This is a recipe I created. This is what I came up with because I enjoy playing with different ingredients. It works nicely on ribs but is also good on brisket or pulled pork. Enjoy!
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 9 hrs 25 mins |
| Total Time: | 9 hrs 55 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 6 ounces pancetta or salt pork, diced
- 2 ½ pounds beef chuck
- 3 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
- ½ cup diced celery
- ½ cup diced carrots
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ⅔ cup white wine
- 1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 pounds yellow onions, sliced
- 2 pounds red onions, sliced
- 2 (16 ounce) boxes uncooked rigatoni
- 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram leaves
- 1 pinch cayenne pepper
Instructions
- Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook until most of the fat is rendered, about 6 minutes. Transfer to a plate with a slotted spoon.
- Add beef chuck and 2 teaspoons salt to the pot. Increase the heat to high; cook and stir until browned and any liquid released begins to evaporate, 10 to 15 minutes.
- Reduce the heat to medium-high. Add cooked pancetta, celery, carrots, remaining 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper; cook and stir for 5 minutes. Add white wine, tomato paste, and bay leaf; cook and stir for 2 to 3 minutes, scraping up the drippings from the bottom of the pan.
- Add yellow and red onions. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook for 30 minutes without stirring. After 30 minutes, stir onions and meat until well mixed. Cover again and cook for 30 more minutes.
- Stir, then reduce the heat to low. Keep uncovered and cook, occasionally stirring and skimming off any fat, until beef and onions seem to melt into each other, 8 to 10 hours. If the sauce is reducing too much, add water or broth as needed to maintain a sauce-like consistency.
- When the sauce is almost finished, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook rigatoni in the boiling water, stirring occasionally until just barely al dente, 10 to 12 minutes. Drain.
- Add rigatoni to the sauce and cook until heated through. Garnish with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, marjoram, and cayenne.
- This recipe makes enough sauce for 2 pounds of dry rigatoni. But you can use just the amount you need and refrigerate or freeze the rest. To serve, heat as much sauce as you need in a skillet. Then continue with Step 6, above.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 891 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 117 g |
| Cholesterol | 80 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 10 g |
| Protein | 39 g |
| Saturated Fat | 10 g |
| Sodium | 1022 mg |
| Sugars | 19 g |
| Fat | 30 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Made on Sunday so I could cook all day. I learned the hard way; just buy pre-cut/cubed chuck roast! I had an approx 3+lb chuck roast that I had and opted to cut into 2” cubes. It was like trying to cut down a Christmas tree with a butter knife! Once I finally did manage through that; followed the recipe but agree with Danielle F; had I not checked the onions halfway through the first 30 min, would have resulted in disaster. I stirred and continued to cook, COVERED and stirring occasionally – not only during the onion steps but throughout the entire cooking process. I don’t know if medium or low is slightly higher on my oven/stove stop but it helped towards the success of this recipe. Even still, I needed to add some beef broth in small increments, throughout the 8 hour cook time. In hindsight, I think I would have added a little more broth at the end as this turned into a very thick meat sauce but it was extremely flavorful and very good!! I would make again!! And plan to! Great recipe Chef John!! We loved this!
Burned horribly after the first 30 minutes. Thankfully, I am a seasoned cook and was able to rescue it. Definitely add more liquid than just what’s called for in the recipe before setting it to cook covered on medium heat without stirring for 30 minutes. I should have known by that instruction alone that there was not enough liquid for the job. Also, instead of constantly adding liquid during the 8-10 hour low-heat simmer, I just kept the pot covered (instead of uncovered as specified). If I need to reduce it at the end, I will, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to have to. It’s still on the stove as I write this – it’s in its 6th hour. Tastes pretty good, though. I actually do like it and I will most likely make it again, only with my tweaks.
This turned out wonderfully even after I made a few small tweaks. I’m not a fan of pork, so I skipped the panchetta and used trimmings from the chuck roast to render the bit of fat needed for browning the meat. I otherwise followed the directions faithfully up until the end of the second 30 minute cook. I took the sauce off the stove and put in the fridge overnight. (My roast was pretty well trimmed, but taking the sauce out of the fridge gives you a chance to spoon off any excess fat.) The next day, I put in the slow cooker for about 9 hours. I added just a little broth at the start and checked it once or twice to make sure it wasn’t dry or sticking. This sauce was delightfully rich with a slight sweetness. As a mostly non-tomato sauce, it was a perfect match for my husband’s sensitivity to tomato-based foods and my mania for pasta.
There really isn’t a way to describe this pasta sauce that captures the delicious uniqueness it imparts to the rigatoni. It definitely has notes of french onion soup but there is such savory flavor from the beef. I ended up needing more salt than I thought and would probably add more heat during the cooking process. I did the initial cooking on the stove then transferred to the slow cooker. I added some broth during the cook. I might try in the Instapot at some point. The husband enjoyed this very much and fortunately he will get to again soon thanks to the abundance of sauce now in the freezer. Thanks Chef John!
I used venison for this recipe. We loved it!
Chef John does it again! I make this with venison stew meat instead of beef and it’s absolutely delicious. Works just as well cooking it entirely on the stove as he suggests or transferring to a crock pot to let it simmer for 8-10 hours. Depending on how moist everything is, you may need to add some water or broth but otherwise it’s perfect as written.
