Ina Garten's Speedy Weeknight Bolognese Tastes Like it Took All Day

I love a good Bolognese—honestly, I think I would eat the hearty classic Italian pasta sauce every day if it wasn’t so time-consuming to make. However, as it stands the slow-simmered, meat-based sauce is sadly relegated to only special occasions at our house.

Originating in Bologna, Italy, Bolognese is a rich and savory sauce that gets its incredible flavor from the long-cook method of sweating, sauteing and braising each ingredient, starting with the meat. Various Italian aromatics are also added in stages and allotted plenty of time to cook down between each ingredient addition.

Bolognese can take 3-4 hours from start to finish to prepare, which makes it delicious, but also means that it's not really an option for a weeknight meal. In other words, it requires a lot of time and patience—two things I don’t have on the average Tuesday evening. But I should have known that Queen Ina has a solution for this dilemma.

The Barefoot Contessa has been my go-to for delicious, easy-to-make recipes for quite some time, so when I came across Weeknight Bolognese, in her Barefoot Contessa How Easy is That? cookbook it immediately caught my eye. If Ina promises a delicious Bolognese in under an hour, I knew I had to try it. Here’s how it went.

Get the recipe: Ina's Weeknight Bolognese

Ingredients For Ina Garten's Weeknight Bolognese

There are as many Bolognese recipes as there are cooks because each person adds their own spin. That said, most will agree that a mixture of onions, carrots and celery is the place to start. Ina's recipe, however, forgoes this classic mirepoix and instead relies on garlic, oregano and red pepper flakes as shortcuts to flavor.

Ina does agree that the main ingredient for bolognese is meat, though. She calls for ground sirloin in her recipe, although she does offer ground chuck, turkey or pork as potential substitutes.

The rest of the ingredients include mostly pantry staples: olive oil, dry red wine, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, nutmeg, fresh basil, heavy cream, Parmesan cheese and orecchiette pasta.

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How To Make Ina Garten's Weeknight Bolognese

Start by heating your olive oil in a large skillet. Add the meat and cook it for 5 to 7 minutes, breaking the meat up with a wooden spoon. Once the meat is completely browned, add the garlic, oregano and hot red pepper flakes. Continue cooking for an additional minute or so to bring out their flavor.

Add some of the wine (reserve the rest for later) to de-glaze the pan. Both the crushed tomatoes and tomato paste are added next and are simmered for approximately 10 minutes.

While the sauce simmers, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box, leaving it a bit al dente as it will cook a few minutes more in the sauce. While the pasta is cooking, add the nutmeg, basil and cream to the sauce and let it to simmer.

When the pasta is ready, transfer it to the sauce using a slotted spoon (reserve some of the pasta cooking water). Let the pasta and sauce cook together for a few minutes, adding in the reserved wine and cooking liquid, as needed, to creat a sauce that lightly coats the pasta.  Serve warm with grated Parmesan and chopped basil, if you'd like.

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My Honest Thoughts About Ina Garten's Weeknight Bolognese

I'll admit I was initially skeptical of this recipe, but I never should have doubted the Barefoot Contessa. Although this is quite different from any Bolognese I've eaten in the past, I did enjoy Garten’s saucier version. Plus, it allows me to eat a meat sauce whenever the craving hits, which makes this recipe a winner in my book.

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Tips for Making Ina Garten's Weeknight Bolognese

Use the right meat. Sauces such as this typically work better when the meat has higher fat content. I used an 80/20 ground chuck here and had great results.

Choose your own pasta adventure. Garten's recipe calls for orecchiette, but she notes that any shell-shaped pasta will work.

Finish with bail. Adding the basil once the pasta is off the heat, will preserve the flavor.

Mind the wine. To reduce the acidity I suggest eliminating the second wine addition and using only the reserved pasta water. You can sip the leftover wine with your pasta.

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