— instructions —

①

Render bacon.

Heat a large pot over medium heat and add the bacon to begin rendering out the fat. There’s no need to add any oil to the pot since the bacon will provide fat itself. Stir around. After 2 minutes, turn heat back down to low and cook, continuing to render until the bacon is rendered, nicely browned, but not too crispy. Remove bacon from pot.

②

Caramelize onion with spices.

Begin caramelizing your onions. Put a dutch oven over medium heat with a dollop of olive oil and sauté for a couple of minutes. Add cloves and star anise. Turn down to low heat and continue to cook onions, slowly caramelizing. It will take about 45 minutes for the onions to caramelize. Keep watch and stir once in a while so that the onions don’t burn on the bottom of the pot. When the onions are ready. They’ll be a deep brown colour. Salt to taste.

③

Add celery and garlic.

When the onions are caramelized, discard the spices and add celery and garlic. Sauté until the celery is semi-translucent, about 30 minutes. 

④

Brown ground meat in separate pan.

In a separate pan, add a dollop of oil of choice and begin browning the ground chuck & ground butt breaking apart the pieces. Leave the meat on the pan untouched for about 4-5 minuted so that the bottom gets nicely browned. Be sure not to overcrowd the pan, otherwise you won’t be able to get a good sear. Transfer meat to colander the drain oil.

⑤

Deglaze and scrape.

In that same pan, add ½ cup wine to deglaze, scraping up all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

⑥

Combine meat and onions, along with wine, milk, broth, porcini & let time do it’s thing.

Add the wine and juices from the deglazed pan to the dutch oven with the onions and celery mixture along with the browned ground meat. Add another ½ cup wine, evaporated milk, broth, and porcini. Stir to combine. Cover and cook over low heat for 3 hours.

⑦

Fry tomatoes.

1½ hours into cooking, heat another pan over medium heat with oil of choice and sliced garlic. Cook until fragrant, about 40 seconds. Don’t let garlic get too brown. Add tomatoes, dried oregano, dried basil, dried marjoram and cook until the liquid from the tomatoes has evaporated, about 30 minutes. Add the remaining ¼ cup wine, tomato paste, ketchup, vinegar and Worcestershire. Turn the heat to low and simmer for another 30 minutes.

⑧

Transfer tomatoes to dutch oven and simmer.

Transfer tomato mixture to dutch oven with meat mixture and simmer, uncovered, for the rest of the 3 hours.

⑨

Prep pasta.

Bring a pot of water to boil. Salt and drop a dollop of olive oil in water. Once boiling, add pasta in and cook until pasta is almost al dente. It should just be slightly undercooked.

⑩

Add pasta to sauce and cook until al dente.

Add the almost cooked pasta to the dutch oven with the meat sauce and swirl around until the pasta is cooked thro
ugh completely with an al dente texture. This shouldn’t take too long, about 3-5 minutes. Finish off with the grated parmesan right in there and stir to combine. Serve and garnish with chopped parsley and grated parmesan. Congrats! You just made low n’ slow meat sauce.