Ragu alla Bolognese

Name: Ragu alla Bolognese
Total time: 3 h
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: Beef mince; Pancetta or guanciale; Onion; Carrot; Celery; Olive oil; Red wine; Tomato puree; Semi-skimmed milk; Dried pasta

Ragu alla Bolognese, plated as one serving.

509 kcal a serving, against 730 for the traditional version. That is 221 kcal off, or 30%, with 31g of protein. Serves 6. 3 hours, mostly unattended.

What the traditional version is

Bologna's registered version is beef, pancetta, a soffritto of onion, carrot and celery, white or red wine, a little tomato, and milk. Butter and oil to start. Simmered for hours until the fat splits out and the sauce goes glossy and dark.

What changed, and what each change costs

15% beef mince down to 5%

Half a kilo of 15% mince carries 75g of fat. At 5% it carries 25g, and the sauce still has the pancetta and the oil to work with.

What it costs you. Lean mince goes grainy if you rush it. Brown it in two batches over a proper heat, then give it the full 3 hours. Hurry this and you'll taste the change.

50g of butter and 30ml of oil down to 15ml of oil

The butter is doing almost nothing that three hours of simmering and 200ml of milk won't do on their own.

What it costs you. The first 20 minutes smell less good. That's genuinely all I could find.

150g of pancetta down to 70g

It's the fattiest thing in the pan after the butter.

What it costs you. Less of that cured depth underneath. Chop what's left much finer so it disappears into the soffritto and shows up in every spoonful.

Double the soffritto, from 300g of vegetables to 600g

More onion, carrot and celery means more body and more sweetness, which is what you lose when the fat goes. It also nearly doubles the fibre.

What it costs you. It reads slightly more vegetal, and a Bolognese grandmother would notice. Chop it finer than feels reasonable and cook it longer at the start.

500g of tagliatelle down to 420g

Six people, 70g of dry pasta each, and a sauce this rich means you don't need more.

What it costs you. You'll want more. Have a salad.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Beef mince
Pancetta or guanciale
Onion
Carrot
Celery
Olive oil
Red wine
Tomato puree
Semi-skimmed milk
Dried pasta

How it starts

Chop the pancetta as finely as you can manage, then the onion, carrot and celery.
Warm the oil in a heavy pan and cook the pancetta gently for 5 minutes.
Turn the heat up and brown the mince in two batches.

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish Italian.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	730	509
Protein	32.1g	31g
Fat	32.6g	11.3g
Saturated fat	12.6g	3.8g
Carbohydrate	69.2g	62.9g
Protein per 100 kcal	4.4g	6.1g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish Italian prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

Allergens. milk, celery, gluten, sulphites.

The method is in the book

Worth making this way. The lean mince plus long cook is the trick, and the doubled soffritto covers most of what the fat was doing. If you're cooking for someone who grew up on it, use 10% mince instead of 5% and take the smaller win.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish Italian, along with 59 more. Buy the paperback