I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Once upon a time, I decided to make traditional ragu. I did all the little things you're supposed to do, and let me say, it was a pain in the tuchus. I mean, really, the browning and simmering slowly until the meat is in rags, using milk to enrich it, and all that - using a recipe even! Ultimately, it was OK, but not worth the effort. At some point later in my career, I discovered the joys of the crock pot, but somehow it did not occur to me until quite recently that the most annoying bit of the ragu-making, the long, slow simmer, would work quite well in a crock pot.

However, I couldn't just make the same recipe now, only in a crockpot, so I messed with it, streamlined it, and came out with something that was, in fact, pretty wonderful.

• shank or shin of whatever takes your fancy. I used a goat shank
• 1/2 - 1 cup stock
• an onion
• a clove or two of garlic
• some rosemary, thyme, oregano perhaps, or your favorite Italian herbs
• salt and pepper
• tomato sauce/purée/passata - mine come in 500 gm packages, 16 oz is close. Accuracy is not critical here.

Dice the onion and mince the garlic and add it. Go away for another hour or two.

When you return, the meat should be done, either falling off the bone, or close to it. Add the tomato sauce and mix well. If the meat is falling off the bone, help it along and remove the bone, and shred the meat. If it isn't quite, don't worry about it - it will be. Give the sauce a taste and correct the seasoning; unless your broth was quite salty, it will probably need more salt. Let it cook another hour or so. Now the meat should fall off the bone. So get it off the bone, shred it fairly finely if you haven't already done so, and start your noodles.

When the noodles are done, put sauce on them and eat.