Ragù Napoletano: The Queen of Sauces and the Sound of Sunday

Ingredients

• 500 g beef chuck, in one piece
• 500 g pork ribs, in one piece or in connected rack
• 300 g Italian pork sausages, left whole
• 300 g braciole (stuffed rolled beef), tied with butcher's twine
• 1.2 kg tomato passata, added in stages
• 2 large white onions, finely sliced
• 60 g lard, for cooking the onion and searing
• For the primo
• 400 g rigatoni, ziti, or paccheri, dried, to serve with the sauce

Method

1. 1
   Place the lard in a wide, heavy-based pot — a terracotta tiella or enamelled cast iron is traditional — over low heat. Add the sliced onion and cook without colour, stirring occasionally, until completely soft, translucent, and beginning to dissolve into the fat. The onion is ready when it offers no resistance and has no remaining raw white at its centre.
2. 2
   Raise the heat to medium-high. Pat all meat pieces dry and add them to the pot in a single layer, working in batches to avoid crowding. Sear every surface — beef chuck, pork ribs, sausages, braciole — until each face carries a deep mahogany crust. Do not move the meat until it releases cleanly from the pot. The crust is the flavour capital of the dish; this step cannot be shortened. The meat is ready to turn when it lifts without tearing.
3. 3
   Return all meat to the pot. Add the first third of the passata. Stir to lift any fond from the base and allow this addition to reduce, uncovered, until it darkens and no longer looks raw — the surface will begin to catch slightly at the edges. This is the point at which the second third of the passata is added. Allow it to reduce in the same manner before adding the final third. The sauce is ready to enter its long braise when all passata has been added, the mixture is a deep brick-red, and the fat has begun to separate visibly at the surface. This is the step on which the dish lives or dies: passata added too quickly in one mass produces a thin, uniform sauce that no length of cooking will fully repair.
4. 4
   Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting. The surface should show only an occasional, lazy bubble — what Neapolitan cooks call pippias, a quiet, intermittent blip rather than a simmer. Cover the pot leaving a small gap for steam to escape. Cook for a minimum of three hours; six hours is better; eight hours is the Sunday standard. At three hours the sauce is good. At six it is transformed. At eight it is a deep, glossy, almost-brown concentration and the meat yields to the lightest pressure of a spoon. The fat will have fully separated to the surface and the sauce will coat the back of a spoon thickly.
5. 5
   Lift all meat from the pot and set aside, covered, for the secondo. Cook the pasta in generously salted boiling water until al dente. Drain, reserving a ladleful of pasta water. Dress the pasta with several large spoons of the ragù, loosening if necessary with a little pasta water, until each piece is evenly and deeply coated. The sauce should cling — not pool — on the pasta.
6. 6
   Serve the dressed pasta as the primo. Bring the reserved meat to the table separately as the secondo, with remaining sauce alongside if desired. Meat and pasta must not appear in the same bowl.