate source of protein and body.
- If you have a spice rack that's even slightly well-stocked, you should be sure to add herbs. Basil and oregano are both excellent choices for bolognese sauce.
- Carrots, sliced very thinly (about as thick as a coin) improve the flavour and add body well.
- A splash of red wine will make the sauce richer, if you have any around. Worcester sauce will give it a nice kick.
- Grating cheese on top is a must.
- What type of pasta to use? My personal favourite is the deeper, coarser flavour you get with wholewheat spaghetti.