Ragù di Salsiccia

A ragù from sausage meat, done in forty-five minutes because it is already seasoned.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 600 g coarse pork sausages, skins removed
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 200 ml dry red wine
• 700 g passata
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
• 1 dried chilli
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Squeeze the sausage meat out of the skins and BREAK IT INTO ROUGH LUMPS WITH YOUR FINGERS, not a spoon. Pieces the size of a hazelnut, left recognisable — minced smooth it becomes an ordinary meat sauce.
2. Brown the lumps in the oil over a high heat without moving them much, so they take colour on one side.
3. Add the onion, fennel seeds and chilli and cook 8 minutes.
4. Add the wine, let it reduce, then the passata.
5. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES IS ENOUGH. A bolognese takes three hours and a ragù napoletano most of a day, and both are built on whole cuts or raw mince that need the time. Sausage meat is already seasoned, already fatty and already ground: cooked for three hours it goes dry and grainy.
6. GO CAREFULLY WITH SALT AND ADD NONE UNTIL THE END. The sausages bring their own and how much is unknowable until it has cooked down.
7. Dress short pasta with it, with pecorino.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes