Reverse-engineered Ragu · Cooking Notebook

I think one of my favourite plates of pasta is the Radiatori ragu dish from Stuzzi. It’s got everything you want from a dish of pasta. Chunky pasta, a rich sauce and shredded meat with some chunkier bits in it for some texture. This recipe was reverse engineered from the dishes I’ve had at Stuzzi but also some other sauces I’ve eaten in Puglia.

Visual

1 white onion	dice small and fry in the butter to a mirepoix	combine in the dutch oven and mix well	cook covered at 120°C for 3h, then uncovered at 180°C for 1h to thicken	rest, then shred the pork through the sauce with a fork
2 carrots
4 sticks of celery
4 garlic cloves
75g butter
1kg boneless pork shoulder (excess fat trimmed off)	cut into large chunks and brown generously in olive oil
Olive oil
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp sage
1 tbsp rosemary
4 tbsp tomato paste
8 fresh tomatoes
300ml red wine
200ml veal stock
100ml water
Salt and pepper to taste

Ingredients

1kg boneless pork shoulder (excess fat trimmed off)
1 white onion
2 carrots
4 sticks of celery
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp sage
1 tbsp rosemary
4 garlic cloves
4 tbsp tomato paste
8 fresh tomatoes
300ml red wine
200ml veal stock
100ml water
75g butter
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Select a Dutch oven pan with a lid for this recipe
Dice your onion, garlic, celery and carrots into small cubes and fry in the butter (your mirepoix)
Remove from the pan and add the pork shoulder (cut into large chunks) with the olive oil, brown the meat generously
Add the mirepoix back into the pan, and add the remaining ingredients, mix well
Cook at 120°C for 1.5 hours with the lid on
Give everything a good stir and return to the oven for another 1.5 hours
Give everything another stir and remove the lid, increase the oven temperature to 180°C
After 20 minutes, stir, rinse and repeat this for another hour (this allows the sauce to thicken and darken, increasing in intensity and flavour)
Remove from the oven and rest
With a fork, stir the sauce, breaking some of the chunks of pork up along the way, so you have different textures within the sauce
Either store the sauce for another day, or cook immediately with pasta

Notes

If you want, you can ramp the temperature a bit more to reduce the longer cooking time, but you need to ensure you render the shoulder down enough so the meat shreds up.

Inspiration

As mentioned, the best version of this sauce was originally discovered from Stuzzi. But pasta sauces are highly subjective depending on who you speak to, so you need to do your own discovery work to some degree!