You might be thinking, another pasta dish? By now you know my love of pasta. This short rib bolognese sauce with tagliatelle pasta is anything but just another pasta dish. This hearty ragù sauce is a traditional Italian sauce from Bologna. It consists of cooking meat in tomato sauce including three important vegetables; carrots, onions and celery, over a low flame for a long period of time. It is typically made for topping pastas, preferably wider pastas, such as pappardelle, lasagne, and tagliatelle.

I would usually make this bolognese sauce using half ground beef and half ground pork as I learned this from my father’s bolognese recipe that I got to enjoy while growing up. I always had room for seconds for this recipe! I’ve recently been trying different recipes involving beef short ribs and thought it would be interesting to use it in a bolognese sauce. I’m so happy I did and I’m sure you’ll love it too!

Using your own, homemade tomato passata or plain tomato puree is ideal, but if you don’t have your own, I recommend finding a brand you really love. If I don’t have a jar of my dad’s homemade tomato passata and if I am too lazy to make my own or just don’t have the time, I use Mutti. I am in no way sponsored by them, but I do really like their passata over any other brand I have tried. If you would like to learn how to make your own passata, you can follow along in my recent Pasta alla Norma recipe where I made the passata by scratch using this vegetable mill.

The key to this recipe is patience. It does require a couple of hours of simmering in order to get the best flavor. You can get away with only simmering it for about an hour and a half if you are impatient and hungry, like I usually am, but I wouldn’t recommend any time shorter than that, so plan ahead!