Italian Lamb Ragu with Home Made Pasta

 

Italian Lamb Ragu is an extremely rich and comforting dish, and full of nostalgia. Long slow cooking is the key to tender lamb which shreds beautifully to combine with a sauce full of delicious flavours. 

This recipe will deliver to you a restaurant quality dish, without paying restaurant prices. It's a cinch to make and all the ingredients are readily available. If you like to make your own pasta, then be prepared to be blown away by this quality meal. Store bought pasta is good to use as well. I've also provided the recipe for making your own Arrabbiata sauce from scratch if you wish, but to save time we have also used the Barilla brand Arrabbiata sauce and it was delicious. 

Ingredients: 

Serves 8

1.2 kg Lamb shoulder (or close enough if a bit larger)

2 carrots, sliced

1 onion, finely chopped

1 cup finely chopped celery

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup red wine

2 beef stock cubes

1 1/2 cups water

3 sprigs rosemary, finely chopped

4 fresh bay leaves

3 sprigs fresh thyme

400 g can chopped tomatoes

1x400 g jar Arrabbiata pasta sauce with Chilli Peppers (I use Barilla Brand Arrabbiata with Chilli Peppers because it is what I can easily find here in the supermarket, and it is found with all the other pasta sauces.) However, if you wish to make your own Arrabbiata Sauce as I often do, given time constraints, please find the recipe below.

Fresh Basil leaves

Grated parmesan cheese

Method:

Season the lamb with salt and ground black pepper, cut into 4 portions, and sear each portion on a high heat until browned all over, in a large stove proof and oven proof casserole dish. Remove the meat from the pan and keep aside covered.

Gently saute the classic chopped mirepoix ingredients, the carrots, celery and onions, on a low to medium heat in olive oil.

Dissolve the beef stock cubes in 1 1/2 cups hot water.

To the vegetables add the tomato paste, red wine, beef stock, rosemary, bay leaves, thyme leaves, a can of tomatoes, and Arrabbiata Sauce.

Add the browned lamb to the sauce and bring to a simmer on the stovetop.

Place the casserole dish in the oven and cook at 150 degrees for 4 hours.

Remove the meat and shred. Placed the meat in the sauce and gently stir so that the meat is covered in the sauce.

Serve with fresh basil leaves, grated parmesan cheese, and a pasta such as rigatoni or fettucini, however Ragu is also delicious served with potato mash.

Mr. HRK made the pasta for our meal from scratch.

If you wish to make your Arrabbiata Sauce from scratch, here is the recipe I used for my 

Mexican Chicken Traybake as given below.

Ragu rich sauce

Arrabbiata Sauce Recipe

If making this from scratch, the sauce almost needs a post just devoted to it alone. However because it is integral to this recipe, I'll try and give you enough detail so that you can make it yourself. By making it yourself you can control the heat factor in this sauce. Anything homemade is much better than commercially made. Arrabbiata means "angry" in Italian, and is a sauce that Italians love to eat with pasta. So by doubling the batch here, you can then freeze enough sauce to make Pasta all'Arrabbiata (spicy tomato pasta) another time.

I'll give you the exact measurements for the Arrabbiata Sauce that I used for this traybake, and you can double them if you wish. Thanks to Nagi Maehashi for providing the basics of this Arriabbata sauce.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves, finely minced (optional)

!/2 -1 red cayenne pepper chilli, depending on how hot you like it

400 g/14 oz canned crushed tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/'4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon white sugar

Instructions for making the sauce:

Heat the olive oil in a medium sized saucepan over a medium heat. Add the garlic and stir for 10 seconds. Add the finely chopped cayenne pepper chilli. Cook for 1 minute, and the garlic should be golden in colour.

Add the crushed tomato from the tin, the salt, sugar and the ground black pepper. 

Turn up the dial to a high heat, stir, then when it comes to a simmer, turn back down to a medium heat and simmer for 15 minutes. 

Have a taste, and if it is still a bit acidic or sour, add a little more sugar. This is hard to judge as all tomatoes are different. I added a bit more to suit my taste.

Mr. HRK's pasta, crimped at the edges. Interesting lighting in this photo.

Make your own pasta

Making your own pasta is very rewarding, the results are delicious and dinner guests love that it is homemade. I leave this process to Mr. HRK now as he enjoys making pasta and it saves me from doing it, bless his heart, although I am entirely capable if necessary. I have a bit of trouble taking the photos and getting the exact details of the recipe from Mr. HRK when it comes to making pasta as he is a rather shy cook, however the process he uses is very close to Jamie Oliver's recipe. Mr. HRK generally uses the ratio of 4 cups of 00 flour to 4 eggs, whereas Jamie Oliver used 6 cups of 00 flour to 6 eggs. The quantities can easily be adapted depending on how much pasta you need to make.

Thankyou to my clever daughter Shannon for this original recipe, which she came up with when she was here on holidays and realised I had bought the perfect cut of lamb for a ragu.

This is an original recipe by @happy_retirees_kitchen (Happy Retirees Kitchen)

Phew, what a heck of word Arrabbiata is, and I have used it lots of times in this recipe and in my Mexican Chicken Traybake recipe. I hope I now have it spelled consistently throughout. Let me know!

Happy cooking,

Best wishes,

Pauline