Entire cooking time: about 1.5 hours.
Ingredients:
Bacon- 1 pound
Ground Beef- 2 pounds
Ground Pork- 1 pound
4 eggs
Onions- 1 large sweet white
Mushrooms- 6 large crimini
Tomatoes- 12 medium-large sized heirloom
Pepper or hot pepper- we used 4 small loco red peppers
Sea salt- season to taste
Fresh ground pepper- season to taste
Fresh or dried marjoram leaf- 1/3 cup dried or 1/2 cup fresh
Tools:
1 medium to large pasta pot
Cutting board
Knife
Wooden spoon
Bowl
Hand / immersion blender (optional)
Method:
Take bacon and cut it into lardons (small rectangles), and cook in a medium sized pasta pot on medium heat. Cook it until 3/4 of the way cooked, just before it gets crunchy- about 8-10 minutes. Set the bacon aside from the pot. The bacon oil remaining in the pot will be used, there is no additional oil added in this recipe.
Add ground pork and ground beef into the emptied pasta pot. Cook until lightly browned and then set aside with bacon.
Time to handle the veggie portion of this sauce:
Take your onion, and depending on your preference, either julienne or dice small. Add onion pieces into the pot and saute until translucent.
While the onions are cooking, thinly slice or dice your mushrooms, and then add them into the pot with the cooking onions.
Take tomatoes, remove their stem and dice/chop. Add the tomatoes to the pot and cook until tomatoes start to break down.
Put the peppers into the pot, and use an immersion blender to ensure they are properly broken down. Alternatively, chop peppers fine and add them to the pot. We used an immersion blender to avoid getting hot pepper oil on our fingers. The immersion blender is a good tool to use to break up some of the tomatoes and achieve the liquidity of the sauce you like.
Once the vegetables have been cooked down (approximately 15 minutes), add the entirety of the meat back into the pot, combining well with the vegetables. Let the sauce come up to a boil and reduce to simmer, stirring occasionally. At this point add marjoram, sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Combine well.
Your final garnishing step is hard boiled eggs, this is a Mediterranean touch to a delicious bolognese sauce!
Slice hard boiled eggs into 4-5 pieces and add into the sauce pot. At this point our sauce was on low-medium heat (setting 2 out of 8).
The sauce is finished and may be eaten! :) However to intensify the flavours, you may continue to cook on low heat for additional time, or let stand off heat until ready to use.
Brian also made homemade pasta- stay tuned for that recipe! :)
Jarring is an awesome idea to ensure you always have a healthy jar of your favourite recipes on hand. Since we like to make food in bulk to save time, learning how to store food safely for later helps to ensure we don't end up overeating our favourite recipes! Check out the link for an easy step-by-step.
Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy.