Sugo Di Carne (Ragu Meat Sauce)

Sugo Di Carne translated directly means Meat Sauce. Today I’m sharing this amazing meat sauce that we made and I learned about while in Tuscany – when I was lucky enough to joint the Tuscan Women Cook program in September 2024. #TuscanWomenCook. They have such an amazing operation and the program is awesome – I’d highly, highly recommend it if you like to eat and drink and want to have immersion into the Tuscan countryside with a truly wonderful group of people. I had an incredible time.

On the first day of cooking – we learned this recipe AND we made homemade pasta (lasagna noodles) and then added this meat sauce + bechamel sauce + parm to homemade pasta and made the most delicious lasagna. It was super interesting the method for making this sauce (which I’ll share below) plus the fact that the lasagna was so sparsely loaded. They kept saying, use restraint as we layered the lasagna. The amazing ingredients (Sugo di carne) and the fresh pasta were the stars of the show. Surely a lil parm and bechamel sauce never hurt anyone! No need for ricotta or a ton of other ingredients. Below are a few pics of the lasagna lesson.

Before we can make this Lasagna, we need to start with the sugo ! Let’s get going !

Lessons I learned in making this Sugo :

1. Get out a good bottle of Italian wine – Sangiovese would be great. Taste the wine – make sure it’s good and then don’t expect to have more. The balance of the bottle eventually goes into the sauce. Hope you didn’t spend way too much on that bottle….  🤣
2. You’ll start with a lot of Soffritto — Onions / Celery / Carrot – the holy trinity and base of much of Tuscan cooking. Interestingly, the veg will basically disintegrate into the sauce as you cook.
3. Meat : Lots of it. 2 lbs of ground beef + 1 lb of ground pork. The meat will be cooked – and almost fried for more than an hour in a “little” olive oil.
4. Nonna’s in Italy say, “add a little olive oil” and they mean add a cup or cup and a half of olive oil. I swear everyone and their brother or uncle must make their own olive oil – so it’s free and they use it like it’s water. To be clear – (I’m not exaggerating) they use a LOT of olive oil in every dish. Maybe that’s why everything tastes so good ?
5. This dish is shy of herbs – except for a full bunch of parsley. No oregano, no basil, not a pinch of hot red peppers. I was surprised that there were not more herbs and spices in the dish.
6. This is NOT a weekday meal, unless you aren’t working that day. This sauce is most likely something you’d make on the weekend. The sugo cooks for 4+ hours and requires a lot of stirring.
7. Lastly…when in Italy, they set out the sugo we made fresh today, and compared it with Sugo made fresh yesterday and there was a marked difference. The sugo from today was good – absolutely. The sugo from yesterday was outstanding. No joke. Plan to refrigerate your sugo at least one day ahead of when you plan to serve it. #WorthIt

After investing in the preparations and cooking of this sauce, plus overnight in the fridge, when you serve this ragu to your guests they will say that this sauce melts in their mouths. Delicious like you’d not expect! As if someone’s Nonna had taught me how to make it!

Now it’s YOUR turn!

Sugo Di Carne (Ragu Sauce)

This meat sauce (carne) is the stuff that dreams are made of, assuming you dream of delicious Italian meat sauce! Lots of meat slow cooked, almost fried, with soffritto, and tomatoes. Simple and Excellent

5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 25 minutes mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Servings 15 People

Calories 471 kcal

Equipment

• Large Heavy Duty Pot 7+ Quarts – Ideally a wide bottomed pan

Ingredients

  

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Finely Dice or Cuisinart Soffritto

• 2 Onions
• 1 lb Carrots
• 1 stalk Celery (whole stalk – all the ribs in a bunch)

After Soffritto Cooks Add

• 1 bunch Parsley Finely Chopped (exclude main stems)
• 6 cloves Garlic Finely Minced (or drop into food processor)

Carne

• 2 lb Ground Beef (I used 2.6 lbs, as my packages were 1.3 ea)
• 1 lb Ground Pork

Tomatoes

• 56 oz Canned Whole Tomatoes (2 large cans)
• 30 oz Canned Tomato Sauce (2 regular sized cans)
• 6 oz Canned Tomato Paste
• 3-4 Fresh Tomatoes (Optional – I did not any any)

Wine

• 750 ml Sangiovese Wine (one bottle – ideally an Italian variety)

Olive Oil

• 1 C Extra Virgin Olive Oil EVOO

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Instructions

 

• Finely dice or use your food processor to nearly puree your soffritto. If using your food processor, roughly chop the veg and add to the food processor and pulse a bunch of times. You will likely need to add the vegetables in 2 batches.
  
• Add olive oil to your large pan, put it on the heat and warm it up. Add the vegetables and essentially, fry the vegetables for 10 – 15 minutes until golden.
• Mince the parsley and garlic, add to the vegetables once done. Cook a couple of minutes (only) until you smell the garlic.
  
• Add the meat to the veg and begin 'frying' the meat.
  
• Continue to stir the meat, getting it off the bottom of the pan and moving it around to scrape the fond off the bottom of the pan. Do this for a LONG time. Like an HOUR. I would stir about every 5 minutes or so… My pan wasn't very wide on the bottom and there was a lot of soffritto and meat – so I had to stir and cook a long time. You want the meat to be a beautiful dark, rich caramel brown when it's done.
  
• This is a picture of Jacamo – who helped teach / interpret for the Nonna's and he said stir stir stir the meat for a long time – until it is done. Given the amount of oil in the pan the Nonna's made, the meat essentially fried in the olive oil… (original recipe called for 1.5 CUPS). See how dark the meat is in his picture… I probably ended cooking of mine a bit too early – but with all that meat in my pan – it was hard to get it fried like that – besides I "only" used about 1 C of oil.
  
• Add what is left of the bottle – after you taste the wine and ensure the wine is good. (Would be HORRIBLE to add corked wine to this dish at this point!). Use the wine to deglaze and get the frond off the bottom of the pan.
  
• Once the meat is done and the pan is deglazed – add the tomatoes (whole / sauce / paste / fresh). Use your spoon to smash up the whole tomatoes as you stir.
  
• Cook for 3+ hours stirring fairly frequently. Add additional wine or water throughout cooking as needed to keep sauce moving and not burning in the pan. The texture of the ragu should change to a dark rich color.
  
• Once the ragu is done (or you are just tired of stirring – ha ) take the ragu off the heat and set to the side, and let it cool down before you put it into the fridge overnight.
• The next day, warm the sauce, cook some pasta or ravioli or both and serve with some grated Romano/parmesan and ENJOY. Or – you could hold the sauce and make lasagna !
  

Notes

I don’t know for sure how many people this recipe will serve.  I made this as directed and you can see my 7 Qt pot was nearly full.  I fed 6 of us, a hearty serving, and froze the remainder in smaller containers for future dinners for the hubster and I.

Estimating:  If the 7 QT pot was full to 6 Qts, then there was appx 24 C of sugo made.  If each person had 1C serving – there would be 24 servings.  

Based on this, I’d plan for 15 – 20 servings to be safe.   

Calories calculated on 15 servings. 

Nutrition

Calories: 471kcalCarbohydrates: 17gProtein: 18gFat: 33gSaturated Fat: 9gPolyunsaturated Fat: 3gMonounsaturated Fat: 19gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 65mgSodium: 597mgPotassium: 1006mgFiber: 4gSugar: 9gVitamin A: 6135IUVitamin C: 28mgCalcium: 88mgIron: 4mg

Keyword Canned Tomatoes, Groud Beef, Ground Pork, Soffritto, Tomato Paste, Tomato Sauce

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