Ragu Bolognese turns out to be an effective, if unconventional, topping for a rice bowl. See why.

Time: 3/5
Rice and ragu cooks in parallel for maximal efficiency

Effort: 3/5
A throw-things-in-pot-and-wait kind of meal

Pasta/rice sauce fusion

I once learned how to make Ragu Bolognese from a couple from Bologna, when I was in Thailand of all places. Being that I serve basically anything with rice, I thought I might serve Bolognese sauce over it.

Rice is cheap, shelf stable, and can be made in bulk. In my opinion, t also keeps and reheats better than cooked pasta. It’s also relatively easy to make a whole bunch of bolognese sauce at a time, so putting two and two together makes for an effective albeit somewhat unconventional meal prep idea.

Unfortunately, the result does suffer from a lack of texture. Shovelling a homogenous texture into your mouth and swallowing without much chewing involved might be great if you need to eat in a hurry (like the situation my version of Pad Krapao Moo or Pork and String Beans with Preserved Mustard Greens was designed for), but eating that sort of chum bucket meal every day for a week drives some people (like my SO) crazy.

So, to add some textural and visual contrast, I also batch prepped a bunch of Onsen Tamago (hot spring eggs) to go with the meals. For the uninitiated, they’re basically eggs that have been poached inside their shells so the egg whites are barely set and the yolk is still runny.

Part of why bolognese works as a rice bowl topping is that it’s a really hearty and substantial sauce with a bunch of meat and vegetables in it. Still, even with all those carrots and onions in there, it doesn’t feel like a complete meal to me without something green on the plate, so I also cooked some lettuce to have on the side while waiting for the rice to be done.

This concept is actually very similar to how the Taiwanese tops their rice with a stewed pork sauce called Lu Rou Fan (which I’ve made a macro-friendly, meal prep version of). But, having tried a pasta sauce with rice, that gets me thinking: is there any other pasta sauce that would go well with rice in a meal prep context? Let me know in the comments, I would love to hear. This is an avenue of discovery I plan on exploring later down the line.

Dramatis Personae

Meat – 100-200g per portion

The way I learned it was 50/50 ground beef and pork. The way it worked out for me this time was slightly more pork than beef because where I am, pork is local and sold by the catty (about 600g) while beef is imported and sold by the half-kilogram.

Any ground meat would work well; bolognese is not an exact science. You could absolutely do ground lamb, and substituting sausage for some of the meat would also work well.

Vegetables

I used one large carrot and two onions for 6 portions. Chop them up fine. Celery and garlic could also belong to this, but it wasn’t how I learned it (plus I have an intense dislike of celery, and simply cannot bring myself to eat it).

A good food processor would save you a lot of work here. You’ll have plenty of time to do the dishes while waiting for the sauce to simmer, so don’t worry about the cleanup. I did not have a good food processor, so I did it the old fashioned way.

Tomato product

Either fresh, boxed or canned, you want about the same amount of tomatoes by weight to the meat. I went with chopped tomatoes from a box.

Tomato paste is also great for simulating the flavours you’d get from something simmered low and slow for an entire afternoon. It’s a great shortcut for a weeknight sauce. I ended up putting a lot more than I thought I would, at least a tablespoon per portion.

Tomato paste from a tube is easier to dispense as needed and to store, but I could only get it from a can. It doesn’t matter anyway, as I’m about to show you a neat little trick I learned to keep bulk-purchased tomato paste in a more user-friendly way.

Others

Some balsamic vinegar really brightens up the dish towards the end. I added it with the heat off, so that the fruity aromas don’t get cooked off.

As usual, salt and pepper to taste, and any dried or fresh herbs you might have.

Executive summary

1. Chop up onions and carrots. Sweat the vegetables in a pan with a pinch of salt.
2. Once translucent, make a well in the vegetables and sauté some tomato paste in there. Mix to combine, then add the ground meat.
3. Stir and break up the meat. Add canned tomatoes. Season to taste. Bring to a simmer and let it do its own thing.
4. Get rice going in rice cooker. Set and forget.
5. Do some cleaning up while waiting for the rice to cook. Make the eggs. Prepare meal prep containers and set the table.
6. Watch the water level on the sauce, you might need to add some liquid if it gets too thick. Once the rice is done, take the sauce off the heat and stir in a splash of balsamic vinegar.
7. Combine and serve

Play by Play

Doing some pre-prep with the tomato paste. I have a sheet tray lined with some baking paper, on which I deposited tablespoon-sized dollops. That goes into the freezer for an hour or so, until the dollops turn solid.

The big can of tomato paste is now divided into single serving portions. Keep them in a ziplock bag in the freezer, and defrost however much you need each time!

That food processor you see there was a major disappointment. I used it to make ginger garlic paste with some success, but it was not powerful enough to chop up raw carrots. I ended up having to dice all these vegetables the old fashioned way. At least hard work builds character *sob*

Sauteeing tomato paste to develop some flavour, after sweating the vegetables. That dollop was woefully inadequate for the 2+lbs of meat involved. I ended up more or less sextupling the amount in the end.

Adding the meat, then the tomatoes. Once the meat is broken up and the tomatoes are stirred in, I went and got my rice cooker going while it simmered. The time spent waiting for the rice to cook and the sauce to simmer is time that can be spent preparing side dishes, and doing some cleaning up.

My rice is done and I’m hungry, so it’s time to eat. Heat is off, and balsamic vinegar goes in. Stir, taste and adjust for seasoning at this point.

The eggs don’t need to be reheated, so they can be kept separately. They’ll add some visual and textural contrast to the meal. Everything else is divided up and ready to go. (PS check out this new bowl we got – I love its simple elegance).

Ooooh yeah.

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