Beef Ragu

beef ragu portioned out onto 3 dishes ready to be made into 3 separate recipes.

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In meal plan 7 we have a cottage pie, a lasagna and spaghetti bolognese. All three recipes use the same ragu as a base.

Prep Time15

Cook Time30

Course: Dinner, Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Diet: Gluten Free

Diet: Dairy Free, Freezes Well, Nut Free

Servings: servings

Calories: 376kcal

Author: Thrifty Lesley

Cost: ???

Equipment

Ingredients

500 g beef mince
60 g bacon bacon pieces, chopped small
300 g carrots
300 g onions chopped
400 g tinned tomatoes or fresh if you have them
120 g red lentils

Instructions

Sauté the onion until transparent.
300 g onions
Add the mince, bacon and carrot. Sauté gently, covered, until the vegetables are soft.
500 g beef mince, 60 g bacon, 300 g carrots
Add the red lentils, tomatoes and about half the amount of the weight of tomatoes in water. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
120 g red lentils, 400 g tinned tomatoes
If there is too much moisture in the pan, boil quicker until the level is right.
Season with salt and pepper.
Your ragu is now ready, set aside for use in the recipes. Keep cool until use.

Notes

If you have any available, a combination of any of the following will add flavour to the ragu.

A glass of wine (add instead of the water)
worcestershire sauce
a dollop of tomato ketchup
a squirt of tomato puree
some fresh thyme, bay or rosemary
a tblsp redcurrant jelly and/or any chutney.
Add whatever seasoning you are using at the simmer gently stage.
I used a tsp of salt, half a tsp pepper, 2 bay leaves, a third of a tin of baked beans from the back of the fridge and the washed out remnants of a bottle of tomato suace.

There are some spare vegetables in meal plan 7, if you want to, you could add some of them here to get another portion or two from this mix, although, for me, it is stretched enough already.

If you are not following meal plan 7, this mixture is the classic one to stretch.
Add some cooked beans, a tin of baked beans, complete with sauce, is fine.
Or stretch it with more vegetables.
If you use it to make cottage pie, you could add swede or carrot to the mash for a change, and serve with a green veg, peas or beans for instance.
You could pop the mix into a double pastry pie,
stir through pasta and top with a little grated cheese,
top a large baked potato with it, again with or without the cheese.
The uses of a beef mince mix are endless!

You could use the three portions of mix for a different combination of dishes if you want to. Say, cottage pie twice and spag bol once, something like that. On meal plan 7, there is 140g spaghetti and half the pack of mash left, and plenty of flour and enough milk left to make lasagna twice, so you could have any of the three options twice if you want to, then one of the others.

How else to use this delicious ragu

Use any spare ragu

on its own with crusty bread to mop up the sauce
to top jacket potatoes
a minor change is to use tagliatelle or penne, the Italian way, rather than spaghetti. Although Italians probably wouldn't approve of this version of a ragu
use the ragu as a base on a pizza
use some crusty rolls and make sloppy joes

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