How to Make A Real Ragu: A Traditional Recipe from Italy You Can Easily Make at Home

Few things celebrate Italy more than a traditional recipe for an authentic ragu sauce. In honour of Italy week, here’s a golden oldie from my earlier blogging days: how to make a real ragu. My knowledge about food and Italy has come a long way since then. But the recipe remains as good as ever. Enjoy!

“This is the classic ragù that my grandmother taught me: a delicious, versatile sauce that can be used in many ways. Added to lasagne, any type of pasta, served with meatballs…” Lella from Cuoche in Vacanza

Once you’ve finished your meal, why not follow another tradition and indulge in some top Italian coffee.

How to Make a Real Ragu

Tuscany, Italy

Recently, I wrote about my cooking lessons in Tuscany. In short, how I’d always thought of Italian food as something cheap and easy that you threw together in your student days, when you didn’t have an oven – or much of a clue.

Then, I visited Tuscany. Or, perhaps to be more precise, Cuoche in Vacanza, an Italian cooking class, visited me. In addition to rewriting the whole section of my brain labelled “Italian food,” they also shared a recipe or two. Here, as promised, is one:

How to Make A Real Ragu: the Recipe

Ragù – Ingredients

1 medium onion

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

500 grams of minced meat (pork or beef)

1 sausage – opened (optional)

1 can tomatoes

4 cloves

Extra virgin olive oil

1 glass white wine

Recommended reading: How to Spend 10 Days in Italy and Other Handcrafted Itineraries

Method: How to Make Real Ragù

Chop the onion, carrot and celery together, heat a small amount of extra virgin olive oil in the bottom of a pan and fry the chopped onion, celery and carrot until soft. Add the minced meat and opened sausage and allow to cook until the meat is quite dry. Add the wine and let it evaporate.

Add the tomatoes and cloves, and if the tomatoes are peeled, break them up with a wooden spoon.

Allow to simmer until the meat and sauce are unified (about one hour.) Stir occasionally.

Add salt during the last five minutes of cooking.

Buon Appetito! The ragù is now ready!

 Making spinach and ricotta ravioli to go with the real ragu

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Post-Ragù Analysis

In many ways, this recipe for ragù isn’t too different to my student version. So where did I go wrong? Well, I never used cloves or celery, I probably grabbed sunflower oil or whatever oil there was to hand, and in all probability, I drank the wine. Now I’m older, wiser (ahem) and have a much more discerning palate, I’ll have to try this at home myself!

Recommended reading: Things to do in Umbria: Soak Up Culture, Fall in Love with Food in Italy

Real Ragù Tips

“When I was small, my grandmother let me try it by spreading it on a slice of Tuscan bread (bread without salt.) This will always be the most delicious way of eating ragù for me.” Cuoche In Vacanza

Disclosure: Casa Gentili invited me to attend this cooking class in Italy. As ever, as always, I kept the right to write what I like (and eat what I like.) Otherwise, life’s just too short.

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