Cooking Blue Apron's Beef Bolognese

I must give you the results of the first Blue Apron dish I prepared. It was delicious! I rate it 5 stars out of 5. My preparation I rate 4 stars out of 5. I did make a couple of flubs.

The recipe was easy peasy. All the ingredients needed were there. The only contributions required  from my pantry: 2 tsps of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Of course I had to use my own water. Too much detail? I just want you to know how close to "everything" Blue Apron includes for each recipe in the box.

the recipe with pictured instructions and the ingredients packaged and labeled

the ingredients after being my own sous chef

Flub #1 - I received an email welcoming me to this week's menu which contained a tip for preparing the fresh pappardelle pasta. The tip was to peel apart the pasta before dropping it in the boiling water to prevent the strips from sticking together. Too bad I didn't read that email before I started the dish. I wish the tip had been included on the recipe instructions card. Okay, I'm not a complete dork. I did fluff them up (sort of peel the strips apart), but I believe I did not use a large enough pot of boiling water for the rather wide strips of pappardelle pasta to have room to grow. Next time.

Flub #2 - I also did not salt the water aggressively enough. I use little salt in my food for health reasons. However, I do like it seasoned to be flavorful. Again I blame the size of my pot. I thought I had added enough salt for the amount of water I was boiling. In the future I will remember that the size of those pasta strips need more water and more salt in the water in order to be seasoned. Oddly enough I had watched an episode of Master Chef Junior the night before in which the young chefs prepared pappardelle pasta. Why did I not remember what size pots of water they used?

Since this is also a salt issue I will add it to Flub #2: My final review of my dish is that I did not add enough salt in the preparation. Both the pasta and the completed dish were under salted, even for me. However, it was better than being too salty. On the plate you can add salt to "under salted," but you can't take it out of "too salty."

The portions were more than ample. It was a meal for two and I easily had enough for four.

first plate of Beef Bolognese with Fresh Pappardelle Pasta & Brussels Sprouts.

last plate (#4) of the Beef Bolognese with Fresh Pappardelle Pasta and Brussels Sprouts
Sooooo good!
(In the background: eggs coming to
room temperature for this week's cake)

I loved the dish and the cooking process! I will make it again.

Marilyn
Kitchener to Kitchen