Thread: My best ragout recipe!

Hi folks,

This started out as a bolognese type sauce, and grew from there. Its actually very easy to make, and gets better the longer you cook it. Its more of a ragout now, as you'll see when you look at the recipe.

Having made it again on the weekend and really enjoyed it, I thought I'd share it with my SRP brethren!

So heres a list of ingredients.

500g good quality mince
1 steak
1 red pepper
1 yellow or orange pepper
1 aubergine (eggplant)
1 red onion
8 - 10 medium sized mushrooms (basically enough to make it mushroomy )
1 teaspoon of thyme
1 level tablespoon of cocoa
1 level tablespoon of marmite
A good sprinkle of black onion seeds (3-4 teaspoons)
A pinch of celery salt
A good slug of red wine (enough to cook the ragout down in)
Two tins of chopped tomatoes
A level tablespoon of tomato paste

What you do is cut the steak into chunks and brown it with the mince. Then chuck in the onion and peppers for about 2 minutes, then the aubergine and mushrooms go in for another 3 - 5 minutes.

Once this is cooking down nicely, chuck in the two tins of tomatoes. This probably wont make the ragout watery enough, so this is when you throw in the wine as well.

You want to add enough so that you can cook the ragout for an hour or so and it will be nicely thickened by the time you get to it, so I guess this equates to about a third to half of the bottle. But use your own judgement!

If it starts to dry out a bit too much, just chuck some more wine in. If you put in a little too much, just cook it for a bit longer! Its quite a good recipe like that..!

Once the wine has gone in, chuck in the tomato paste, the thyme, the celery salt, cocoa, marmite and onion seeds and give it all a good stir.

Once its been stirred, turn the heat down so its just simmering away nicely and put the timer on for an hour.

The hour can be spent honing all those eBay razors that you've bought but not quite got around to honing..! Plus you have half a bottle of red wine to drink

After an hour or so it should be ready to eat. You can cook it for longer if you want, just keep topping it up with wine and keep the heat on it. I've cooked this for 8 or 9 hours before! The longer, the better!

Cook up some pasta, drain it and mix it in with the ragout and you're ready to go!

Serve it up with some garlic bread, a nice bottle of red wine (a Rioja or a Barolo, something like that) and a fresh, crunchy green salad and you have a meal fit for a King!

This recipe will serve 4 - 6 people depending on portion size. You can freeze any leftovers, or reheat them the next day. Just chuck a little wine in it, reheat and you're good to go..!

Enjoy!

That sounds gooooood...

I may actually end up making that this weekend... Needed to make a good meal for 'Liv, but all I'm good for is grilling an improving... I'm bad at creating

Its a great recipe because its so simple, but it tastes great as well..!

Hope you enjoy it!

Sounds like fun but I'm guessing you aren't Italian. What the F is "marmite"? Are marmites some sort of medium sized rodent a kin to the nutria perhaps?

Originally Posted by icedog

Sounds like fun but I'm guessing you aren't Italian. What the F is "marmite"? Are marmites some sort of medium sized rodent a kin to the nutria perhaps?

No, its not much of an Italian recipe! It started out as one, but I changed it..!

Marmite is the stuff in the link below. You can have it as a spread, and its really great in things like this, and chilli, for thickening them up and adding a real richness to the taste. The Aussies have something very similar called Vegemite.

Marmite - Love it or hate it

Marmite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a spread, its definately a love or hate thing. I've got a friend from Boston and when I gave her some marmite to try, you'd think I'd given her cyanide from her reaction! But her husband really liked it, so as I say, definately a love or hate thing!

But others love it, I do, and its great on all sorts of things. You can have it on toast, with cheese in a bagel or use it in sauces like this recipe.

You dont notice the taste in the sauce, it just blends in with everything else! But for me, its one of those things I just have to have in these meaty sauces, it really adds to it.

If you want some and cant find it, PM me and I'll send you some..!

Marmite contains free glutamic acids which are less processed version of the food flavor enhancer found in MSG.

Glutamate is a great way to boost the "beefiness" of beef. Other sources include tomato paste and anchovies. Using any of these in chili, a pan sauce for steak, or beef stew gives great results!

The bonus? No MSG headache or bad feeling for adding a salt compound to your food.


-Rob

I could have sworn marmites are aquatic rodents. But what is "mince"?

This mince has me flummoxed too. It seems to be something that is finely divided and contains apples, raisins, grapes, and suet, or maybe it's something completely different.

Aquatic rodents are muskmites, aren't they? Or would they be marshmites?

And here's me thinking this set of fora was just for straight razors.

However, in the spirit of this thread, Mince is short for Minced meat. Usually beef and its just pushed through a sort of seive. could just cut it up into thin strips though.