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Rigatoni Bolognese has all the necessary elements to make it classic, comforting, and a little bit luxurious, but isn’t overly fussy. Ready in an hour. Here’s how.
Why we love this recipe
I’m 50 percent Italian-American but like 75 to 80 percent Italian-American food. Don’t try to do the math, just trust me on this one. This beautifully calibrated rigatoni Bolognese is hearty, rustic, Italian-American comfort food to the max — yet a version this good still feels a little bit refined.
This classic recipe gets literal cheers from my family when I tell them it’s for dinner. The sauce tastes like it’s cooked all day long but is easily ready in under an hour. Makes a nice big batch that lasts a week in the fridge and freezes well for later.
It’s great with rigatoni, but you can pair it with spaghetti or another pasta shape if you prefer.
What you’ll need
Here’s a glance at the ingredients you’ll need to make this recipe.
- I apply the same sourcing standards to meat for this sauce as I do to all meat. Start with great-tasting, good-quality ground beef. For me that means 100% grass-fed and grass-finished meat, typically 85% lean, 15% fat.
- You’ll want nice thick, meaty bacon for this recipe. You can buy slab bacon or, like I sometimes do, bacon that’s sold sliced about ¼-inch thick. The package I’ve pictured here is on the thinner end of what I like to use, but still much thicker than standard supermarket bacon.
- The trinity of onion, carrot, and celery is one of the elements that distinguishes Bolognese from other meat sauce. Embrace a little bit of browning on the bottom of the pot and scrape it all up into the sauce when you add the wine. It adds a lot of flavor.
- There’s lots of fresh garlic in this recipe, but I often add more as the mood strikes. Feel free to do the same.
- A combination of tomato paste, tomato sauce/puree, and diced tomatoes creates a deep flavor and a perfect texture — not too thick and not too thin.
- A tiny bit of ground cinnamon and nutmeg hint at sweetness and complexity without throwing this sauce off its savory game.
- Choose a nice dry white wine that you like to drink, and serve the rest of the bottle with the meal. The flavors of wine get concentrated when you simmer off some of the liquid in this recipe (and really all recipes with wine in them), so make sure you like the taste.
- A splash of heavy cream rounds out the flavors and makes this sauce extra-luxurious. Choose the best-quality one you can. For taste, health, and environmental reasons, I always buy organic heavy cream.
My favorite sources for meat & pantry staples
For years, I’ve been sourcing our meat from ButcherBox. We love this curated meat delivery service, which provides grass-finished beef, heritage breed pork, organic chicken, and more from small farms direct to the customer. You can learn more in my extensive Butcher Box review and unboxing.
I love Thrive Market for a wide variety of products. Often described as one part Whole Foods, one part Costco, they’re a membership-based online market for healthier products at discounted prices. Plus, they’re mission-driven, engaged in the community, and not currently owned by a giant corporation. You can learn more in my Thrive Market review and unboxing.
How to make it
Here’s an overview of what you’ll do to make cozy batch of rigatoni Bolognese. You can see the steps in action in the video that accompanies this post, and get all the details in the recipe card below.
- First you’ll cook the bacon in a big, heavy pot and drain the excess fat. Next, cook the onion, carrot, and celery until tender and a little bit browned. Stir in garlic and tomato paste and cook for a minute or two.
- Next, brown the beef. Then stir in the wine and simmer until about half the liquid evaporates.
- Stir in tomatoes and spices. Cover and simmer (while you cook the pasta to al dente in a separate pot of well-salted boiling water).
- Stir in a splash of heavy cream. Sauce is ready to eat, and it only gets better over time. That’s it!
The history of Bolognese
You could be forgiven for assuming that rigatoni Bolognese hails from the Italian city of Bologna, but it doesn’t, quite. Bologna does have a delicious meat sauce called ragù that’s long-simmered and shares some ingredients with this meat sauce. It’s typically served with tagliatelle or other broad, flat pastas.
Rigatoni Bolognese surely draws from that tradition, but this particular recipe is Italian-American in origin. (Brits and Aussies have similar versions of this comfort food, too, usually made with spaghetti, and often call it spag bol for short.)
It’s easy to find people getting angry about Bolognese sauce online, so I don’t recommend you go down that rabbit hole unprepared. Just know that this is a popular Italian-American sauce that really needs no introduction or justification beyond its deliciousness.
Expert tips and FAQs
Definitely. The sauce makes a generous batch and keeps well in an airtight container in the fridge for a week, only improving in flavor as it has a chance to settle into itself. Or freeze it for up to a year.
Cook your pasta right before serving, though leftovers are just fine, too.
More favorite pasta recipes
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Rigatoni Bolognese
Ingredients
For the Bolognese sauce
- 6 ounces (170 grams) thick-cut bacon, diced
- 1 large yellow onion, diced small
- 2 medium carrots, diced small
- 2 ribs celery, diced small
- 8 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 tablespoons (30 grams) tomato paste
- 2 pounds (907 grams) grass-fed ground beef
- 2 teaspoons fine sea salt, divided
- 1 cup (240 ml) dry white wine
- 1 28- ounce can tomato sauce
- 1 28- ounce can diced tomatoes
- ⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ cup heavy cream
To serve
- 1 ½ pounds rigatoni or other pasta
- Grated parmesan or pecorino cheese
- Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Set a heavy 5 1/2-quart pot (this is my favorite) over medium-high heat and add the bacon. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned. If there is more than about two tablespoons of fat at the bottom of the pot, spoon out the rest and discard or save for another use.
- Add onion, carrot, and celery and continue cooking, stirring from time to time, until softened and lightly browned in spots, about 5 minutes. '
- Stir in garlic and tomato paste and cook two minutes more.
- Add ground beef, along with one teaspoon of the salt, stirring to break up the meat into small pieces. Cook for about 5 minutes, until beef isn't pink.
- Stir in wine and simmer for a few minutes, until liquid is reduced by about half.
- Stir in tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, cinnamon, nutmeg, and remaining teaspoon of salt.
- Cover pot and reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer while you cook the pasta.
- Stir in cream and leave pot uncovered for the last few minutes of cooking.
- While the sauce simmers, fill a large, heavy pot halfway with well salted water and bring to a boil. Cook pasta to al dente according to package instructions. Drain, return pasta to pot, and toss with several ladles of sauce.
- To serve, plate pasta in wide, shallow bowls and top with additional sauce.
- Pass grated cheese and a pepper mill at the table, along with some flaky sea salt if you like.
Notes
- The trinity of onion, carrot, and celery is one of the elements that distinguishes Bolognese from other meat sauce. Embrace a little bit of browning on the bottom of the pot and scrape it all up into the sauce when you add the wine. It adds a lot of flavor.
- There's lots of fresh garlic in this recipe, but I often add more as the mood strikes. Feel free to do the same.
- A combination of tomato paste, tomato sauce/puree, and diced tomatoes creates a deep flavor and a perfect texture — not too thick and not too thin.
- Choose a nice dry white wine that you like to drink, and serve the rest of the bottle with the meal. The flavors of wine get concentrated when you simmer off some of the liquid in this recipe (and really all recipes with wine in them), so make sure you like the taste.
- Bolognese sauce pairs well with rigatoni and is also great with bucatini, spaghetti, and even cheese tortellini.
- The sauce makes a generous batch and keeps well in an airtight container in the fridge for a week, only improving in flavor as it has a chance to settle into itself. Or freeze it for up to a year.
- Cook your pasta right before serving, though leftovers are just fine, too.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Subscribe to Umami Girl’s email updates, and follow along on Instagram.
