Ragu Bolognese

[Bentley Green]

Actually, it IS several sauces in one. It calls for all of those things.

But after the eggs are added, it further thickens the sauce with subtle gentle heat and the residual heat from the hot pasta.

Any further cooking will scramble the eggs and the sauce won't look smooth. All this talk about it and now I got a taste for some of it. Haha!!

[Clove]

Originally Posted by BerryBaby

If you add cream and parmesan to this, you have more of an Alfredo sauce. It's traditional if you use pancetta, eggs and parmesan. Anything else, and you have a different dish.

What a debate!
In Italy they add pecorino and lots of black pepper.
I have had it served to me , but not in a restaurant, with the eggs separated and the whites added to the pasta (with the black pepper) and stirred through to cook. Then the pasta was nested on the plate and the egg yolk was placed on top of the nest.
You break the yolk and stir it into the pasta or eat the egg as it lightly poaches on top.
Of course, in the farm where I ate it, the eggs were about 3 hours old and from a chicken that lived in the behind the farm house.
The only keys to this dish are:

• Pasta
• Eggs
• Pepper - essential to the name of the dish
• Some kind of pork - (in Italy it is more often guanciale than pancetta)
  • Pecorino cheese is important - but not as important as the top 4

Nothing against Giada, but she cooks on TV for the American tastes and product availably.

BTW - Why is all of this stuff going on in a thread called Ragu Bolognese?
Should we start another thread called Spaghetti alla Carbonara or "coal miner's spaghetti"