Pasta Genovese/Beef and Onion Ragu

This is kind of a franken-recipe. Cook's Country adapted this stove top recipe for the slow cooker and then I moved it back to the stove top.

Pasta Genovese
Adapted from Cook's Country June/July 2016
1 lb. boneless beef chuck-eye roast, cut into 1 1/2" pieces¹
2 lbs. onions, sliced
150g pancetta or bacon, chopped²
100g salami, minced³
1 carrot, chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
1/3 - 2/3 c. dry white wine
1/3 c. water
1/4 c. olive oil
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 Tbsp. dried basil (or 2 Tbsp. fresh)
1 lb. pasta of choice
50g Pecorino Romano or Parmesan

1. Season beef with salt and pepper and set aside.
2. Fry pancetta and salami in 2 Tbsp. olive oil.
3. Add carrot and celery. (I just let them sizzle for a bit while I chopped the onions.)
4. Add the beef and onions.
5. Toss in 1/3 c. wine, 1/3 c. water, a bit more salt and pepper (maybe 3/4 tsp. coarse salt, I didn't measure), tomato paste, and basil.
6. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for a couple hours, stirring occasionally. Mine started to look a bit dry before I was ready to stop the simmer, so I tossed in another 1/3 c. wine.
7. Try to mash or shred the beef a bit if you can. (Mine wouldn't shred, so I just kept it as an extra-chunky sauce.)
8. Boil and drain your pasta.
9. Stir cheese and remaining olive oil into sauce. Toss with pasta and enjoy!

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¹ I substituted stewing beef, but was still pretty tough at the end of cooking. Next time I'd either do it in the slow cooker, pick a more tender cut, or both.
² This was supposed to be closer to 50g of pancetta,but I made an error when converting to metric and thought I needed 100g. And since I didn't want to keep the last 50g of pancetta from the 150g-pack hanging around in the fridge, I decided to just put it all in. It was delicious!
³ Same thing happened again here.