Slow-cooked beef ragout recipe | Sainsbury`s Magazine (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between ragout and ragu? ›

The difference between ragu and ragout isn't really that much ragu is an Italian pasta sauce that is usually made with minced meat or vegetables and ragout is a French style stew that would normally be found on-top of a Paris style mash but the Italians would do this on-top of polenta.

This beef ragu is a flavor explosion of carefully-selected ingredients, including: Beef. Chuck roast is the best choice here. It shreds nicely and becomes super tender and flavorful after cooking for a few hours.

If the beef is still tough after 2.5 hours of cooking, it needs to cook for longer. Make sure the sauce is still bubbling very gently (you should be able to see bubbles appearing in the sauce; if not, the heat is too low and the beef will take a lot longer to cook).

A ragout is essentially the same as a stew, except that most recipes for ragout are originally French, and often the meat and vegetables are cut into smaller pieces than in a typical stew. Ragouts vary in flavor and ingredients — you can skip the meat and make a vegetarian ragout, for example.

Synonyms of 'ragout' in British English

She served him a bowl of beef stew. hash. casserole. goulash. olla.

1. : well-seasoned meat and vegetables cooked in a thick sauce.

What is ragù? Ragù is a meat-based sauce, typically served with pasta. Traditionally, pieces of meat (often beef, pork, game, or even horse), are cooked on a low heat in a braising liquid (this is usually tomato or wine-based) over a long period of time.

If you think these sauces are very similar, you are right. Bolognese sauce is actually a form of ragù, meaning that they both start from the same basic recipe. In fact, Bolognese's official name is ragù alla bolognese or, in English, Bologna-style ragù.

Ragù is an Italian meat-based pasta sauce with a little bit of tomato/tomato paste (but not overwhelmingly tomato like a marinara would be). Think bolognese. Ragout, on the other hand, is a thick and chunky French stew, meat or veg-based and cooked long and slow until the flavors are rich and robust.

Here's the gist: the two ways Italians say “sauce” in Italian are salsa and/or sugo. Both words translate as “sauce” but never as “gravy.” Ragù doesn't even translate as “gravy” but comes close enough since it involves meat which is what people really mean when they say “gravy” (my personal opinion).