Carrots, celery, milk, 25% fat and no seasoning? Ugh, that really does sound disgusting!
After cooking for one hour it is disgusting. After two it's just barely edible. But after four~five hours it's very, very good. And that's the point. To make this properly takes time, and that's the one ingredient that doesn't cost any money. Spag bol is a slapdash concoction that tries to make a slow cooked dish into a quick one (and the Brits aren't alone here. Kraft spaghetti was America's answer to spag bol in the 60's). If you're willing to take the time, you can make something much better for less money.
Purists, btw, insist that there be nothing in the sauce but fat to cook the battuto (oil, lard, butter), the battuto itself, beef, pork and/or pancetta, wine (some don't even want this), and water or stock. But almost everyone adds something tomatoey and a bit of milk. In my case, I used the rendered beef fat to cook the battuto, and left out any pork because I have friends who don't eat it.
As for the fat content - First, you need to work on your math skills. It's 20%, not 25. Second, very lean ground beef tastes like crap, and most people end up adding in some other form of fat to make up for the dryness. Personally, I prefer to have the natural flavor of beef fat in the sauce, but you can change it anyway you want. The nice thing about grinding the meat at the time you buy it is that you choose what goes into it. If you think completely lean beef is healthier, you can have that. That said, 20~30 years ago 15-20% was the norm for ground beef, and good restaurants today use 20% for burgers.
