The best meat sauce comes to those who wait. However good your ragù is, it will not be as good as when you let it sit for a few days, even weeks (in the freezer, of course, reheating every now and then). Just give it time and it will come into its own, like fine wine, cheese, or the boil on your buttocks (sorry; Coco Martin in Serbis suddenly sprang to mind).
Most people are skeptical when I trot out that line. Can I blame them? Not when I have no scientific explanation for such, uh, phenomenon — Serious Eats’ Food Lab this space ain’t. I assume they mean it when they ask what makes the sauce “so good,” so I give them the one thing whose effect I can’t account for; I’m sorry to differ with Kenji on this point, but there it is. How many of you will concede that adobo and humba do not, in fact, taste sooo much better two or three days after? In any case, Lord knows I do not hold anything back when sharing recipes.
Good is always good, but it never hurts to be interesting. My latest pasta meat sauce managed to be just that. “Is that…” said Therese. “Is that–”
“Goat meat.”
“No kidding? I never thought it would go so well with pasta — amazing.”
Actually, neither did I. I was merely aiming to re-purpose some goat adobo, in itself not very good. After removing the meat, I boiled whatever bones and spices remained, then strained the liquid into my usual sofrito (puréed caramelized onions with finely minced garlic and celery, and canned diced tomatoes, sautéed in lots of olive oil), added the goat meat, seasoned, and simmered some more. That was, let me see, over a month ago. Once every week I would take it out of the freezer to thaw and reheat, add a litle bit of this or that spice, herb, or condiment, purely on the whim of the moment, let it cool back down, then back it goes into sub-zero storage with, among others, garlic bread. There they are, looking none the worse — in the case of the ragù, better — for staying there. (And now that I have thought about it, I take back what I said being okay with “interesting” — I’m part Chinese, after all.)
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