Your Family is Going to Love this Italian Ragu
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 5-10 hours in a slow cooker
- Total Time: 5.30 hours
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Ingredients
3–4 lbs. beef roast
2 Tbsp olive oil
Handful each fresh rosemary and fresh thyme stems discarded and leaves finely chopped
One medium size yellow onion peeled and finely chopped
Eight garlic cloves peeled and finely chopped
Two carrots peeled and finely chopped
Two celery sticks finely chopped
1 ½ cups red wine
1 14oz cans chopped tomatoes
1 24 oz jar of Rao’s Marinara sauce * or sauce of your choice
Salt and pepper to taste
Pasta or Polenta – fresh or dried tubular pasta like rigatoni, but I adore ragu on polenta.
Grated Parmesan cheese for garnish
Instructions
1. Cut roast into 2″-3″ cubes and brown them in olive oil in a frying pan over high heat in stages, don’t overcrowd the meat, so it browns nicely. Leave some fat on the meat to add moisture and flavor.
2. Chop onion, carrot, celery, mince garlic, chop rosemary, and thyme, and put everything in the bottom of a crock pot.
3. Add the browned meat to the vegetables in the crockpot. Pour the wine into the crock pot with canned and jar of tomatoes.
4. Stir to mix all of the goodness. Add salt and pepper to your liking and your health.
5. Cook on high for 5 hours or low for 10 hours.
6. Prepare pasta or polenta according to package directions.
7. Combine beef ragu with hot pasta or place ragu on top of the polenta and sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
Notes
Tubular shapes like penne and ziti are perfect with hearty, thick sauces like ragu. Rigate, the ridged ones, capture even more sauce. Wide, flat pasta-like pappardelle is ideal for sopping up creamy sauces—generally, the wider the noodle, the heavier the sauce.
