MEAT SAUCES

BY DEFINITION, MEAT SAUCES ARE RICH IN FLAVOR and offer an excellent way to "stretch" a small amount of beef or pork to feed four or more people. Because the meat must marry with the pasta, it needs to be quite small. Ground meats, bulk sausage (or sausage meat removed from its casings and crumbled), and chopped bacon are all possible choices.

When making sauces with ground beef, we opt for chuck, which has more fat than ground round and sirloin. In our testing, we have found that leaner ground meats become dry and tough when cooked through, as is necessary when making a pasta sauce. Even chuck can lose too much moisture if it is overcooked. For this reason, sauté ground meat (as well as sausage) just until it loses its raw color. This way the meat will still retain some of its moisture when the liquid ingredients (wine, tomatoes, etc.) are added to the pan. The meat will continue to cook, so there's no need to worry about undercooking at this point.

In addition to not overcooking the meat, try to break apart pieces with a fork as the meat cooks. Ground meat, especially, has a tendency to clump together as it cooks. Pieces of meat crumbled into small bits will coat pasta better than large pieces, so don't omit this step.

Sauces in this chapter require several different kinds of canned tomatoes. For ragù, we like to use whole tomatoes in juice. We drain and chop the tomatoes and then use the juices to keep the sauce from scorching. The three-hour simmering time for this sauce accentuates differences in pans and stoves. The tomato juice, which can be added as needed, helps compensate for those differences.

For the absolutely quickest meat sauce, we use canned crushed tomatoes, which need very little time to thicken into a saucy consistency. While some chunkiness is desired in a basic tomato sauce, for meatballs the sauce should be thick (so the meatballs don't become soggy) and smooth. Canned crushed tomatoes are essential here.