Classic Spaghetti Bolognese with Homemade Semolina Noodles
Hello, Dear Reader!
What a lovely winter’s day for a delicious bowl of homemade pasta, don’t you think? This delightful red sauce is cooked with browned ground beef, tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic, and white wine. It uses home canned marinara sauce to save time, but you can use any marinara sauce that you like best! The noodles are made with artisanal nutty semolina flour for a classic Italian meal. It’s a wonderfully classic dish that anyone can make at home!
This recipe uses Ball® Basil-Garlic Tomato Sauce, or your favorite marinara sauce, making it an excellent recipe to use up your canned goods from the summer!
what is spaghetti bolognese?
Have you ever had pasta with a thick and creamy meat sauce? Then you have had bolognese sauce! Bolognese, also known as ragu alla bolognese or simply ragu is a sauce made with meat, onion, tomatoes, milk, white wine, tomato paste, and chopped beef and sometimes ground pork. It can also have celery and carrots!
This recipe is more traditional to Italian-American cuisine where the sauce is heavy on tomatoes rather than a creamy milk-base. This style of sauce resembles ragu alla napoletana, which is made in the south of Italy.
choosing the right ingredients:
To make a delicious homemade Italian spaghetti with bolognese sauce, you will need a few choice ingredients.
Semolina Flour. While you do not need semolina flour to make noodles, it does help! Semolina flour creates that authentic Italian flavor to homemade noodles, and it also helps to create a pasta that can hold itself together. I have made all sorts of different pastas, and I truly do love using semolina flour the best. The noodles are thicker and sturdier, making them much easier to cook with. I like to use King Arthur Baking Company Semolina Flour.
Fresh Eggs. I love using our hens’ eggs to make pasta. It makes such a difference in the overall flavor and color of the final product. If you do not own chickens, then try using some local eggs the next time you make up a batch of pasta. If this is not in your budget, you can still make incredible homemade pasta without the farm freshness.
Homemade Marinara Sauce. This recipe does a little bit of cheating using marinara sauce rather than cooking down fresh tomatoes. But that is the reality of cooking in winter! Tomatoes are not growing currently where I live, which is why I spent my summer storing away batches of Ball® Basil-Garlic Tomato Sauce. This sauce is packed full of flavor with fresh basil and garlic and cooked to the perfect consistency to make into a homemade sauce in a matter of minutes.
steps to make semolina noodles:
Semolina flour can be a little difficult to work with. These tips are here to help make the process a little bit easier!
Form a Volcano. I know, this sounds a little weird! But combine the semolina and all-purpose flour and create a mound that looks like a small volcano on your work surface.
With the bottom of a drinking glass, make a flat well in the center of the volcano. Crack your eggs into the well, making sure that they do not flow down the sides.
Using a fork, begin to whisk the eggs in the center of the mound, bringing in some of the flour from the bottom of the well. If you pull too much flour from the sides, it will begin to cave and egg will flow all over the counter.
Once most of the liquid has been soaked up by the flour and the mixture begins to look crumbly, use a bench scraper to chop up the mixture and bring it together.
With your hands, knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. It will be a bit tough, like a play dough rather than a soft and supple bread dough.
When you are ready to cut the noodles, there are several ways to go about this. You can use a hand crank pasta machine and a chitarra pasta cutter (pictured above). I also like to use the pasta attachments for my Kitchen Aid Mixer, or you can roll and cut the pasta by hand!
steps to make bolognese sauce:
The sauce is quite simple to make with the addition of marinara sauce rather than working with fresh tomatoes. Trust me, I prefer the fresh version any day, but we are currently in the middle of winter. So that means I am digging into my pantry of homemade canned foods that I spent all summer and fall making. I love finding ways to use my home canned foods, and it’s nice to be able to share them with you!
To make homemade bolognese sauce, you will begin by browning some ground beef in hot olive oil. This is then cooked with some chopped yellow onion, garlic, and I love to add red or green bell pepper to my sauce!
Once all of the vegetables have been cooked, they are seasoned with salt, pepper, and some tomato paste. The tomato paste helps improve the color and flavor of the sauce. Then, I love to use white wine for flavor and to deglaze the pan.
