House of ragù

I blame Elaine. Since she posted about grinding her own meat, I bought the meat grinder attachment for our old KitchenAid and made three big batches of ragù in 15 days. In the pre-grinder days I would make a batch, have garganelli al ragù for dinner, and file the rest of the ragù away in the freezer in double-portion packages that would last us a few weeks at the rate of one package per week. Those days are over. The first two batches of home-ground ragù never made it into the freezer. We had pasta al ragù, Sloppy Joes, crostini, and even ragù taquitos. You’d think we’d be sick of the stuff already but I had a new batch bubbling slowly on the stove all day Tuesday. The interesting thing about grinding my own meat has not been the improvement in taste and flavor (that was expected), but the fact that now I

can keep ragù in the fridge for a week without any discernible degradation. With store-bought ground meat, you could tell the ragù was not freshly made after 36 hours. The only downside to grinding meat at home is the added work — more prep time to remove unwanted fat and cut the meat into chunks, and more cleaning time to disassemble and wash all the parts. It’s worth it.