Red Wine Sauce for Ground Beef

This recipe for Red Wine Ragù follows the basic techniques for making a classic Italian beef ragù, or meat sauce... The only major difference is that this meat sauce has lots of red wine, perfect for deepening the flavor of the tomatoes, and adding a subtle sweetness to the whole sauce.

This red wine meat sauce is perfect for adding a subtle twist to your usual Sunday gravy. And though beef ragù seems like a rich, comforting meal you'd eat during the cooler months, most Italian-American families like mine eat it all year round. Usually on Sundays, when the whole family gathers for a big... loud meal.

Since it is pretty rich, I like to accompany it with a bright, crunchy vegetable side dish, like this amazing Italian Greed Bean Salad or this refreshing Arugula Citrus Salad.

How to make ragù

Let's start with the term "ragù". This word simply refers to a meat-based sauce. The meat along with a few alliums braise in a tomato and red wine mixture until the ragù thickens and becomes deeply flavorful.

Ingredients

This red wine meat sauce relies on good technique to achieve the most flavor out of very few ingredients.

• Ground beef
• Onion
• Garlic
• Tomato paste
• Crushed tomatoes
• Red Wine
• Grated Pecorino or Parmesan
• Salt, pepper, cayenne
• Olive Oil

Instructions

The overall process of making beef ragù is similar to braising meat.

• First, sear the meat in a cast iron pot/ Dutch Oven.

I cook ground meat in chunks so it becomes crumbly rather than maintaining its curly, meat grinder shape. This isn't as much of a problem with ground beef or pork as it is with ground chicken and turkey, but I do it anyway.

• Next, sauté the garlic, onion and red pepper flakes in the fat that rendered from the beef. Then add some tomato paste and cook until it darkens in color and sticks to the bottom of the pot.

Beef is removed and replaced with onions and garlic. Tomato paste is added and starts to brown and adhere to the bottom of the pot to form even more fond.

• Then, use the wine to deglaze all the fond, or those "browned bits" of tomato paste and onions stuck to the bottom of the pot. Deglazing takes all that fond and incorporates it into the rest of the sauce.

The beef ragù is slightly brown after deglazing, due to the browned bits on the bottom being transferred to the sauce.

• Finally, add the tomatoes and some water... in batches! If you add the whole can at once, the tomatoes will cool down the whole pot, and the sauce won't emulsify properly. New cold ingredients must heat up quickly in order for the sauce to stay cohesive.

Tomatoes are a bright red color as soon as they're added to the pot.

• Simmer for 1.5, until thickened. Add a fresh clove of grated garlic, season with salt and pepper to taste, and add some fresh parsley.

The ragu depends in color as the sauce cooks and reduces.

• Serve over fettuccine, rigatoni, cascatelli, or any other pasta shape you love!

I love long flat pasta shapes for their silky texture. If you want something more firm, use rigatoni, fusilli, or campanelle.

Top Tips:

1. Allow tomato paste to stick to the pot to make a fond.
2. It's OK to salt the beef and onions, as they sauté, but don't salt the actual tomato sauce until it's done. Since the red wine ragù will reduce a lot, you may end up thinking it's too salty in the end.
3. Add all new cool liquids in batches, allowing the sauce to get really hot before each new addition.
4. Adding another clove of grated garlic at the end will help layer the garlic flavor.

Variations on Red Wine Ragú

This recipe is incredibly delicious, and very simple. Having said that, you can make it even more complex by adding a few simple ingredients/steps

• Sauté 2 anchovies with the onions and garlic. Don't worry, the sauce won't taste fishy, it's just add another layer of flavor and rich umami taste to the ragù. The anchovies totally disintegrate.
• Instead of crushed red pepper, use 2 dried chiles de arbol. This is how I put my personal spin on most tomato sauces. They add a really nice level of spice and flavor.
• Use whole tomatoes instead of crushed. The sauce will be a little chunkier. It depends on what mood I'm in.
• Serve with beans instead of pasta, especially when using the leftovers. This will make the recipe exciting even on day 2.

In this variation, I ate my leftover Red Wine Ragu the next day over cannellini beans with a little extra parsley and pecorino, plus a velvety runny egg for more protein and rich, comforting texture.

Equipment needed to make Beef Ragù

The equipment you use plays a large role in how the recipe turns out. For this recipe, there are two must-have pieces of equipment I recommend if you want your red wine meat sauce to taste like mine.

A large dutch oven, AKA a cast iron pot. Dutch ovens get really hot and are the best vessels for developing fond.

Some Dutch Ovens can be crazy expensive, but you don't need to spend a lot for a good quality dutch oven. In my opinion, Lodge makes perfectly good, long-lasting cast iron products at an incredibly reasonable price. Like this 6-qt Lodge Dutch Oven.

A Chef's Knife: I recommend buying a chefs knife after almost every recipe I write. That's because they singlehandedly streamline your cooking, making you more efficient in the kitchen. Again, chef's knives can be inexpensive, middle-of-the-road, or very high-end. But any chefs knife is better than none. I use this 8 inch Wustoff.

Recipe

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Description

This Red Wine Ragù recipe is a classic Italian beef ragù with a wine-forward twist.

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• 1 lb ground beef, 80% lean
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic; 3 sliced, 1 grated
• 2 Tb tomato paste
• 1 cup of red wine
• 1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes
• Salt, pepper, crushed red pepper for seasoning
• 2Tb Olive oil
• 1 lb long flat pasta such as fettuccine, tagliatelle, or pappardelle
• 2 large handfuls of parsley, chopped
• Grated parmesan, for serving

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1. Heat a large dutch oven over medium-high heat. Place ground beef in the pot in large hand-pressed pieces. Season generously with salt and pepper, and saute it until cooked through and starting to brown. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the beef onto a plate and set aside, but leave the fat in the pot.
2. Add the olive oil and the onions to the pot, and season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Sauté onions for about 5 minutes, or until they start to soften and darken slightly. Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Stir in tomato paste to coat the onions and cook for 1-2 minutes until the tomato paste deepens in color to a dark red-brown and sticks to the bottom of the pot. Add the beef back to the pot along with the wine to deglaze. Scrape the bottom of the pot with your spoon to help release the fond.
3. Add the can of crushed tomatoes in 2-3 batches, allowing the sauce to come back up to a boil before adding more tomatoes. Then fill the can about ½ of the way with water, swirling it around to get all the extra tomato off the sides of the can, and add the water to the pot as well. Bring ragu to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 1.5 hours partially covered, so steam can escape. Stir the sauce occasionally to make sure the bottom isn't burning.
4. When finished, grate the other garlic clove directly into the sauce. Cook for 2 more minutes then season with salt to taste and add fresh parsley.
5. Once sauce has simmered for 1 hour, heat a large pot of salted water over a high flame until boiling. The water should taste fairly salty, like the saltiness of soup, but not as salty as the ocean. Once boiling, drop the pasta into the water. When pasta is cooked to your desired doneness, turn off the heat, strain the pasta through a collander, and return pasta to the pot along with 2-3 ladles of sauce, stirring to coat. Place pasta into a large serving bowl and top with more sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan, crushed red pepper, and more parsley if you'd like.

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Keywords: Red wine ragu, red wine meat sauce, beef ragu, beef and red wine ragu

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