Dutch Oven Bolognese
Two pounds of meat, a can of tomatoes, and three hours of doing nothing. Car camping only.
- calories
- 780
- weight
- 14 oz
- cal / oz
- 56
- protein
- 42 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 180 min
- total time
- 210 min
- water
- 2000 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Ground beef | 1 lb | |
|---|---|---|
| Ground pork | 1 lb | |
| Olive oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Yellow onion, carrots, and celery | 1 onion, 2 carrots, 4 ribs | diced small at home and bagged together |
| Garlic | 6 cloves | chopped at home with the mirepoix |
| Canned San Marzano tomatoes | 28 oz | |
| Tomato paste | 1 tbsp | tube keeps better than a can |
| Pinot noir | 1/2 cup | |
| Rosemary sprig and bay leaf | 1 each | |
| Salt, pepper, sugar | 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 2 tsp sugar | |
| Powdered whole milk | 3 tbsp plus 1/2 cup water | stands in for fresh milk |
| Grated parmesan | 1/4 cup | the hard dry kind, not fresh |
| Dried pasta | 1 lb | |
| Dried basil | 1 tbsp |
Method
- Get a bed of coals going, or run a stove low. Heat the oil in a 6 qt dutch oven and brown both meats with the rosemary sprig, salt, and pepper. Seven minutes, and let it stick a little.
- Add the bagged onion, carrot, celery, and garlic. Cook ten to twelve minutes until the vegetables collapse.
- Stir in the tomatoes, crushing them with the spoon, then the paste, wine, sugar, and bay leaf.
- Lid on, coals raked low. Simmer at least ninety minutes, three hours if you have the fire and the patience. Stir every twenty minutes or so.
- Whisk the milk powder into a half cup of water and pour it in. Simmer another fifteen minutes uncovered.
- Boil the pasta in a separate pot, drain, and fold it into the sauce with the parmesan and dried basil. Pull the rosemary stem and bay leaf first.
This is a long-simmer sauce, which is exactly why it belongs at a car camp and nowhere else. The work is all in the first twenty minutes; after that the dutch oven sits on low coals and the fire does the rest. Nothing here is fast, and nothing here is light — two pounds of meat and a cast iron pot is not backpacking food.
Two changes from a kitchen version. Fresh milk becomes powdered whole milk reconstituted at camp, which does the same job of rounding off the tomato acid without a carton going warm in the cooler. Fresh basil becomes dried, added at the end, because a bag of leaves turns black in a pack by day two. Chop the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic at home; a cutting board on a picnic table in the dark is the worst part of this recipe.
Packing
Dice the mirepoix and garlic at home and vacuum-seal it with the meat in the cooler. Wine goes in a small screw-top bottle. Everything dry — pasta, milk powder, parmesan, sugar, herbs — rides in one bag outside the cooler.
Variations
- Skip the pasta pot and stir in a cup of dry small shells plus two cups of water for the last twenty minutes. One pot, softer noodles.
- No wine? A splash of balsamic and an equal amount of water gets you most of the acid.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/pasta-bolognese