Spaghetti Bolognese... What is That?

If you was you to ask an Italian if they could make a spaghetti bolognese they would give you a puzzled look. It is a common misconception that this dish was made popular in Italy and that is all they eat. You won't see many people eating the dish in their villas in Italy.

So what is Spaghetti Bolognese? It is meat sauce served on a bed of spaghetti, sometimes with a sprinkling of grated partisan or parmigiano cheese to add to the flavour but there are slight variations. It is called Spaghetti alla Bolognese, Spaghetti Bolognese, Esparguete à bolonhesa or Spaghetti Bolognaise so it is easy to confuse anyone even those who know of the dish, add to the fact that it is mainly popular outside of Italy.

Also it didn't exist in its namesake city Bologna, in the city they always served Ragu with egg pastas tagliatelle or lasagne. Naples, a place where a lot of different Italian dishes are made, is where Spaghetti comes from and the Naples Ragu of a meat flavoured thick tomato sauce sticks much better to the slippery nature of Spaghetti better than Bologna's ground beef ragu. Although there are some that do claim that the Bologna Ragu based dish is a form of Spaghetti Bolgnese which is why you see a sauce less form of the dish.

The 'traditional' recipe was registered in 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina, who rounded up the ingredients to: beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and milk or cream. Although they admit there can be slight variations to the traditional ingredients such as the use of chopped pork or pork sausage instead of beef, while other meats such as chicken may be used along with the beef.

The dish in other countries is different from the Italian counterparts as it seems more based on a tomato sauce rather than Ragu (meat based sauce). In Britain, Northern Europe and the United States the tomato sauce dominates the dish but the sauce is still made thick and rich thanks to the chunks of meat in the sauce and is served with big pasta shapes such as linguine, tagliatelle or fettuccine. Although there are some who try to make it authentic by adding spaghetti to it but due to the different consistency of the sauce it doesn't cling to the tomato sauce so it isn't recommended to wear a white top when eating that version. In Norway the dish is very popular especially among children.

In Australia and New Zealand it has almost become a custom to some families to have Bolognese on Tuesday nights as a family meal, this is due to a popular sauce brand called latina who had an advertising campaign in the 1960s and whilst the advertisements no longer play the tradition still remains strong. Chinese people call it 'Western Zhajiang Main' because it looks similar to the traditional Chinese dish. The Zhajiang Mian is dry noodles covered with a thick ragu which is mainly minced meat, on the other hand westerners called Zhajiang Mian 'Chinese Spaghetti'.










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