TIL there's a name for how I cut my veggies when I make bolognese.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunoise

The first time I made it, I didn't like how it looked, with biggish visible chunks of carrot. The celery was less offensive visually but I didn't like that either, and the texture kind of sucked. It tasted good, but I thought the flavor was probably also being held back by this.

So next time I cut everything smaller. Everything was better, including the flavor, but not better enough. So next time, even smaller. At this point it's taking a lot of work, just because smaller pieces = more cuts. But it got better again. So next time I tried a food processor, hoping to get similar results with less effort. Absolute mush, don't do this.

So I finally said why don't I just skip ahead and see what happens if I really put the work in to make the individual pieces invisible in the sauce. This turns out to be like half the work of making the dish, and the rest of the dish is no joke either. But WOW that's what I should have been doing all along. There is a really fancy restaurant right down the street that shills its wagyu bolognese, and Anna will not order it because she knows it won't be as good as mine and she'll just be mad to have spent good money on it.

Anyway apart from using good technique overall and a good recipe (pretty much the original/official one with a few tweaks) this is my secret for a great bolognese. I don't do it with the onions btw, just a small dice for those, but the carrots and celery get this treatment every time. If I don't have the time to do this, easy trick: I am not making bolognese today.