There are very few dishes, bar perhaps the Sunday roast, that almost every person in the UK will have eaten and enjoyed. But, spaghetti bolognese is one of them…

This classic Italian food has featured on tables in the UK for a scant 60 years and was viewed as exotic in the 1960s. Now, though it’s a mid-week staple that kids and adult alike enjoy.

However, bolognese has drifted from its roots a fair bit and sometimes doesn’t hold a candle at home compared to in a restaurant.

Luckily, top chefs like Gino D’Acampo and Roberto Bassi have offered up their tips for making a mouthwatering version in your kitchen.

Check out their top tips:

Tagliatelle not spaghetti

Roberto Bassi, executive chef at Academia Barilla, said: “Well, if you really want to cook an authentic Italian Bolognese, the first step, perhaps surprisingly, is to use tagliatelle.

“Then, the secret of a good Ragu alla Bolognese, the traditional Bolognese sauce, lies in the choice of the meat and achieving the right ratio between vegetables and meat.”

Italian food expert Celia Hopkins explained that, in Italy, it is wrong to serve spaghetti with meat sauce – real chefs prefer tagliatelle as it “holds it better”.

Using spaghetti is a practice that takes place exclusively outside Italy and is thought to have started in England where the sauce is often laid on top rather than mixed in with the pasta.

Use two meats

Traditionally, bolognese uses beef and pork mince which must be browned well and then the pan deglazed with wine before bubbling away for hours.

Gino D’Acampo explained on This Morning: “The traditional way is two different meats – beef and pork.

“The reason is the pork will give you the fattiness and flavour, the beef gives you the texture.

“You massage the meat together and the oil starts to crumble the meat so it’s easier when you put it in the pan.”

Use three liquids

Gino said: Let’s talk about the liquid that goes into the bolognese sauce – we have three liquids that go into there.

“Liquid number 1 – the wine. You’re going to have to put the wine first because you want the alcohol to evaporate and the flavour to stay in there.

“Liquid number 2 – milk, full fat milk. It tenderises the meat.

“Liquid number 3 – chicken stock, beef stock or whatever you want.”

And, both chefs noted some major mistakes that cooks make when making this traditional dish.

Mistake one: adding oil to pasta

Roberto said: “There are two major mistakes we see with cooking pasta, which can greatly impact not only the authenticity, but also the quality of your end result.

“These mistakes are adding oil to the water when cooking and rinsing the cooked pasta with water.

“If you are working with high-quality pasta, only a small amount of starch is released during cooking which prevents the pasta from sticking together.

“By rinsing your cooked pasta, you are actually removing the light starch coating which helps the pasta to bind with the sauce.”

Mistake two: draining pasta

Celia claims draining the pot is also a definite no for the experts, who lift the pasta with a ladle in the pan of sauce before mixing everything together.

The starchy water left on the pasta helps to make the sauce creamy and allows it to coat the pasta.

Mistake three: adding tomatoes

Meanwhile, Gino said: “In a traditional bolognese sauce, you should never pour tomatoes – chopped tomatoes, plum tomatoes, anything like that.

“A bolognese sauce is made without tomatoes.

“The only thing they use is tomato concentrate (puree)– which is completely different.”

Gino suggests bubbling your sauce away for three hours on a very low heat stirring every 15 minutes.

The lid should be on the pan for half of the time.

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