Fantastic recipe! Easy to make and a huge hit for anyone you serve it to! Like French onion soup meets pasta sauce. Hard to explain but it’s amazing
I followed the recipe exactly. We are having it for supper tonight but it looks like a winner.
I followed this recipe exactly. I’m a pretty confident cook, but admit I was nervous about this sauce, I haven’t made anything like it before. It’s a remarkable amount of onions, you don’t realize the volume until you have it in front of you. I followed all the steps and throughout the day the sauce changed and evolved like it did in the video. At first the smell was pleasant enough, but I couldn’t imagine how it would translate into a pasta sauce, and I was still apprehensive at hour 10 when it was done. I let it cool and stored it in the fridge to test it out later in the week. That was Sunday, fast forward to Wednesday and I was finally able to eat a meal at home, so I made the dish by sautéing a portion of the sauce and then simmering the al dente pasta in it. It was absolutely delicious. I can’t describe the flavor but it certainly isn’t onion plus meat sauce. It’s a rich, hardy, filling sauce with a hint of sweetness in the aftertaste. It is going in my book of recipes to make for dinner guests. This is one of those recipes that elevates your confidence in the kitchen and I highly recommend trying it. Shout out to Chef John! Thank you!!! Note that during occasional stirs, you’ll want to use a wooden spoon to scrap up the sauce at the bottom. I also added quite a bit of water throughout the day as it cooked down. (Side note, I started this at 9 in the morning and realized I had forgotten to get white wine, and had to text my neighbors for a cup of wine at 9:30AM, what must they have thought of me? They must like me because multiple people came through. :-))
The flavor is incredible. The texture is perfect. This is not a 30 minute meal. The prep of 6 lbs of onions was not fun. Was it worth my time and tears, absolutely. This is a meal to be shared with at least 4 people. I shared it with 6 people. Big hit with everyone. On the downside, my home smelled of onions for days. Next time I will simmer it for the 8 hours outdoor on the burner attached to the BBQ.
This was good. I made sure to keep adding broth as it cooked but it still was not as broth as it needed to be once I added the pasta. If I make it again, I will make sure it has all a lot more broth.
Incredible meat sauce! I’m surprised I had never heard of this. It’s as tasty as any tomato based sauce.
Excellent as usual chef john. Thanks again
I made this almost to the letter. As another reviewer said the pancetta did not leave enough fat so I added some bacon, not much. My major issue (with me) is that I cut back on the onion. I could not believe how that much onion could make a sauce that didn’t taste like an onion. I was WRONG. Next time full throttle on the onions. I’m learning from other recipes onions have interesting properties. Anyway my boys wolfed it down, my picky wife liked it and my paisan with a Neapolitan wife wolfed down 4 servings, and he is on a diet. It does take some time, probably a nice Sunday dinner choice.
I hate to have to rate this negatively because I am a HUGE chef John fan (almost all of my regular recipes are his), but this turned out to be a bummer after such a long effort. I followed the recipe to a T, but this was basically just pot roast pasta. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I’ve always found pot roast to be extremely bland and this recipe was more of the same. My guests politely told me that it was “fine” but I could tell they felt the same way. I’m glad that some reviewers liked it so much, but I definitely won’t be making this again.
Soooo good! Makes this!!
Sweet and savory sauce. The rigatoni and grated cheese balanced it out beautifully.
Excellent recipe. I actually thought it could have used another half pound or so of meat. Not quite sure about the complaint of making the house smell like onions. I smelled them a bit the first hour or so of cooking, other than that I only smelled the amazing fragrance of the entire sauce. One note >>> if you use salt pork rather than pancetta take it easy on the additional salt. Let it cook for several hours then add salt as needed.
This was one of those recipes that “seemed” like a lot of work and I normally would have passed over, but I was intrigued enough to give it a try. I had one issue, I want to state up front to help others from having the same debaucle I did, and that was after cooking the onion mixture for the second 30 minutes, the mixture burned and stuck to the bottom of my pot. I mean CHARRED. I quickly transferred the mixture to another pot, but unfortunately I had stirred it some before I realized it was not just stuck but burnt to the bottom of the pot, so I had black bits of charred onion and sadly a lot of the pancetta was charred and all of these little pieces had to be removed one at a time to salvage this dish. Thankfully after I removed as much of the charred bits as I could, I could not taste the burnt flavor. I read you can add a splash of sherry to help with burnt flavor and I did that just “in case”. I was SO thankful it was salvageable! So if you make this recipe (since I read later from several other reviewers that had the same problem) I would either turn the heat down from medium to a lower temperature or take the lid off and stir occasionally during that second 30 minutes. Otherwise instructions were great and easy to follow and the recipe was really delicious. I began prepping all of the vegetables the day before. I would just pass through the kitchen and slice a few onions at a time. The day I cooked it all I had to do was cube my beef, so that made it much easier.
Made the recipe as written. The sauce was even better the next day. Definitely a keeper in my book!
Wound up using bacon and a sweeter white wine on our end, and it came out amazing. In fact, the only thing I could think of to make it turn out better next time is to use salt pork/pancetta and a regular white wine. Like the recipe says. Also, learned through this how good an onion reduction can make a sauce. Outstanding.