Tuscan Ragout

Pork ragout is a thick and restricted sauce made from minced pork. Pork ragout is a recipe to share, perfect for seasoning dry pasta or polenta on cold winter Sundays. Use it with egg tagliatelle, or simply for homemade or season with conchiglioni pasta. if you don’t like the usual polenta, use buckwheat or white corn polenta. The original recipe of the Tuscan ragout is prepared with a mix of minced beef, pork and sausage and cooked slowly as the grandparents did.In Tuscany, ragu’ is made in a different way compared to other Italian regions. If you add that every family has its own recipe, you will understand that it is not easy to provide an original recipe for Tuscan meat sauce, but all recipes have a secret.The use of our sausages, so tasty and fragrant, gives the Tuscan ragù an extra touch. The secret of the Tuscan meat sauce is also its slow cooking, a gentle flame cooking for hours, until the tomato shrinks almost completely and,  Instead of peeled tomatoes, someone uses preserves, a couple of spoons dissolved in a cup of water.

Ingredients and Method:

·         2 carrots

·         1 large or 2 medium red onion

·         1 stick of celery

·         2 garlic cloves

·         600g ground beef

·         400g minced pork

·         200g of chicken livers or 3 sausages

·         3 bay leaves (or rosemary)

·         3 glasses red wine

·         1 kg peeled tomatoes

·         Salt and pepper

·         Extra Virgin Olive to taste

Method:

Wash the herbs and remove the threads from the celery. Chop the vegetables in a blender together with the onions and garlic.

In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, fry the herbs in the oil and let them fry well over medium heat. Mix the minced meat with the livers or sausages without skins and add them to the sautéed mixture in small handfuls, cooking over high heat.

Stir until it sticks to the bottom and continue until the ground is browned. Browning is essential, it must be nicely browned. Now add the wine little by little and let it evaporate. Salt and pepper.

When the wine has evaporated, add the roughly blended peeled tomatoes, pouring them a little at a time. Rinse the jars with a little water and add this “diluted tomato” to the ragù.

Add the bay leaf.Leave to cook for ¾ of an hour over medium heat, leaving the pan uncovered to allow the ragù to shrink, then move the pan onto the smaller burner and cook covered for at least 2 hours over low heat.

Buon Appetito!