Italian Barolo Braised Beef with Porcini and Juniper | Brasato di Manzo al Barolo con Funghi Porcini e Ginepro

Sep 28

11 min read

Brasato di Manzo al Barolo con Funghi Porcini e Ginepro (Italian Barolo Braised Beef with Porcini and Juniper)

Brasato al Barolo is the dish the Langhe built around its own wine, and it is not a stew. A single whole muscle marinates in the bottle, comes out stained almost black, and spends three hours under a lid until a skewer passes through without resistance. It is then sliced across the grain in slices that hold together. Beef cut into pieces is a spezzatino, a different recipe.

This version adds two things from the same hills: dried porcini, rehydrated, with their soaking liquid filtered into the braising base, and juniper crushed into the marinade. The porcini water carries glutamates that give the sauce a depth wine and beef alone never reach, and the juniper lifts three hours of reduced red wine off the palate.

Everything difficult happens in the first hour and the last twenty minutes. The alcohol has to be driven off before the slow cooking starts, or the sauce turns bitter. The middle three hours ask nothing.

Yield: 6 servings. Marinade: 12 to 24 hours. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: about 3 hours 30 minutes. Rest: 20 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Region: Piedmont.

The Story

The dish comes from the hills between Alba and Barolo village, and it is younger than people assume. Barolo as we know it, a dry structured red aged in wood, was shaped in the middle of the nineteenth century around the cellars of the Marchesa Giulia Colbert Falletti, with Cavour behind it. Before that the Nebbiolo here was often sweet and unstable, and the kitchens beside the new wine used not the good bottle but the tail of the vintage.

The cut matters as much as the wine. Piedmont raises Fassona, whose prized cuts are eaten raw as carne cruda, which leaves the shoulder and neck for the pot. Cappello del prete, the priest's hat, is what the region reaches for: a flat triangular shoulder muscle with a central seam of connective tissue that dissolves into gelatin and holds the slices together. Cima di manzo does the same with more fat.

Porcini and juniper come from the ground above the vineyards. The chestnut and beech woods of the Alta Langa produce porcini through the autumn, and drying them was the only way to keep a glut, which is why dried porcini sit in every Piedmontese pantry. Juniper grows wild on the stony edges of the same hills and has gone onto beef and game across the western Alps for centuries.

Ingredients

For the beef and the marinade

Beef cappello del prete or cima di manzo, in one whole piece, 3 1/4 lb (1.5 kg)
Barolo DOCG, or another Nebbiolo based dry red, 1 bottle, 3 cups (750 ml)
Yellow onion, medium, 1, in large pieces
Carrot, medium, 1, in large pieces
Celery stalk, 1, in large pieces
Garlic cloves, crushed, 3
Juniper berries, lightly crushed, 10
Black peppercorns, 8
Cloves, 2
Bay leaves, 2
Fresh rosemary sprig, 1
Cinnamon stick, 1 inch (2.5 cm)

For the porcini

Dried porcini mushrooms, 1 oz (28 g)
Warm water, 1 1/2 cups (360 ml)

For the braise

Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Pancetta, finely diced, 2 oz (55 g)
Tomato paste, 1 tbsp (16 g)
Beef stock, unsalted, 1 cup (240 ml)
Fine sea salt, 2 tsp (12 g), divided
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

For finishing

Unsalted butter, cold, 1 1/2 tbsp (21 g)
Fresh porcini, sliced, 5 oz (140 g)
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp
Juniper berries, 2, for grating over
Fine sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Preparation

Step 1

Tie and marinate the beef. Tie the dried beef at 1 inch (2.5 cm) intervals with butcher's twine, or it will open along its seam as the connective tissue softens and leave the pot in two halves. Put it in a deep nonreactive container with the marinade aromatics, pour the bottle of Barolo over to cover, and refrigerate 12 to 24 hours, turning twice.

Step 2

Soak the porcini. Cover them with the warm water and leave them 30 to 40 minutes, until soft. Lift them out with your fingers rather than pouring the bowl out, squeeze them and chop them coarsely. Filter the liquid through a sieve lined with a paper filter, leaving the last tablespoon of grit behind.

Step 3

Separate the marinade and dry the meat. Strain it, keeping the wine and the vegetables apart. Dry the beef with paper towels until they come away almost clean, then leave it uncovered 20 minutes. Wine soaked meat is wet and stained, and neither condition browns. Season with 1 teaspoon of salt.

Step 4

Sear the beef hard. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy casserole just large enough to hold the meat, until the foam subsides. Lay the beef in and leave it 4 to 5 minutes a side, turning it onto every surface, until the outside is deep brown. Higher heat burns it. The marinade stain browns faster than clean meat, so judge by smell.

Step 5

Build the base. Lower the heat, render the pancetta 3 minutes, then add the drained marinade vegetables and cook 10 to 12 minutes, until the onion has collapsed and taken colour. Stir in the tomato paste and cook 2 minutes more, until it darkens from red to brick, then add the chopped porcini for a minute.

Step 6

Cook off the alcohol. Pour the strained wine in and keep it boiling openly 8 to 10 minutes, scraping the base, until the volume has dropped by a quarter and the sharp spirit smell has gone, replaced by fruit and wood. This step decides whether the sauce is round or bitter. Then add the porcini liquid and the stock.

Step 7

Braise low and slow. Return the beef. The liquid should come two thirds up the piece, not cover it. Bring it to the barest simmer, add the remaining salt, cover tightly and hold it on the lowest flame or in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 3 hours to 3 hours 30 minutes, turning every 45 minutes. It is done when a thin skewer meets no resistance.

