Polenta con Ragu

On a cold, snowy Saturday, I think you need something warm and hearty for dinner. Like a healthy portion of  polenta con ragu. The ragu takes a while to make, but it's delicious and worth it if you have the time. We found our recipe here (which you can translate into English). We have made the ragu several times since. 

The ragu takes several hours to make, but is a delicious sauce with lots of depth. If you have a few hours to just let it cook on the stove on a Saturday or Sunday, it's definitely better than a regular jarred marinara with meat added. The ingredients are very basic, and you can let it simmer, stirring occasionally with little fanfare. We have since started adding a few tablespoons of milk at the end, as mentioned in the recipe.    

The polenta doesn't have a ton of flavor, so the bulk of what you taste is from the ragu. If we make the polenta with ragu again, we talked about adding some roasted garlic to jazz up the polenta a bit. We also topped the final product with shaved parmesan which melts right into the meat. 

The recipe makes a large amount of ragu, plenty more than you need for the polenta. We used the rest of the ragu as a regular meat sauce on pasta later in the week.