Spaghetti Bolognese with ground meat and tomato paste

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   How do you make spaghetti Bolognese with ground meat and tomato paste? Gather the ingredients. You can use any pasta you like—I used spaghetti. Go for durum-wheat pasta; it's both tastier and better for you. The ground meat can be anything: beef, pork, poultry, or a blend. Mine is a beef-and-pork mix. If you don't have celery, you can leave it out. In a pared-down version you can even skip the carrot—though it's certainly tastier with the vegetables.

2. Step 2:

   

   Peel the onion and cut it into small cubes.

3. Step 3:

   

   First, scrub the carrot under running water with a brush, then peel it. Cut the carrot into small cubes. You could grate it on the coarse side of a grater, but I prefer all the vegetables cut the same way.

4. Step 4:

   

   Cut the celery stalk into the same size cubes as the rest of the vegetables.

5. Step 5:

   

   Heat a deep skillet over medium heat. Pour in the vegetable oil. Add the vegetables. Fry them over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring now and then with a spatula.

6. Step 6:

   

   Add the ground meat to the vegetables. With a spatula, first stir it in, then mash it well to break up all the clumps. The finer the meat in the sauce, the better it tastes. Fry the meat with the vegetables for about 10 minutes.

7. Step 7:

   

   Add the tomato paste to the meat. Sprinkle in the seasoning, salt, and pepper. Pour in the water.

8. Step 8:

   

   Stir all the sauce ingredients together well so the tomato paste is evenly distributed throughout.

9. Step 9:

   

   Cover the skillet and let the sauce simmer over low heat for 40 minutes. Check now and then that the liquid hasn't cooked away; if it gets low, add a little more. The sauce should stay fairly loose.

10. Step 10:

    

    When the sauce is nearly ready, cook the pasta. Put a large pot of water on the stove. There should be plenty of water—about a quart for every 3.5 oz (100 g) of pasta. Bring it to a boil and add salt. Drop in the pasta and stir it right away with a spoon so it doesn't stick to the bottom. Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Taste it a minute before the timer's up. The pasta should stay just slightly underdone—al dente. Pasta cooked this way is much tastier than overcooked.

11. Step 11:

    

    Drain the pasta in a colander. Bolognese sauce usually isn't tossed with the pasta in the pan the way other sauces are. Instead, the pasta goes down first and the sauce goes on top. To serve, you can sprinkle the pasta with grated cheese and garnish it with basil leaves.