To think that when you make a spag bol

[HelloCanYouHearMe]

You fry the mince off first?!

DP rarely cooks & tonight has decided to do spag bol and is following a Jamie Oliver recipe (which in itself is U afaic)

The recipe has him frying off onion, celery, carrot, garlic... so far, so good. Then it goes on to say to throw in the minced beef & 2 cans to tomatoes, water from 2 cans and simmer for an hour.

The hour is up & DP asked me to taste - the casserole dish is swimming in liquid & tbh all i can taste is powdery boiled mince

Tip off excess water and add a spoon of tomato ketchup. Heat it rapidly. Should do the trick

I was fed boiled mince lasagne by my cousin over Christmas. I coped, but I don't think my (Italian chef) husband will ever recover

As a fellow Italian wife

I can just imagine !!!!!

My friend once served me sausage casserole. She hadn't browned the sausages first and it looked like dead mans finger casserole ! Slimey, pale pink sausages swimming in a watery , fatty gloop. Yuck !

Grim. Mince should definitely be browned first!

yes i always brown the mince off first and then tip away the fat, the quantity of which depends on the quality of the meat.
Be gross not to.

Can you wait until he leaves and then tip out the sauce and then fry off the mince which has the sauce remainder on it (if that makes sense).

Felicity Cloake in the Guardian tested them all , her final recipe (at the end) is not bad but I would add tomato puree too and use unsmoked, not smoked, pancetta or lardons.
It should cook for well over an hour, preferably two. Fact.

I always do my bolognaise the JO way. Never had anything but compliments for mine.

If it is tasteless you need to season it very well and add more tomato puree. If you dont have enough liquid in it to leave it for another half hour or so I would add some more water or another tin of tomatoes.

I also have mine blibbing away for a good few hours. You need the tomatoes to infuse the meat and the seasoning to all merge in.

lol- so true.

Though not as bad as the friends who fed him quorn lasagne. I didn't tell him till afterwards at which he said he'd noticed something was awry but daren't ask what.

Jamie does this with his Chili too, no idea why.

Why all the Jamie Oliver hate?

I cook stew without browning first but mince just has the most unappetising appearance and texture of boiled!

Add some red wine and simmer slowly for ages. It might be salvageable. JO always says to add fucktons of liquid to recipes.

Zzzzz I made an Italian man lasagne once and he said it was the best he ever had. Mind you he was trying to get me in to be it worked

Bed

I always brown meat for meals, especially bolognaise. A lot of it depends on the mince (quality and fat ratio) though for bolognaise and the heat he's cooking it on. YANBU.

I always find recipes for any kind of Italian sauce don't have enough salt or oil and have too much tomato.

No Italian bolognaise tastes particularly tomato-y.

I always do the meat part of my lasagne in the slow cooker, on low for 8 hours.
I don't brown it first.
But it is absolutely delicious.

Send it to me and I'll eat it. My husband NEVER cooks which is a bit shit as I'm fed up coming up with things for dinner. Even watery mince would be a treat as long as I didn't have to make it myself!

What's worse is making a curry for an Indian

Don't do it - I secretly microwave my Dahl earlier at work or pretend it's 'veg chili'

Condensed we used to get given a very pale, (definitely unbrowned) sausage and potato casserole at school, we called it boiled babies' arms. It was a boarding school, and we were just delightful.

Eek, that's all wrong. I think your sauce is doomed.

Each to their own. I make the minced beef for spaghetti bolognese by frying onions and garlic and red pepper, then adding the beef and tomatoes and beef stock (dissolved in water) at the same time. At the end I add herbs, black pepper.

It's my own recipe, I'm glad Jamie deemed it fit to steal.

However, most people I know make it the OP's way (I used to do it like that). If the not-browning the beef way makes it watery and tasteless, something else is going wrong when OP's husband cooks. Maybe he has the wrong quantity of tomatoes or isn't using enough herbs? Or maybe he should use those "jellified" stocks rather than a dry cube crumbled into water?

Wait, I don't even care about the meat. You let it boil for 45mins?!! Tomato sauce has to be cooked for at least 2 hours. My grandmother cooks it the whol day. It's delicious and lovely.

Your sauce is doomed. I don't see how this could...? :0!!

Ofcourse you brown it first..boiled otherwise,and I'm a vegan and I always brown the vegan mince too...Jamie Oliver...hummmm