Make the best bolognese sauce by slowly simmering beef with a bit of seasoning, plump tomatoes, celery, carrots, garlic and onions. Hours in your slow cooker produce amazing flavour with minimum effort. Learn all secrets below!
If you love pasta, try my quick and meatless Tomato Basil Spaghetti Sauce.
I had pretty ambitious plans for this month but due to circumstances out of my control I am stuck at home and most of my time is spent in the kitchen.
Nothing seemed as satisfying as rich and robust beef bolognese sauce over spaghetti or tagliatelle. It’s one of those cozy dinners you always want to have at the end of a long day.
Somehow it gives you comfort to know that no matter what storm is raging outside, there is always comfort found at home.
How to make authentic bolognese sauce
My usual and easy way of cooking beef bolognese sauce is low and slow in my trusty cast iron pot. The magic trick to making the best beef bolognese is patience.
Just when you think it’s done and want to take it off the heat, keep it on for another hour or two. Through many trials I learned, what makes beef bolognese sauce is time. And tomatoes of the best quality!
So when you go shopping for your ingredients, do choose best canned tomatoes you can find. You will be surprised how sweet and flavourful beef bolognese sauce will taste made with perfectly ripe tomatoes!
However if you are not lucky enough to find ripe canned tomatoes, adding 1 tablespoon of sugar to your sauce also helps.
What are the ingredients?
The usual suspects in almost every beef bolognese sauce are beef, tomatoes, basil, oregano as well as diced onions, carrots, celery and some garlic.
I also add just a small amount of smoked pancetta or bacon for flavour, and that little addition makes a world of difference, as was once pointed out by my father-in-law!
I usually start by frying the pancetta, and then add all diced vegetables and saute everything for a few minutes. I always believed that step was crucial for the flavour development until a couple of days ago.
How to make slow cooker spaghetti sauce
When I set out to develop a slow cooker bolognese sauce recipe, I naturally wanted to simplify the process. What is the point of a slow cooker if you cook everything in the pan first?!?
So I took the risk and added all the vegetable raw. The only things I pre-cooked were bacon and beef. I was curious if that method would yield the same flavour.
Well as soon as my son finished his first helping, he said, “I don’t know why but this beef bolognese sauce tastes better than what you usually make”. Woah! The magic of a slow cooker!!
Alternatively, you can make this sauce in your Instant Pot, which speeds up the process significantly. It will be ready in one hour instead of 8!
Right, let’s get to it! Below you will see the stages of cooking this wonderful beef bolognese sauce.
In the second row of photos you can see what the sauce will look like at the beginning, 5 hours later and 8 hours later.
A pretty significant transformation is you ask me. While no thickeners and minimal human effort have been used! All natural ingredients, healthy and delicious!
This slow cooker bolognese sauce recipe produces A LOT OF sauce. I usually divide it and freeze a half of it for later. This delicious sauce could be used in my three cheese lasagna recipe.
How to make a smooth sauce
If you prefer a less chunky sauce, I would recommend adding all the vegetables to a food processor first and pulsing them for a few seconds.
With this method you will have the same flavour, quicker and a smoother sauce. I often do that to speed up the process and eliminate all the dicing!
More pasta sauce recipes:
Originally published in 02/2017. Updated with new images and instructions and republished in 03/2020.
Ingredients
- 3 strips of bacon/50g bacon or pancetta, chopped optional
- 1 large onion diced
- 2 medium carrots diced
- 2 celery stalks diced
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 2 X 14oz/400g cans of chopped tomatoes
- 2 tsp dried basil
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 lbs extra-lean ground beef
Instructions
- In a frying pan cook cubed pancetta or bacon until crispy. Remove to a plate.
- In the same frying pan brown ground beef over medium heat with salt and pepper until cooked all the way through.
- To the slow cooker add diced onion, carrot, celery, minced garlic, bacon, canned tomatoes, basil and oregano, 1 tsp salt and cooked ground beef. Stir to combine.
- Cook on low for 8 hours. At the end of cooking time taste and add more salt if necessary.
- Serve with pasta and parmesan cheese.
*Note: This sauce will get thicker the next day.
Notes
I can look at your finished recipe and can see the richness of color in the sauce so I am ready to make it. A caterer for a family event made a millionaire spaghetti had a rich sauce that gad this deep rich color, I just would love to know what brand of canned tomatoes you use. I don’t care about the expense, can you hint with the first and last letter of the brand and the number of letters in the full name, I want that rich deep flavor.
Hi Tina, I live in the UK, so we might have different brands available. If you want really rich colour I would suggest using something that is called tomato passata. Passata is made from crushed and sieved tomatoes and are used by Italians to make sauces. Some great brands that I use are Napolina and Cirio.
Do you drain the meat or not after browning it?
Hi Rich, I use extra lean beef and brown it on high heat, so there is nothing to drain but if you are using 10% fat beef, then yes, I would drain that.
Sad to say, I got a very disappointing, soupy result despite cooking it for significantly longer than specified in the recipe. In terms of the stage 1/2/3 photos above, it never got past stage 2. In the end, rather a waste of time and ingredients.
Quick tip: Unless your sauce is burnt, it’s never a waste of ingredients. Simply boil it down until desired consistency. It’s difficult to say why exactly the sauce never thickened but my bet would be on the tomatoes used. Lower quality tomatoes are canned when still unripe, so they don’t fall apart in the process of cooking, which is what makes the sauce thick.
Just made this very nice but would like it thicker how would I do this ie make it thicker and not as runny thanks for any ideas
Hi, Roy. You can boil the sauce down a bit to make it thicker but it will also thicken on its own the following day.
How can I reduce this for four people
Hi Roy, you can move the slider in the recipe card that will allow you to adjust the ingredients to the number of people you are cooking for. Let me know if you need more help with it!
Hi Vika. Why not cook the raw meat in there with the veggies?
Hi Nadia, the ground beef needs to be cooked separately because if not stirred properly it would turn into a brown lump. It can’t be simply added to the slow cooker raw as you would do with diced beef. Browning it also improves the flavour. I didn’t cook the vegetables with the meat because it’s an unnecessary step and I wanted to simplify this recipe for a slow cooker.
Best, Julia
Thanks for that info, Vika. It is in the crockpot for dinner tonight, I’m excited! Btw, my sister’s and I are all cooking off your recipes lately. I literally want to make everything you post!!
I am so happy to hear that, Nadia! Let me know what else you and your sister are cooking!
This is my go to spag bol recipe when I’m having friends over and don’t have time to cook. Let this cook all day and serve up! Yum!
I am so happy to hear it Sarah! I love it when dinner parties are made easy!
Do you leave the lid off or on? I wasn’t sure if enough would cook off with it on… Thanks! 🙂
Hi Becca, the lid is on the entire time. It is a bit watery at first but gets properly thick the following day.
I’m making this right now! It’s in hour 6. Looks a bit watery. Should I add tomatoe paste or just leave it alone???
I would leave it alone for now and let the slow cooker do its thing, Krissy. You can always stir in the tomato paste at the end. 🙂