After reading about stirring Bolognese sauce through pasta to save money, I wondered if there were any "obvious" tips I could use?

[RhubarbThumb]

The thread advised you'd use less meat if you stir the sauce through the pasta and then serve. I did this yesterday and it used maybe half as much meat, maybe less, we still enjoyed our dinner.

I pad out mince dishes with red lentils, as my tip.

Also, make pizza at home with dough from yoghurt and flour, and then minimal toppings, but increase things like spinach in there.

Anything else?

Whatever method you do to serve it surely the way to use less meat sauce is to......cook less in the first place 🤷

You can buy a bag of potatoes, slice em up and optionally parboil and freeze (on trays initially to prevent sticking) for diy oven chips. Just dump them into a slightly unclean air fryer. Can add a bit of oil if wanted but the unclean air fryer does the trick. Being frozen they are nice and fluffy inside. About a third of the price of buying oven chips, taste much better and no nasty additives.

Most recipes use one whole tin of tomatoes, one whole packet of mince etc. It makes more sense to cook the recipe as usual and save half. Timesaving and saves on fuel costs. In fact, even cheaper would be to double up. As long as you can stop the rest of the family from helping themselves to the extra sauce before you've frozen it!

Of course, but personally I like to cook bolognese for a decent amount of time and it works out better for me if I cook all of it but then take half to use another time to save time on cooking the next day or whenever. It also saves energy not making bolognese twice using half a pack of meat each time.

I think most people would use a whole packet of mince for a family of four but this way it would always do us two meals if bulked out with cheaper ingredients like oats or pulses. It's just a way of saving a bit of money and making things stretch further without it feeling miserable.

A PP reminded me about yellow stickers. I almost always buy our meat on yellow sticker prices and then freeze it. I still have a turkey crown in the freezer that cost me £3 at Sainsbury's late on Christmas Eve.

I don’t know why people don’t get it either, the OP has explained clearly and shown a photo of what is a very normal way to serve spag bol (in the UK anyway). We used to dollop when the DCs were younger because one preferred loads of tomato sauce on pasta and one preferred a tiny amount and lots of cheese. DH is a dolloper because he’s not keen on pasta and will just have a tiny amount. Sometimes if I make chilli DD makes herself some pasta instead of the rice we’re having and dollops both, other times we cook with sauce stirred through. I agree you use a lot less sauce with mix-through.

Ahh sorry OP ... apologies for not reading properly.

Every time I've eaten pasta in Italy and Sicily the sauce has been stirred through and mixed. Every single time. Unless homemade the pasta isn't the star of the dish it's the sauce, even if that's just a humble mix of oil, chilli and garlic.

Also ... any odd amounts of sour cream or Philadelphia style cheese we have that need using up are great stirred into a sauce to add more juice which makes it go further too.

Italians would never let me in the country knowing I committed such heathen acts but hey ho

Ok, but that doesn't mean that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people put the sauce on top the pasta when serving it

The fact that some posters dont understand the issue is mad

Yes, but, to save money and time, I make a batch, enough for 6 meals, so using gas once, buying bigger quantities of meat to save a bit per kg, use the dishwasher less often, as I'm washing the pan once, not six times, that kind of thing.

I could put less on the top of the pasta, but people look at it and think it's not enough... It's just how people are 🤷‍♀️ so I stir it through before serving and it's fine, but yes, if I out 50g on top or 50g stirred through,it's the same.

I put loads of veg into the sauce. 2 onions, garlic, 2 sticks of celery, 2 big grated carrots, a finely chopped courgette and loads of mushrooms with 2
or 3 tins of tomatoes. It makes an huge pan, enough for a family for 4 or 5 meals.

During Covid the only pasta available in Lidl was an Italian tricolour Easter-shapes one. I think people wouldn’t touch it at the time because it had been imported from Italy. It’s exactly the same as any other pasta.

I think it's Italian rather than American!

You can make dumplings with mashed potato. Just add an egg and a bit of flour, chopped parsley, form it into a dough then make your dumplings. They taste good!

Someone's posted broadband beans in parsley sauce with gammon upthread. One of my most hated meals of the 1970s! Little broad beans without the waxy skins are delicious though, but a faff to prep.

I'm another one who adds a lot of grated carrot - also if I have a head of broccoli I might grate up the stalk too. If the veg to meat ratio looks a little on the high side I will add a teaspoon or two of Marmite to get it tasting more meaty again. I see spag bog/cottage pie etc as a basic weekday meal which should be healthy rather than a special treat. If I'm making a special pasta I'll use somthing like a duck breast ragu instead.

I’ve been on MN for donkeys years and I’m getting more and more impatient with the “I just don’t understand…” posters.
Try a tiny stretch of the imagination. A “tweak” of the imagination. Most of us have seen curry in a ring of rice and ragù in a ring of pasta. It’s more photogenic than all mixed together.

Anyway, my tip is to reserve most of the olive oil from good quality tinned tuna and use it as your dressing oil. It’s infused with extra tuna flavour and you’ve already paid for it.
Until the recent price rises in EVO oil I used to throw it away. 🤦🏼‍♀️

@Sgtmajormummy I said "I don't get it" because if you want to use less sauce then just cook or serve less sauce.
That's hardly a revolutionary concept 🤷

How do you do this, how long does it take to cook? Thanks

I think the point was that if you serve less sauce dolloped on top of the spaghetti, people would notice and think it's not enough. But you can get away with using less sauce without people noticing if it's stirred through instead.

Any half decent Italian cook will say you must add the pasta to the sauce not the sauce to the pasta to coat it well with pasta water.

Oh my actual goodness, I'd never thought of saving the olive oil from tinned fish. That's the best tip ever!! And there might even be some bonus protein infused through! Brilliant!

What difference does it make?

Adds more pasta water and more evenly which makes the sauce 'sticky' (to the pasta) and silkier but it doesn't accidentally add too much pasta water which can make the sauce too loose and dilute the flavour of the sauce.

It is better imo. I don't get an even coverage and end up frustrated while trying to stir/maintain the heat before serving when I forget to put it into the pan of sauce.

The 1980s cow-pat method of serving Bolognese! I always stir through, JFC.

Don't see how it means you use less meat since you've already cooked the sauce by the time you serve it?