Photo: CristianoMay · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ragù Napoletano (Tomato Sauce Slow-Cooked Around Whole Cuts of Meat)
Naples' Sunday sauce: beef and pork left in large pieces, browned with onion, then cooked in tomato passata at the barest simmer for three hours or more. The sauce dresses the pasta as the first course and the meat comes out of the pot as the second.
Ingredients
- Meat
- beef shin · one piece800 g
- pork spare ribs · cut into pieces600 g
- thin beef slices · 4 slices, for the braciole300 g
- garlic · chopped, braciole filling2 cloves
- flat-leaf parsley · chopped, braciole filling1 handful
- pine nuts · braciole filling2 tbsp
- raisins · braciole filling2 tbsp
- grated pecorino · braciole filling30 g
- Sauce
- onions · about 400g, sliced very thin2
- olive oil4 tbsp
- red wine250 ml
- tomato passata1.5 L
- tomato paste · optional1 tbsp
- salt · to taste
- black pepper · at the end
- basil · at the end1 handful
- To serve
- short pasta (ziti, paccheri)500 g
- grated Parmigiano · at the table
Steps
Lay out the thin beef slices, scatter with garlic, parsley, pine nuts, raisins and pecorino, roll up and tie with string. These are the braciole.
Heat the olive oil in a heavy pot and add the shin, ribs and braciole. Add the sliced onion at the same time.
- ⏲ 40 min
Over medium-low heat, stir until the meat has a dark crust and the onion has collapsed without burning. Whenever the base dries, add a splash of wine and scrape it up. Keep going until the onion has almost disappeared.
Stir in the tomato paste, pour in the passata and season with salt.
Turn the heat right down so the surface barely trembles. Set the lid ajar and cook for at least 3 hours and up to 6, stirring to the bottom now and then. Add no water; if it gets too thick, a little hot water only.
When the sauce is a dark red-brown and creamy, turn off the heat and add pepper and basil. Lift out the meat and keep it warm.
- ⏲ 12 min
Boil the pasta and toss it in the sauce for the first course. Untie and slice the meat and serve it with a little sauce as the second.
Variations
- Without braciole. Shin and ribs alone are fine.
- Meatballs and pork-rind rolls. Every Neapolitan household puts in a different set of meats.
- Carnival lasagne. Naples bakes its lasagne with this sauce.
- The day before. Made the night before, Sunday morning is easier and the sauce has settled.
Tips
- Leave the meat whole. The sauce takes its flavour from it.
- Brown the onion with the meat. Wet it with wine a little at a time until it has almost vanished.
- The lowest heat you have. It should barely tremble.
- Lid ajar. The sauce has to reduce to thicken.
- No water. If it dries, a little hot water only.
- Basil and pepper go in off the heat.
More detail and the reasons why (2)
- It runs the other way from Bolognese. Spaghetti Bolognese breaks its mince up so the meat ends up the size of everything else in the sauce and coats the strands with it. Ragù napoletano keeps the meat in large pieces. Over the hours the sauce draws the flavour out of the meat and carries it to the pasta, and the meat itself is lifted out and eaten on its own. One pot gives two courses.
- Which is why it uses cuts that take time. Shin and other sinewy cuts are tough after a short cook and turn tender only once their collagen has had hours to break down (braising). The time the sauce needs to reduce and the time the meat needs to soften are spent in the same pot.
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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