Pasta alla Genovese - Slow simmered pork and onion meat sauce over rigatoni

My riff on Chef John's Pasta alla Genovese recipe.

This is going to be the last meal that I crank out of my small kitchen here in Burlington, VT for a while. I do still have a couple of posts in the queue so it's not the last of my end-grain cutting board just quite yet. After those, i'll be flying back to Phoenix and spending some time with family so you may see some posts from home.

This dish takes 11-12 hours because of a 10 hour simmer. If you plan on preparing this keep that in mind. 

Pasta alla Genovese is a traditional Italian meat sauce made by slow-simmering beef and onion until they melt together and become one. My version uses pork shoulder rather than beef shoulder because that's what I had on hand. I bought 14 lbs of pork shoulder over a month ago (portioned off and frozen, don't worry) and it has really fed me well - too much pork carnitas tacos is a thing...

Here's a link to the Pasta alla Genovese recipe I used. Chef John of Foodwishes is easily one of my favorite food bloggers. His YouTube channel has over 1,000 recipes it's the first place I look for inspiration when I don't know what to cook.

My version of the Genovese meat sauce differed a bit from Chef John's, however. I mean, this is Kitchen it with Dave and not Chef John (har har). Here's where I strayed from the original recipe:

• I used pork shoulder rather than beef shoulder/chuck
• I used 7 (1 extra) large white onions rather than the combo of yellow and red
• Bacon rather than pancetta (and more of it than called for by visual inspection)
• Nixed the bay leaf (because I ran out)

Here's where I went wrong and what I'd do differently:

• Even though I used 1 extra onion, I felt the sweetness in the finished product was lacking. I later found out that ~10 onions are what many other Genovese recipes call for and I think that's appropriate. If you're thinking about cutting back on onions, don't. The onions are really what make the sauce.
• I browned my pork shoulder far too long because I was racing to cut onions and the dish had some bits of dried pork in an otherwise completely melted together sauce. Avoid this!
• Chef John mentions you may need to add water/stock to maintain the level of the stewing liquid which I found unnecessary with all the onion juices. I've made this dish a second time for my family at home and I added a cup and a half of stock because the pot was left unattended during the simmering. I think this was completely unnecessary.

Okay, enough nit-picking. The finished product is absolutely phenomenal. It's my favorite pasta dish I've ever made. The sweetness from the caramelized onion and that umami goodness from stewing the meat are perfect together. 

Process:

Get your mise en place in order so that you're not rushing to chop onions. Chef John advocates cutting an onion here and there but if you're cooking this on a day off I'd get all the chopping prepped in advance as it makes the actual cooking run smoother.

Cut pork-shoulder. 

I like to cut the pork-shoulder in 1-2 inch pieces. I tried cutting the pork shoulder smaller the second time around and I think it didn't fall apart quite as easily because of how I cut it.

This is how you should cut your onions.

Hopefully you enjoy chopping things and/or are working on improving your knife skills. Cut all your onions as shown above. You could chop them finer or coarser, it really doesn't matter as these are going to stew for hours in their own juices.

Brunoise of carrot.

You'll also need to brunoise carrot and celery. I used my julienne shortcut where I slice my carrots at a bias before cutting them into strips which can be cut further into small cubes (brunoise). This is certainly really sloppy knife-work but it was 2 am and I was getting tired!

Whatever you do, don't skip the carrot and celery. These aromatics are crucial to rounding out the delicious flavor of this dish.

Bacon strips in my dutch oven.

Time to start cooking! I used 6 bacon strips and this is certainly more tasty pork product than the recipe calls for, however, I found it rendered out a perfect amount of fat for the subsequent browning step.

Cook until the bacon strips are crunchy and then remove with a slotted spoon and RESERVE (okay, nibble on a few) them for later use. Next, you'll add in all of your meat!

Chef John's non-traditional browning technique.

Bravo to Chef John for this time-saving shortcut of chucking in all the meat at once rather than doing 3-4 batches of meat browning. You'll want to crank the heat to high and let the juices evaporate for 15 minutes before the meat is able to begin browning. This is certainly against the "rules" of classic cooking - as Chef John himself has said in the past "There are a lot of fun things to do with your meat, but crowding it is not one of them!" - but it makes life so much easier and has a great result.

Once your meat has browned, add the carrot, celery, reserved bacon/pancetta, and salt n peppa! Cook for 5 minutes on medium to get those aromatics all hot and bothered.

Then add a tablespoon or so of tomato paste, a bay leaf (if you have it), and some white wine to deglaze the pan and bring that beautiful fond back into the mix (scrape with a wooden spoon!).

Add the onions to the pot!

Now, you'll want to add in all 7 onions you cut up (Again, I feel this dish would benefit in the flavor category from adding even more onion! ~10 or so). Cover and leave untouched for 30 minutes on medium heat. Stir, replace the cover and continue on medium for another 30 minutes.

What your pot should look like after an hour of cooking.

After those two 30 minute sessions, the onions should release their juices and be quite caramelized and sweet! This is the liquid that the pork will stew in for the next 10 hours! Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover the pot and let that flavor percolate for 10 hours. You'll want to stir the pot every couple of hours so that the bottom doesn't burn.

Go do your dishes, homework, or lust over the pasta that is coming for the next 10 hours. What you'll see at the end of that time is something that looks like this!

The final meat sauce!

What you'll end up with is a very nicely reduced and browned meat sauce that is insanely rich and softly sweet from those tender onions. It tastes incredible, and by this point, you're wishing you would've boiled the pasta 10 minutes before those 10 hours had ended.

Obviously, you'll want to do final seasoning on your meat sauce. What I did was salt to taste, add a bit of honey to amp up the sweetness from the onion, and a pinch of MSG (shhh...) to make that umami pop. I didn't try adding any vinegar/lime/lemon because I feel like this is meant to be a 2-note forward dish with sweet and umami, but I'll have to try that and report back. Maybe some balsamic vinegar to finish would tie it together nicely and compliment the onion sweetness.

Chef John used a rigatoni pasta which I decided to go on board with as the presentation of the dish looked so beautiful in his video. After buying some janky Wal-Mart rigatoni and some of this dope ass baller rigatoni, I 10/10 would splurge on good rigatoni again. That al dente feel is off the hook with the good pasta.

I bought my pasta at Healthy Living Market in South Burlington which is a fantastic grocer and puts Whole Foods markets to shame. A wonderfully thoughtfully curated grocery store for those who cook - and great beer to boot!

Fancy rigatoni #pastamoney

Here is the end product plated and ready to eat! Freshly grated parmigiano reggiano is a great finish to this dish. I always want to add basil to everything but I think a quick chiffonade of basil tossed in the sauce would take this dish to the next level after the next level it's already on.

#swerve

The best part of this recipe is that it makes a TON of sauce that can feed a small army. Have friends over for a dinner party or distribute at your leisure!

Bon appetit!

Dave