After watching the spaghetti bolognese episode from Heston Blumenthal’s “In Search of Perfection”, I had the luxury of a day at home and basically tried to replicate the 8 hour long recipe. Most slow cooking is actually very simple, just allowing time to do the job of bringing out all the wonderful flavours of the ingredients.
This recipe has you actually cooking for probably half that time. In search of Heston has the entire step by step process in wonderful detail – go and check it out.
If you wanted a traditional bolognese sauce, then this isn’t it. However, you do end up with seriously, the most perfect meat ragu. All those steps give you a rich, complex, utterly delicious ragu. This is probably the only Heston recipe that I would follow end to end simply because there are no special ingredients or tools required. Would I do it again ? Probably not – it’s just too time consuming and fiddly, but there are a few processes that I’d borrow the next time I’m making my own bolognese sauce.
What would I borrow ?
1) I already use a mix of beef and pork but I do like that the pork and beef are hand cut – the long slow process of cooking allows the meat to render all the fat and become wonderfully tender and I think it makes for a more unctuous sauce
2) Adding star anise to the frying onions. Not more than 2 small stars, or it will end up overpowering the meat, but it’s the chemical reaction of the star anise and caramelising onions that brings out a compound that enhances the meat flavour
3) Using fish sauce as one of the seasoning ingredients. It does add a wonderful depth and umami to the dish
4) Making the tomato compote and frying the tomatoes before adding it to the meat casserole I think intensified the flavour of the tomatoes (although I’d probably cheat and just use tinned tomatoes as I hate skinning and deseeding tomatoes)
June 14th, 2013 at 3:48 am
I love Heston and your cooking and judging by your photo, this is definitely the best 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
June 14th, 2013 at 7:37 am
Thanks for the props! 🙂 You have a great site here and some fun reading. We tried the recipe a second time with a few short-cuts, it wasn’t quite “perfection” but it was still really good: http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/04/how-to-make-hestons-perfect-bolognese-recipe-from-in-search-of-perfection-redux/
I seem to be the only person who didn’t like the oil-frying stage of the tomato compote! But i totally agree with you, the texture of the hand-cut meat, and the star anise & other umami seasonings really make a difference!
June 14th, 2013 at 9:10 am
Reading your blog was like rewatching the episode on tv – it was brilliant ! Next time I make it (and I’m going to definitely do a redux) I’m going to make a huge portion so that I can freeze some and enjoy the fruits of my labour again without all that effort 🙂
June 16th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
I use fish sauce on most of what I cook but adding star anise with onions, this is something new, got to try that.
June 18th, 2013 at 3:35 am
Who would ever think t add star anise and fish sauce to the sauce…so interesting.