TRADITIONAL NEAPOLITAN MEAT RAGÙ with meatballs, simple and delicious sauce for pasta and lasagna, gnocchi, a typical Neapolitan recipe with slow cooking.
The Neapolitan meat ragù with meatballs is a delicious recipe perfect for seasoning pasta like macaroni, paccheri, lasagna, or gnocchi. Rigatoni pasta is perfect as it captures the sauce better.
The recipe to prepare the traditional Neapolitan meat ragù is very simple. I added meatballs to enrich it; needless to say, it’s really good, the perfect sauce for Sunday pasta or lasagna.
Join me in the kitchen today; we have the traditional Neapolitan meat ragù with meatballs.
- Difficulty: Medium
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients
- 14 oz beef (muscle, brisket))
- 2 sausages
- 18 oz mixed ground meat
- 1 onion
- 2 tablespoons cooked wine (optional)
- 6 cups tomato puree (or peeled tomatoes)
- 2 pork ribs
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- Half glass red wine
Steps
For a good Neapolitan ragù, you should be generous with oil or at least the fatty part. You can add ham hock, pork ribs, and use lard. Personally, I’m not very fond of this type of meat, so I opted for muscle; sausages are optional. You can also prepare it with just one type of meat.
At the end of cooking, from 6 to 8 hours, the perfect ragù, “O RAù” must be covered with oil, plenty of oil, the so-called king’s blanket. When that’s there, the ragù is perfect, and obviously, you can remove it if you don’t prefer.
In my case, the meatballs were added half an hour before the end of cooking, so I let the oil soak up a bit.
The meatballs should be fried first, a quick pan-fry to make them more compact, and you can prepare them as usual.
Traditionally, peeled tomatoes are used, which extends cooking by one or two hours. For convenience and time, I use tomato puree.
Slice the onion thinly or chop it, as you prefer. Put it in a large pan with 1 cup of oil, let it fry a bit, then add all the meat and let it brown.
Let it evaporate with red wine, add the tomato paste, then the tomato puree. Rinse out the bottle with water and add it to the rest of the puree.
Also add the cooked wine if you have it, and cook on very low heat for 6 hours. Add more oil or lard if you like.
Prepare the meatballs as usual, egg, soaked bread, salt, cheese to taste. Make the balls and fry them a bit, then add them to the sauce half an hour before the end of cooking.
The ragù is cooked when the meat falls apart. It can take just 3 hours, but the longer it cooks, the better it is.
Bon appétit
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