Pasta Bolognese

It is raining and icky today and Tim is working. Now we've already established what Daddy-is-gone meals are like so you know the kids have largely fared for themselves today. (Bless them for being old enough to do so.) Cheerios, bananas, apples, cheese and bread have been big movers today. As I type, Mags is getting strawberries for herself and her brother.

While I would like to take the day off from cooking altogether, I have an issue. One of the problems with buying ground beef six pounds at a time is making sure you use or disposition said meat before it turns. Personally, not a huge fan of freezing ground beef for later use as hamburgers. It seems to taste funny. And there are only so many meals in a row we can eat hamburgers before there is revolution (even if they are great burgers.) 

One of the best fixes for utilizing a few pounds of beef is making a big batch of pasta bolognese sauce. I make a triple batch and freeze in three separate containers. These "freezer meals," as we like to call them, are then ready to defrost in the microwave (takes about 10 minutes on high) and combine with a package of dried pasta (which is cooked first of course.) Great for days when time is short. You can go from freezer to table in under 20 minutes.

How to Make Pasta Bolognese Sauce:

Finely chop a mirepoix, which is a combination of carrots, onion and celery. My ratio is a handful of baby carrots, one onion and 3 celery ribs. That being said, the actual amount I use varies wildly depending on what is in my fridge. Set the mirepoix aside.

In a large saucepan (I use a dutch oven) combine 2 pounds sausage and 2 pounds ground beef. Cook on medium high-high until browned. Us a slotted spoon to remove meat and set aside. Disposition the grease. Personally, ours gets dumped in the woods but you do what suits at your house. 

Take the pan in which you browned the meat and put it on a burner on high. Add a little bit of olive oil, mirepoix and two big pinches of salt. When it is sizzling, turn to low and cook until soft and onions are translucent, stirring occasionally. 

Then add back in meat, a small can of tomato paste and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. When combined, add a 1/4 cup red wine vinegar (or leftover red wine - we just don't tend to have left over wine.) Then add a cup of milk. It will taste better with whole milk but use what you've got - providing it's not soy or some other such buffoonery. 

Cook on low for a half hour or so and you are all set. It can be eaten right away or divided up into three portions and frozen.

To make sure we have the right pasta to sauce ratio, I take the six pound bag of pasta and divide into six containers of one pound each. [It is a little more work than buying individually packaged pounds of pasta but the cost is about half. The average store brand pound of pasta is $1.69-1.99 whereas each pound below is $0.83.] The pound of pasta to 3 1/2 ish cups of sauce is just about perfect.

And the costs.....

Sauce (3 batches):

$4.38 Sausage

$5.56 Ground Beef

$0.69 Tomato paste

$0.20 Vinegar

$0.21 Milk

$1.00 Mirepoix (guesstimated)

For a total of $12.04 or $4.01 per batch.

When you have this meal (one batch sauce with one pound pasta), it will feed six adults for about $0.81 each. Not to mention, making the sauce is a great way to kill time on a rainy day.