Mushroom sauces may well be the pinnacle of meatless foods, and an Italian mushroom ragu may well be the king of them all. And as much as I love them with pasta, polenta with mushroom ragu is way more comforting, a warm embrace on a cool evening.

There are endless permutations of the mushroom ragu, from those using workaday white button mushrooms to fancy versions with expensive porcini and matsutake mushrooms. Lots of choices in ingredients, too: tomatoes or no? Red wine or white? Vegetarian or with meat?

In this case, I have made a red wine mushroom ragu — basically a thick, chunky pasta sauce — with a little tomato, herbs and lots of dried wild mushrooms.

I designed this sauce to go with polenta, Italian grits. The reason I like polenta with mushroom ragu is because the deep, dark sauce integrates better with polenta than pasta, although both are nice.

This sauce isn’t very fatty, either, so the butter and cheese in the polenta add some needed richness.

The Mushrooms in Mushroom Ragu

Dried wild mushrooms are my go-to for this recipe. Can you use fresh? You bet, but some of the flavor in this mushroom ragu comes from the soaking water from the dried mushrooms. One way to boost the flavor quotient is to sprinkle in some porcini powder, if you have some.

Morels or spring porcini are great options in springtime, and my preferred mushrooms for this sauce are boletes (porcini and their relatives), black trumpet mushrooms, morels, maitake (hen of the woods), shiitake, the various wild, edible agaricus species, like meadow mushrooms, blewits and cremini.

An easy way to get there is to look for those packets of dried “forest” mushrooms you see in the produce section of supermarkets. They are usually various dried boletes.

Bottom line is you want earthier, darker mushrooms here. But…

A Lighter Ragu

If you want to make this in warmer weather, or if you don’t have any of the abovementioned mushrooms, you can serve your polenta with mushroom ragu a little more on the lighter side. Here’s how:

• Use white mushrooms, chanterelles, maitake, lion’s mane, yellowfoot chanterelles, or meadow mushrooms.
• Switch the red wine for white.
• Use a light stock, like chicken or vegetable.

All of that will lighten up things for a summer supper. I’d still go with the polenta, though.

Polenta or Pasta?

Kinda your call. Like I mentioned, polenta tastes richer and soaks up the mushroom ragu better, in my opinion, but pasta is faster and easier.

If you go with pasta, the shapes you’ll see are all over the place, from tagliatelle to penne to everything in between. If it’s me, and with this sauce, I do like long pasta over short here. The ragu is diced pretty small, so it will do better with, say, spaghetti or linguine or pappardelle than if it were chunky.

In general, chunky sauces go with short pasta, smoother ones with long. This one’s in between.

Storage

Like most sauces, mushroom ragu one is better the second (or even third) day. So make a lot and reheat it for leftovers. It will keep a week.

Mushroom ragu freezes well, and you can pressure can it, too. Generally speaking, it will go for 25 minutes at whatever PSI is appropriate for your altitude.

Looking for other great pasta or polenta sauces? Try my recipes for venison ragu, duck sugo, tomato sauce with fennel, and an old school Tuscan hare ragu with pappardelle.