simple sausage ragú
If you are like me and are from the midwestern USA, you have had your fair share of “meat sauce”: ground beef simmered in jarred tomato sauce, maybe with vegetables but more likely not, and put on top of pasta rather than tossed with it. This is kind of like that, but the Italian-American version, and up there with bolognese in terms of top-most-requested-ragús in my house as soon as the sun starts falling before 7:15pm.
fresh made!
lunch leftover!
I started making sausage ragú after defrosting a 4-pack of sausage only to use one link to make a pizza, and needing to find some way to quickly use up the other 3. While it doesn’t have any firm technique, it does have a wine requirement, and that plus the splash of cream at the end turn this sauce into something that tastes far more luxurious than it is. With practice, this is a dish you can put on the stove in about 15 minutes and leave alone to work its magic on low, low heat until it’s time to eat.
test run #1, featuring a really great wine but not quite the right textural ratios
test run #2, in which I realized I do not like crushed tomatoes for this dish
I’ve made it now a few times to tweak the proportions, and have found that as long as you balance the sausage to tomato appropriately, it’s extremely forgiving. It works with hot or mild sausage, any shape of pasta, varying amounts of cream, more or less garlic, and either red or white wine (I just always have mini-bottles of white around so I don’t have to waste the good natty reds on cooking). It’s not really a recipe so much as a template that can be tweaked as you learn what you look for in the ragú of your dreams. You know, the way any good relationship is.
Recipe
Not your mother’s midwestern meat sauce—and also not an Italian grandmother’s bolognese. Sausage ragú is a simple, meaty, flavorful Italian-ish classic that demands a sturdy pasta, a spicy red wine, and a cozy night in.
Effortful time: 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Makes enough for 12 oz pasta; I always double and save the rest
You need
For the sauce
1 lb mild or hot Italian pork sausage; you can buy bulk sausage if your store sells it, since we won’t need the casings
1 tsp olive oil
1 small shallot, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp double concentrated tomato paste
50 ml dry white wine (you can use red, too)
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp salt
A few twirls of fresh black pepper
1 tsp. chopped Calabrian chiles in oil, entirely optional; if you don’t have these but still want spice, a tsp of chili flakes will work too
14 oz can tomato puree
1/4 cup water plus more as needed
To serve
2 tbsp heavy cream
12 oz pasta of your choice, I used calamarata
Grated Pecorino Romano cheese
Additional salt and pepper to taste
make it
Brown your sausage. In a heavy bottomed sauté pan or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Slice open the sausage casings (unless using bulk) and put the meat in the pan. Cook, breaking it up very finely with a spatula and turning down the stove if it starts to splatter, until all the pink is gone, about 6 minutes. You aren’t trying to fully cook it, just get color and brown bits in the pan.
Add the aromatics. Scoot the sausage to one side. Add the shallots and fry for 1 minute in the oil that will pool in the empty part of the pan. Stir together with the sausage to combine. Add the minced garlic and tomato paste, and cook 30 seconds longer. The tomato paste and garlic will both be super fragrant.
Deglaze and season. Pour in the white wine, scraping up the brown bits. Add the parsley, salt, pepper, and chiles (if using).
Build the sauce. Pour in the can of tomato puree and add 1/2 cup of water (I eyeball this in the tomato can). Bring to a boil for 1 minute, then reduce the heat to very low.
Simmer the sauce. Partially cover and continue to cook on very low for at least 45 minutes, but ideally 1 1/2 hours. The longer it goes, the better it is! Add a splash of water if it starts to look too reduced or dry.
Cook your pasta. In another pot, cook pasta 2 min less than package directions. Save a cup of pasta water and drain.
Finish the sauce. When pasta is nearly ready, stir in cream to your sauce and combine; the sauce will be a slightly rusty orange now. Add pasta back to its cooking pot and ladle on the sauce until the sauce-noodle ratio pleases you. Heat for 1-2 minutes longer until pasta is al dente; add a splash of pasta water to get everything nice and glossy.
Serve it up. Shower with pecorino cheese and then serve with more cheese, because cheese is the reason for the season no matter what season it is.
A NOTE ON FREEZING
While this recipe serves two in my house with leftovers, I love to double it and save extra in the freezer in quart-sized containers for a sauce-demanding day. I haven’t personally found the cream to be a problem with freezing, but if you do intend to freeze, you can also leave it out of the batch you’d like to save. I like to quickly soften the frozen sauce in the microwave for a minute in its container, then simmer gently in a saucepan with a splash of water until it reanimates. If you omitted the cream the first time around, this is when you’d add it during the reheating process.