Crock Pot Bolognese Sauce

I've been fancying spaghetti bolognese for a while now, so I thought I'd try making the Bolognese sauce in the Crock Pot. One word can sum it up... Success!

This is my own recipe, give it a go and see what you think. I'd love to hear how you get on. It made A LOT of sauce - two generous portions for tea with wholewheat spaghetti, enough for tomorrow's experiment and a cereal bowl full to the brim (will have to think about what to do with that bit). I'd say that you could get maybe seven or eight portions of spaghetti out of it easily.

After about seven hours, lovely rich
and tasty Bolognese sauce.

Mrs Roe's Crock Pot (Slow Cooker) Bolognese Sauce

Ingredients
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 large carrots, peeled, quartered lengthways and chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
3 rashers back bacon (smoked, unsmoked... whatever), chopped
500g lean minced beef steak
Beef stock cube
1 dsp oregano
200g mushrooms, chopped
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree
Ground black pepper

Method

1. Add the sunflower oil to a frying pan and heat for a bit, then add the onion and fry until beginning to soften. Add the carrots and continue to fry until the onions are starting to colour slightly. Stir in the garlic, then remove from the heat and scrape the mixture into your Crock Pot bowl.
2. Return the frying pan to the heat and add the bacon. Fry until the fat has browned, then add to the veg in the Crock Pot.
3. Now, brown off the mince in the frying pan before adding it to the Crock Pot.
4. Crumble over the stock cube, add the oregano, mushrooms, tomatoes, tomato puree and black pepper. Stir thoroughly to combine.
5. Cook in the Crock Pot on low for 7-8 hours, then turn the dial to the 'keep warm' setting if your Crock Pot has one.
6. Cook some pasta (spaghetti is traditional, obviously), divide between bowls and top with the sauce to serve.

You'll note that, apart from the tomatoes, I didn't add any liquid. It really didn't need anything and the sauce was a lovely, thick and rich consistency.

You could easily add other veg if you wanted to make it go even further - I would have used celery if I'd had any in the fridge.

It could have been improved with some Parmesan over the top of it and maybe some garlic baguette for juice mopping, but it copes perfectly well without these.