Braised Beef Ragù

Are you drooling yet? NO?! What's wrong with you? Alright I'll admit my pics are a little blurry, but just ignore the quality and get excited about how easy and delicious this is. If you enjoy: naps, movies, poker, imbibing alcohol, or any activity that will make you unavailable for several hours, this is perfect for you.

Here's a list of what you'll need:

1 large chopped yellow onion
1 1 3-4 lb chuck roast
4 minced garlic cloves
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 C red wine
1 bay leaf
5 thyme sprigs
2 14oz cans crushed tomatoes
1 tbsp chopped fresh basil plus more for garnish
1 lb fettuccine pasta

Take a 14ish inch heavy bottomed skillet and add olive oil over medium heat until it's nice and hot. You don't want a gray lump of meat; you want a nice hot pan so that you can create a beautifully caramelized golden brown roast. Pics of that later in this post. Basically, put some salt and pepper on the roast and let it sit in the pan without touching it for a few minutes. Seriously, don't move it. After 5 minutes, check the color, and if it's a nice dark brown, flip it. Do the same thing on the other side, then place the meat on a plate.

Time for some onions. If there's too much grease in the pan, get rid of some until it barely coats the bottom. Add the chopped onion and let it sweat for a few minutes at medium heat. Next add the minced garlic until it's fragrant (maybe a minute).

This part is important. Don't skip it. Add the tomato paste and let it brown in the bottom of the pan for a few minutes. The flavor you get from browning the tomato paste is absolutely worth the time it takes. Please enjoy this picture of that process happening.

All of that brown stuff you see on the bottom of the pan in the picture above is what will help flavor the delicious sauce, so to get it off the pan into the sauce I deglazed with the wine.

This is right after the wine has been added, the delicious bits stuck to the pan were scraped off, and the tomato paste was mixed in with the wine. At this point I added the bay leaf, the thyme sprigs, the chopped and let the sauce reduce about half before adding the crushed tomatoes.

There it is. Just take a moment to enjoy that gorgeous color. I happened to go to my local butcher shop where bone-in chuck roasts were on sale, so this roast has a bone. I can't recall ever seeing one in a grocery store, which was really the reason I decided to get one, but a boneless chuck roast would work just as well. 

Good news. At this point you heat your oven to 300 degrees, and forget about the roast for a few hours. Those big white pieces of fat in the picture are bad news though. After about three hours I took the roast out to test its tenderness. It was getting tender, but there was a thick layer of grease on top of the sauce. I used paper towels to remove as much as I could. I then took a knife and removed the now tender chunks of fat. The roast wasn't done, however, so I let it continue to cook for another two hours before I pulled this out of the oven...

Shrinkage is real, guys. This is without the bones and the pieces of fat removed, but even if I'd removed them before cooking, you still lose a significant amount of volume from the roast. To serve the roast I just sliced it into a few semi-large chunks. It's tender enough that you can cut it with a fork, so serving it in large pieces is not a problem.

When the roast is finally tender put a large pot of salted water on to boil, and cook the pasta according to package instructions except drain it a minute earlier than suggested. You want to finish the pasta in the sauce so that it has a chance to absorb the flavors.

Is it bothering you yet that I've been switching which side of the picture the yellow tea kettle is on? Seriously though, how delicious does that pasta look? Time for some honesty. The ingredient list just said fettuccine, but this is actually fresh pasta that I made. Making pasta is a recent experiment, so I don't have a lot of experience and didn't want to include it. If any of you are interested I used Mario Batali's recipe for basic pasta, which you can find here. Video is included. Anyway, once your pasta is drained, add it to the sauce and stir until sauce and pasta are combined. When they are combined and the pasta is al dente, you are ready to serve up this delicious masterpiece. Don't forget to top it with fresh basil and grated parmesan. In case you've forgotten, this is how delicious it looks.