Reference Recipe: Spaghetti Bolognese

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To give you a better idea of how climate-friendly different recipes are, I have used some reference recipes for comparison. These classic recipes are not necessarily the most climate-friendly, but serve as a benchmark for all other recipes. The following article is one of these reference recipes

Spaghetti Bolognese is one of my absolute childhood memories of sitting at my grandmother’s table - she called it “pasta asciutta”: I don’t know why she used this term, and I remember that as a child it took me quite a long time to understand that it was the same dish that was called “spaghetti bolognese” everywhere else. There are about 700 variations on the recipe - here is one that is pretty close to my grandmother’s: I don’t remember any celery or red wine in the sauce, and she hardly ever used spices like thyme, oregano, or basil.

Recipe #

Spaghetti Bolognese

30 minutes

2 portions

Ingredients #

• 20 g olive oil
• 1 onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 250 g minced beef
• 75 g carrots
• 1 tablespoon tomato puree
• 400 ml chunky tomatoes from the tin
• Paprika powder, salt, pepper
• 250 g spaghetti
• 30 g Parmesan cheese, to serve

Directions #

1. Finely dice the onion and garlic and sauté in a frying pan with olive oil.
2. When the onion is translucent, add the minced beef and fry until it turns grey and loses a little water.
3. Dice the carrots and add with the tomato puree. Fry for a further 3 minutes.
4. Add the can of tomatoes and a pinch of salt, pepper, and paprika powder. Cover the pan and cook on low heat.
5. In a second pan, bring water to a boil, add salt, and cook the spaghetti.
6. When the spaghetti is ready, serve: Season the Bolognese sauce to taste, adding a little of the cooking water from the spaghetti if necessary to thicken the sauce. Drain the spaghetti and serve with the sauce and grated Parmesan.

Carbon Footprint #

In total, two portions of Spaghetti Bolognese have an estimated carbon footprint of 3826 g. This is mainly due to the minced beef: as shown in the graph below, this accounts for around 60% of the emissions from Spaghetti Bolognese, with the pasta and tomatoes playing a minor role.

This ranks it number 53 out of 56 recipes published on the blog so far in terms of estimated carbon footprint.

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