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Simple hearty rigatoni bolognese with eggplant
INGREDIENTS
- 1 pound rigatoni
- 1 small eggplant about 1 pound, julienned
- 1 pound 96% lean ground beef
- 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
- 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
- 5 garlic cloves minced
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- optional: parmesan cheese and parsley for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
- Cooking the ground beef: Heat olive oil in a 3-quart pot over medium heat. Add garlic and ground beef to the pot, mixing and breaking up the ground meat as it cooks until it is mostly browned, about 5 minutes.
- Cooking the eggplant: Add eggplant to the pot and cook until it’s very soft, stirring regularly, about 10 minutes.
- Simmering the sauce: Add the entire can of crushed tomatoes and the heavy whipping cream to the pot. Mix well. Let simmer on low-medium heat until the sauce thickens, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat. Add salt, oregano, and pepper. Mix well.
- Cooking rigatoni: Cook the rigatoni according to package instructions. After cooking, drain and rinse the rigatoni with cold water. Miix the rigatoni with the bolognese sauce. Serve immediately.
This is a tasty weeknight dinner recipe for rigatoni bolognese with eggplant. It’s simple to make and it’s the ultimate comfort food with thick rigatoni pasta, ground beef, eggplant slices, and a rich orange-red garlicky tomato sauce topped with oregano and parmesan cheese crumbles.
Things I love about this dish:
- This is a FAST 30-minute bolognese. None of that simmer-for-hours kind of bolognese. This is the kind of bolognese that you can make on a whim for a weeknight dinner — and then have leftovers for consecutive nights. Win. 🙂
- No alcohol needed. I’ve made this dish with and without wine, and I prefer it without wine. I like to simplify the amount of ingredients involved, and this was an easy decision to skip the wine.
And last but not least, I love this sauce. I’m a huge fan of all the hearty, meaty sauces of the world. Plus, all that savory goodness like pan-seared garlic and eggplant. Cooking up this sauce made my kitchen smell SO GOOD.
This pot of bolognese smelled so good and looked so appetizing that I had Mr. Savory Tooth buzzing around me as I was trying to photograph this dish. I had to zip through my photographs much faster than usual because he was getting so impatient. 🙂 I don’t blame him; I was getting impatient and hungry also!
