Ragu: The chili of the sauce world

Some of the best items to come out of your kitchen can reward your innate sloth. It’s time you discovered one of the finest dishes that has an inverse ratio of taste to effort: a plate of pasta with homemade ragu — meat-based sauce that is essentially chili (with apologies to the proponents of Cincinnati Chili) — for your noodles.

As for what constitutes a ragu, that depends on who you ask. But one thing that the Los Angeles Times points out is that everybody understands it starts with meat:

Ragù is sometimes misunderstood. Most simply, it is a meat-based pasta sauce. But the definition goes deeper than that. Many sauces have meat in them, but ragùs are based on meat. The juices of the meat that has cooked in them are fundamental to the sauce. That’s the reason old-time East Coast Italians refer to ragùs as “gravy.”