Serves 4
Takes 1 hour 30 minutes
Description
A comforting dish that all the family will love. Frugal with pork and beef mince meat, mixed with simple store cupboard ingredients makes for a wonderful mid-week meal. This is also a fantastic recipe for batch cooking to pop in the freezer for the upcoming winter nights.
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180C fan.
2. Begin by placing a wide sauté pan on a medium heat with 2 tbsp olive oil, add in the onions and gently sweat down for 10 minutes, add in both the beef and pork mince and
brown all over. Add in the garlic and bay leaves and cook until smelling fragrant.
3. Add in the tomato paste and cook out for a further 4 minutes, pour in the tinned tomatoes, beef stock, Worcestershire sauce and dried oregano, stir well to combine. Bring to a rolling simmer then turn the heat down slightly, let cook and reduce for 30 minutes, you want this to be drier than a typical Bolognese sauce as it is going into a baking dish.
4. Once the sauce is lovely and thick, turn off the heat, stir through the dash of milk and season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Set a pot of well-salted water on to boil, add in the pasta and cook until al dente. Save a mug of the starchy water and drain the rest, stir the pasta through the Bolognese sauce, pour in a splash of the pasta water to loosen if needed.
6. Spoon a layer of the mixture into a large baking dish, sprinkle a little grated mozzarella and then the next layer of Bolognese, continue until all is spooned into the baking dish, finish with a final layer of mozzarella and a generous grating of parmesan. Cover with foil and place in the oven for 35 minutes.
7. Remove the foil and continue to cook for a further 10 minutes. At this point, switch the oven to grill so the topping becomes lovely and crispy – keep a close eye on this, it will catch quite quickly!
8. Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes before serving. Take to the table for an impressive mid-week meal. Enjoy!
Ingredients
• Olive oil, for frying
• 400g beef mince
• 400g pork mince
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 300ml beef stock
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• Dash of milk
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Handful of basil leaves
• 500g rigatoni pasta (or pasta of choice)
• 250g grated mozzarella
• Parmesan, for grating