Casual Conversation

Make a bunch and freeze it, now you have premade meals of the good shit whenever you want.

PS. I'm heading to the shop now to buy all the ingredients I need to make this, gota start soon else I'll eat way too late.
Can't not make it at least once a week.

Why not make it in bulk once a week, enough for a few servings? And I probably don’t need to tell you this… but keep it in the fridge/freezer

Also please share the recipe, I’m interested!

Excellent work, that just means you need a new dish to iterate on! And the cycle can continue.

Maybe in future experimentation try to prioritize timeliness? That's easier said than done though. Your journey with bolognese is similar to mine with shakshuka, so I feel I understand. It's impossible to turn off my desire to improve things and resulting brainstorms on the topic.

Make a big batch once per week on the weekend and portion it out into easy, freezable individual servings. It can still be your easy go-to meal if you make a week or two worth of sauce all at once. Cook the pasta fresh, reheat your frozen sauce in a microwave, combine and enjoy.

Does it freeze well? When I used to be extra as hell with Bolognese, I would do batch cooking and it went pretty well, especially if I wasn't super lazy with how I defrosted it.

You can go further. I also make my sauce from scratch, but then pressure cook some beef chuck or shanks in it with red wine. Then I make my own pasta to go with.

And it’s good it takes so long because I would be too fat to make it otherwise.

Making my own tortillas has done this to tacos for me. It doesn't add a ton of complexity, but the extra time takes what was a super fast zero effort process, and now makes it about as involved as any other simple dish to cook. But it's SO much better that I can never go back.

I hear you, but you might be able to decouple the lazy version and the fancy one. I love pasta al pesto. I have the lazy version (sauce from the store, chuck it in) and the fancy version (start with basil…). One is a comfort food in rough times, the other a delicacy I can only savor a handful of times a year. Both are great in their respective roles.

Sounds nice, I personally like taking time to cook good food. Can we have the recipe?

Bolognese is obe of my favorites as well, but it's like a 4-5 hour process, yeah. Feeds me for a solid week, though, more than anything else I cook.

Make a big-ass batch once every month or three. Freeze 90% of it to eat later. Cooking 10x as much is not much more effort than cooking 1x.

There's no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit

Simple solution.

Get a big, big pot and make a f%%k ton of sauce once a month.

Get containers and freeze them.

I make chili and lentil soup this way; I've got plenty of each sitting in the freezer. I mostly keep it for days I am sick or just don't feel like cooking.

If you don't have a good sized freezer check online. You can find one that's about as much floor space as a chair that holds plenty.

I'm blursed with a weak sense of smell/taste. This can't happen to me, I would barely be able to tell the two recipes apart. But on the other hand, I'm pretty sure I'm missing a lot of the enjoyment people have with really good food.

I make noodles with red sauce fairly frequently. I just get a big, 28oz, can of whole peeled tomatoes, no Calcium Bicarbonate because that makes the tomatoes taste like crap. I dunno the whole can of tomatoes in a pot on the stove with some basil and let it reduce for 30 minutes to an hour.

If I'm feeling fancy I put a minced onion or shallot with some butter in before the tomatoes.

Anyway, salt to taste, add a little of this or that for umami... Boil some noods and bam it's done. Top noods with sauce and it's a fine dish. Add some cheese if you feel kinky.

Tomato, Basil, salt. What a dream.

Cautionary story, that one. Better be careful with the way I refine my easy stew. Currently, everything about it is pretty random, but at least it’s low-effort cooking. Better keep it that way.

Guess you wouldn't like my easy meal of dumping a can of diced tomatoes over noodles and calling it a day.

Take what you learned about your Bolognese and then make a simpler pasta dish. I love being able to whip up something delicious based on a can of tomatoes and what is in the fridge. Go practice that as your new easy dish..

You can do the same thing with other dishes you enjoy. Find a simple one and perfect it even if it becomes complex and work on doing simple meals.

Tomato sauce is one of those things that freezes well. Make a bunch of your sauce in a big stock pot and freeze what you don't need portioned out in ziplocs or other freezable containers. Then even though it's a process to make you'll only have to do it once a fortnight or so depending how much you prep and how much you eat.