Butchers mince = too salty Spag Bol? any cure?

[KateMiddletonsMum]

Usually buy Tesco lean mince, walked past butchers yesterday and thought "that looks nice", same price anyhow.
Fried onions, garlic, added the mince, cooked, then a tin of chopped tomatoes and a jar of Ragu plus black pepper, tomato purée, basil, oregano and a punch of sugar. this is the recipe I always do!
But it tasted shite and so salty!
The butcher said they don't add salt and offered to replace but I'm a bit wary.

Any cure for the saltiness? Honey? Potatoes?
Thanks!

Sorry, can't resist - 'rinse your mince'

hth

Milk is supposed to be what you add to spag bol.

Never done it myself but seen it on MN threads and also Nigel Slater (kitchen diaries). Presume this would negate saltiness somewhat?

I'd be more suspicious of the ready-made sauce and/or can of tomatoes than the minced beef. It's very common in a factory process that the recipe goes wrong from time to time. Extremely unfair to blame your poor butcher.

Make your sauce again with zero salt and use passata rather than Ragu. Mix the new sauce with the old sauce. That will dilute the salt... then freeze the spare portion for another day.

I agree with CES. Butcher's mince doesn't contain added salt. It will be the readymade sauce you are using. Bolognese is so easy to make I don't know why you are using a jar of sauce. All you do is fry some onions and garlic, add the mince and brown, then add some tomato puree, a tin of tomatoes and some herbs and a splash of water if too dry. IMO readymade bolognese sauce is a complete waste of money.

You don't need ready made sauce.

Check out the salt content listed on the jar - it's full of the stuff.

Potato for sure. Scrub one well and cut into quarters. Put them in the sauce and let simmer for about 30 minutes, they will absorb a lot of excess salt.

Fwiw, I often doctor up jarred sauces. I sometimes make it from scratch, but not always (or even usually). I really love Newman's Own Sockarooni pasta sauce.

When I started buying meat from the butcher rather than the supermarket I was amazed at how much better the flavour is, especially for minced beef.

Maybe the beef you bought needs less salt to enhance its flavour, so the amount of sauce in your normal ragu is now too much.

I would echo the comments to blame it on the sauce. It sounds like your recipe is fine for a quick spag bol so just replace the jar of sauce with the tin of tomatoes.

In my opinion though, ragu needs some dairy and some porkiness - so I usually go the whole hog (har har) and do it this way:
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2003/may/11/foodanddrink.shopping5

If you added salt to mince before it would draw out moisture and weep - don't see why a butcher would ever do that!!

Most likley your jar was perhaps a bad batch and too much salt. Can add a raw potatoe in to try to draw out the salt.

As others said drop the jar and use tomatoes - seem you add most of the same ingredients you need anyway.

Definitely look at the sauce rather than the meat, why on earth would a buthcer add salt? Meat generally tastes better and has mor flavour coming from the butcher rather than the supermarket.

Great, milk and potatoes is the way forward! I wasn't blaming Mr Butcher! just it seemed weird that when i changed the mince the taste was totally different.
The Ragu was on offer in Iceland...I buy the jarred stuff to bulk the bolognese out a tad as my monsters family eat it more readily than anything (then I add some mixed veggies and hide them in the sauce )

If you didn't blame the butcher why was he offering you a replacement and explaining they didn't add salt?... Poor man. Must have thought you were off your chump!

I am a bit

But you would have asked the butcher too, wouldn't you?

Why don't you just add an extra tin of tomatoes?

it was transformed by more tomato purée and chilli powder and chilli beans to a rather fetching tea

shocking - questioning the quality of butchers mince over a supermarkets!

Oh and meat from every single butcher is better than supermarket mince.
FFS I wasn't asking that.
I asked how to stop it being salty so a big thank you to those who suggested ways to help!

I wouldn't have asked the butcher, I'd have blamed the Ragu