I read about ragú on a website that was all about Italian cooking. What I wanted was a simple pasta sauce recipe, so I was randomly scrolling through the net to find a recipe. My search keywords were: making authentic Italian tomato sauce for my pasta, and was introduced to this interesting sauce in the process.
Now there are many notions about how to make a sauce. One popular one is that you never pair a thick sauce with thin pasta such as spaghetti. It is better to pair a creamy sauce with it. But creamy could also be of a soup-like tendency, right? How will that stick to the spaghetti?
I have often paired my sauce, no matter how thick with spaghetti. So, I’m confused by this idea. I was making spaghetti but I didn’t want to give any very narrow descriptions in my google search, such as creamy tomato sauce for spaghetti. Thus, I used general keywords like “tomato sauce” and “pasta”.
I learned something about making tomato sauce. Essentially, it requires six ingredients: tomatoes, olive oil, basil, salt, smashed garlic and a pinch of sugar. But I wanted to understand if I was correct in assuming that this is the best it can get.
So I googled again: pasta sauce other than marinara. I read a few articles to see what distinguishes tomato sauce from other alternatives. It is there I learned that chefs have been hiding a secret from us: the secret of ragú. All we usually hear is that marinara is the choice of sauce for pasta. But perhaps chefs are too busy at work and just don't have the time to take us through every kind of sauce out there, which is understandable.
I immediately wanted to learn about the difference between a classic marinara sauce and ragú. I found that ragu is not tomato sauce at all. It is a meat-based sauce and white wine and vegetables are added to it too. Although it is red in colour, the tomatoes may be eliminated and tomato sauce could be used to make it.
I didn’t know that marinara was not really the classic sauce. Rather, I’m quite puzzled that we think marinara is the only option out there. Or, alfredo sauce. Actually, scratch that. It’s not as much about whether it is a classic, as it is about — how did we not know about this huge component that is a part of Italian cooking?
Well, as Italian cooking has so much to do with cooking with wines and meats, this ragú sauce must be on your list of must-try items. Perhaps you thought that marinara has to be cooked vigorously and needs some kind of magic hand which knows how to add depth and character to a dish. But as I learn more about what I like, I’ve started to repel any myths that I hear about what I should be doing on my journey of understanding food. I used to think I don’t like complex twists, but in fact, I really do.
So perhaps next time, instead of marinara, ragú will be the choice of sauce I go with for my bowl of pasta.
Here's a recipe for ragú you can try!