Simple Gluten-free Bolognese recipe

Italian gluten-free style 🇮🇹

I LOVE to cook and most nights I am happy to make dinner for my fam but there are days usually on the weekend where I want my husband to take charge of dinner.

So what do I hear when it's his night to make dinner? "Do you want me to just pick something up for us?" If you don't know me well, I am NOT a big fan of going out to eat. Main reasons;

1. I can usually make it better at home.

2. I know it's 100% gluten-free.

3. I won’t get charged extra $ for ordering something gluten-free.

So what is an Italian man to do when one is not allowed to just order pizza...... he goes for the next best thing, pasta.

And that my friends is how this simple bolognese recipe came to be one of the staples on rotation at our house.

Now our conversation sounds more like this... me "Hey can you make dinner this weekend?" my husband "Sure do you want me to make that bolognese pasta?" me: "Yes please!" And everybody is happy.

The sauce is naturally gluten-free but we make it with gluten-free egg noodles or gluten-free rigatoni. Both of these Italian brands; jovialfoods and bionaturae organics have amazing GF pasta products.

This is a food network recipe but we change it up a bit.

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 celery stalk, coarsely chopped

1 carrot, coarsely chopped

1 pound of grass fed beef

1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes

1/4 cup flat-leaf Italian parsley

a handful of fresh basil leaves

1/2 cup of fresh spinach

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Freshly grated pecorino romano or parmesan cheese

In a 6 quart pot, add extra-virgin olive oil. When almost smoking, add the onion and garlic and saute over medium heat until the onions become very soft, about 8 minutes. Add the celery and carrot and saute for 5 minutes. Raise heat to high and add the ground beef. Saute, stirring frequently and breaking up any large lumps and cook until meat is no longer pink, about 8 minutes. Add the tomatoes, parsley and basil and cook over medium low heat until the sauce thickens, about 1/2 hour. Finish bolognese with cheese, cut up fresh spinach, additional fresh parsley and a sprinkle of hot pepper flakes (totally optional).

ENJOY!