Once the sauce has thickened slightly, it’s time to add the marinara. After bringing the sauce to a boil and simmering for about 8 minutes, the sauce is ready to serve! Though, if you like a more intense flavor, it can be simmered for about 20 to 30 minutes and thinned with pasta water.
final thoughts:
I hope you enjoyed learning more about making homemade semolina pasta and bolognese sauce! This comforting dish is the perfect homemade Italian masterpiece that is sure to bring a richness to your dinner table. I love making this meal at least once a week for our family during the winter. It does make a lot, so feel free to cut down the recipe if you need to!
xoxo Kayla
Classic Spaghetti Bolognese with Homemade Semolina Noodles
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups (220 g) semolina flour, plus more for dusting
- 2/3 cup (88 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp (9 g) kosher salt
- 3 large eggs
- 3 tbsp (45 ml) cold water
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
- 1 lb (454 g) ground beef
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 green or red bell pepper, diced
- 2 tsp (11 g) kosher salt
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) tomato paste
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) dry white wine
- 28 oz (794 g) Ball® Basil-Garlic Tomato Sauce or your favorite marinara sauce, homemade or store bought
- 1 tsp sugar of your choice (optional)
- Parmesan cheese, for serving
Instructions
- In a small bowl, begin by whisking together the semolina flour, all-purpose flour, and salt. Scoop out the mixed flours onto a clean counter or work surface and mound it up in a volcano shape. Then, with the bottom of a drinking glass, make a well in the center.
- Crack the eggs into the well. Pour in the water. With a fork, begin to whisk the eggs in the well without bringing in any flour from the sides. Once the eggs are well whisked, begin pulling in some of the flour, trying to not let the eggs fall out of the flour and onto the counter. You want to pull from the bottom of the mound rather than from the sides.
- As more flour is absorbed by the eggs and water, you will begin to see that it starts to clump. Now, with a bench scraper, begin to chop up with the dough and bring some wetness to the remaining dry bits. It will look like a bunch of lumps all on the counter. Bring this all together with your hands once it is no longer soupy and knead the dough for about 2 to 5 minutes or until it is smooth and a tough. It should not be soft like a bread dough, but more like a tough play-dough.
- Wrap the pasta in plastic wrap and let it rest on the counter for 30 minutes.
- After it has rested, divide the dough into 4 equal-sized pieces. Dust the pieces with more semolina flour, if needed, and run them through a pasta machine. Depending on what you use to cut your spaghetti, work with the machine's instructions. You can also fold the spaghetti and cut it by hand into thin strips. I roll mine through my Kitchen-Aid mixer to about a 6 or 7, or when I can see my hand through the dough, before cutting with the spaghetti cutter.
- Cut the noodles and then dust with more semolina flour. Let them rest on a pasta drying rack or in little nests on your countertop for at least 20 minutes before cooking. Now, make the sauce.
- To cook the noodles, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Boil the noodles, stirring occasionally, for 7 minutes or until al dente.
- In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat until it begins to shimmer.
- Add the beef, browning it on all sides before crumbling it to seal in the flavor. Cook until the beef has browned fully, about 4 to 5 minutes, then add the onions and garlic. Cook the onions until they are translucent and the garlic is fragrant, about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Stir in the bell pepper, cooking for another 3 to 4 minutes or until it has softened. Season everything with the salt and pepper, adjusting if you prefer to. Stir in the tomato paste, coating everything well. Then deglaze the pan with the white wine. Cook until the wine has almost evaporated, about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Pour in the marinara sauce, stirring to incorporate everything well, and bring it up to a boil. As soon as the sauce boils, lower the temperature to a simmer.
- At this point, you may add sugar if you like a sweeter sauce (similar to a restaurant style sauce), otherwise you may skip this step! Adjust seasonings to your taste.
- Cook until the sauce has slightly thickened, about 7 to 8 minutes. Then, remove the pan from heat.
- Drain the spaghetti, reserving some pasta water if needed to thin out your sauce. Stir the pasta into the sauce, returning the pot to heat for about 3 minutes to cook the sauce into the noodles.
- Serve the spaghetti warm with a healthy sprinkle of parmesan cheese.
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