Spaghetti bolognese

Before you start

• about 2h15, and nearly two of those are the pot to itself

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 300gspaghetti
• 400gbeef mince — not the leanest on the shelf — the fat is what carries a two-hour sauce
• 2 tinstinned tomatoes
• 100mlmilk
• 1onion
• 1carrot
• 2 stickscelery
• 2garlic cloves
• 2 tbspolive oil
• 40gparmesan

Method

7 steps

1. chop · 8m

   Onion, carrot and celery diced very small and even. They are meant to disappear into the sauce, and a chunk of carrot two hours later is a chunk of carrot.

2. fry · 14m

   Mince into a hot wide pan in two batches, spread out and left alone until the underside is properly brown before it is broken up. Crowded in all at once it releases water and greys, and grey mince never develops any flavour later. Minced beef has to go right through: no pink left anywhere in it.

3. fry · 10m

   Meat lifted out, the vegetables into the same pan with the oil and cooked slowly until soft and sweet, scraping up everything stuck to the bottom.

4. fold · 9m

   Meat back in, milk poured over, and simmered until it has almost entirely gone before any tomato is allowed near it. It sounds wrong every single time and it is the step that makes the meat tender rather than grainy.

5. simmer · 1h 45m walk away

   Tomatoes crushed in with a mugful of water, lid ajar, at the barest bubble. It is ready when the fat has come to the surface in orange pools and the sauce no longer tastes of raw tomato.

6. boil · 9m

   Spaghetti in well-salted water, drained a minute early with a mug of the water kept.

7. finish · 3m

   Pasta tossed into the pan with the sauce and a splash of that water rather than sat under a ladleful, salt checked, parmesan at the table.