The secret to perfect spag bol: Mel Buttle

Everyone thinks they make the best spaghetti bolognese but when I tasted this epic bowl and learned the secret ingredient my mind was blown, writes Mel Buttle.

A national cuisine has long been a challenge for us, we’re part of the Asia Pacific region, but we still eat a chunk of roast meat on a Sunday like the Brits.

Christmas is seafood and salads, Thai is just a run-of-the-mill, midweek takeaway, you can get tabouli as the side salad with your fish and chips, and leftover spag bol is a pretty standard work lunch.

It’s the latter I wish to discuss, the humble spaghetti Bolognese, everyone eats it, don’t worry I’m not pushing for it to be our national cuisine.

The humble spaghetti bolognese.

I understand it’s a quicker, more basic version of Italian beef ragu. I recently had someone else’s spaghetti Bolognese at a dinner party, and it was epic. I only saw one of their tricks, which was tossing the pasta with a lump of butter before adding the sauce.

I pushed my host on how he managed to get this much taste into 500g of mince.

He claimed that it was cooked for 14 hours and that’s what gave it the flavour.

I was sceptical, as this was like nothing I’d tasted before. I just don’t give my secrets away willy nilly either, so on this occasion I didn’t further push my talented host and was just thankful for bearing witness to the butter innovation.

Make no mistake though, I probed around my plate with my fork trying to identify what other morsels made this bowl of hearty richness sing with flavour.

I’m a bit torn when it comes to making spag bol, as it’s a mushy dish which means it’s the perfect place to hide grated vegetables. Yes, from myself.

It’s the perfect dish to sneak vegies into.

I think it’s a real balancing act, and trying to hide just that little bit too much grated zucchini really waters down the flavour, and instead of getting a luscious, tomatoey, beefy dish you end up adding a mountain of parmesan so it’s edible.

This surely undoes any of the good nutritional work of the grated carrots and zucchini.

I’ve always put some finely diced mushrooms in my spag, which I’ve since discovered is heresy to some fellow spag devotees, and a no-brainer to others.

Red wine, a little chicken stock and of course onion, carrot and celery are my other non-negotiables. I’ve even heard some monsters put soy sauce in theirs.

I’m not Italian, but surely that’s a ticket from the council or something. I’ve also heard tell of bacon, chilli and capsicum being added. I’m sure that’s a nice pasta, but it’s no longer a true spag bol.

It can only be eaten with long pasta.

I also can’t eat spag bol on anything other than long pasta.

You can keep your penne and your spirals for other dishes thanks. I like to twirl the long pasta around my fork into a ball with just the perfect soaking of sauce, and sprinkling of parmesan. The perfect bite.

I am a firm believer that the perfect bite can’t be obtained when it’s served with short pasta. There’s always too much sauce or too much pasta.

I can’t reveal too many of my secrets, but I will say this, make sure your mince is brown, like caramelised brown, like have-I-burned-that brown, like that-will-take-forever-to-clean-that-pan brown.

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Originally published as The secret to perfect spag bol: Mel Buttle