Step 8

Rest the meat and finish the sauce. Lift the beef onto a warm dish, spoon liquid over it, cover loosely with foil and leave it 20 minutes. Pass the liquid and vegetables through a food mill, pressing the solids through, and reduce until it coats a spoon. Sauté the fresh porcini in butter until golden. Off the heat, whisk in the cold butter and grate juniper over.

Plating

Warm the plates to around 140°F (60°C). A brasato loses heat fast once sliced thin, and cold porcelain dulls both the beef and the buttered sauce. Cut the twine away and slice across the grain about 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) thick, with a long thin knife and one stroke each time. Thinner and the slices fall apart, thicker and they eat heavy. Fan three per plate, and if a slice breaks along the seam, lay it down so the join sits underneath.

Spoon the sauce over the centre and let it run rather than flooding the plate, so the browned surface still shows at the edges. Set the porcini beside the beef, not on it, scatter the parsley and grate a whisper of juniper over the meat at the last second. The classic accompaniment is soft polenta, or plain boiled potatoes.

Professional Technique

The technique that defines this dish is marinating a whole intact muscle rather than cut pieces. A 3 1/4 lb (1.5 kg) piece has little surface for its mass, so the wine reaches only the outer half inch in twelve hours, and that is the point. What the marinade really does is extract: it pulls tannins and anthocyanins out of the Nebbiolo and fixes them to the surface proteins, which is why the beef comes out stained almost violet black and stays dark through the cooking. That bound tannin gives the slices their faintly drying edge, the thing that makes a brasato taste of wine rather than of meat with sauce on it. Cut the beef into cubes and the extraction turns astringent, and every piece is marinated through.

The second is destroying the alcohol before the long cooking starts. Ethanol boils at 173°F (78°C), well below a braise, but a covered pot condenses it and returns it, so a braise begun with raw wine under a lid keeps its alcohol for hours. Alcohol carries bitterness from the tannins and the wood onto the palate, and strips the fruit esters as it leaves, so the sauce ends up harsh and hollow. Boiling openly drives it off while the fruit is still there to keep: the solvent edge goes and the steam turns to cherry.

The third is the dried porcini water, a separate ingredient from the mushroom. Drying concentrates the glutamates and nucleotides several times over, and most of them dissolve into the soaking water rather than staying in the flesh, so pouring it away is the commonest waste in Italian cooking. It must be filtered, and it goes in after the alcohol has gone, never boiled hard. Juniper works on another axis: its terpenes, alpha pinene and myrcene, are resinous and volatile, survive three hours only partly, and cut across the sweetness of reduced wine in a way pepper cannot. Hence some in the marinade and a little grated over at the end.

Texture and Moisture Control

A brasato is a collagen dish, not a doneness dish, and the temperature that matters is not the one on a steak chart. Cappello del prete is dense with collagen, which starts converting to gelatin around 160°F (71°C) and does the bulk of the work between 180°F (82°C) and 200°F (93°C). Long before that the fibres have contracted and squeezed out their water, which is why a brasato is drier at ninety minutes than when it went in. Keep going: the gelatin of the third hour puts the moisture back, richer than water.

Control the heat, not the time. The liquid should show a bubble every few seconds and no more. At a rolling boil the outer layer shreds and fat emulsifies into the sauce until it turns cloudy. If the lid rattles, the pot is too hot. Keeping the liquid at two thirds height keeps the browned crust from washing off, and the turn every 45 minutes evens out a dry band.

The rest is not optional. Twenty minutes under loose foil lets the gelatin set enough that the slices hold under the knife; carve immediately and the piece crumbles. The food mill gives the sauce body from pectin and starch rather than flour, which would mute the wine. Cold butter whisked in off the heat makes a glossy coating, but it is fragile: boil that sauce again and it separates.

Professional Mise en Place

Almost all of this is a make ahead. Everything except the slicing, the fresh porcini and the butter emulsion can be done the day before.

Equipment and tools

Heavy lidded casserole just large enough to hold the beef
Butcher's twine, a thin skewer and a long thin slicing knife
Deep nonreactive marinade container, glass or stainless steel
Fine mesh sieve, a paper coffee filter and a food mill

Prepared ahead

Beef tied and in the marinade, 12 to 24 hours, turned twice
Porcini soaked and their liquid filtered, up to 1 day
The braise cooked and refrigerated in its liquid, up to 2 days
Sauce milled and reduced, held separately, unbuttered
Fresh porcini cleaned with a brush, never under the tap

Service setup

Beef warmed through gently in a little of its sauce, covered
Sauce hot in a small pan, cold butter waiting in two pieces
Fresh porcini sautéed to order, seasoned at the end
Plates warm to the hand, polenta soft over a bain marie
Parsley chopped last, juniper and a fine grater to hand

Chef Tips

Do not open a serious aged Barolo for the pot. Three hours of heat destroys the tertiary aromatics you paid for and leaves tannin and acid. Buy a young Barolo or a Nebbiolo d'Alba, then drink the good bottle with the dish.

Cook it the day before. Reheated, the gelatin has set and redistributed, the slices cut cleanly instead of tearing, and the sauce has married. Cool the meat in its liquid and lift the fat off in the morning.

Taste the porcini liquid before you commit it. Dried porcini vary enormously, and a bad batch tastes musty rather than earthy. If the water smells of damp cardboard, throw it out and use stock instead.

Ten juniper berries is the ceiling, not a suggestion to round up. Juniper crosses from resinous to medicinal quickly, and the point where it tastes of gin is well below where most people expect. Crush them lightly rather than grinding them, and count them out.

Common Mistakes

Cutting the beef into pieces. Cubed beef in Barolo is a spezzatino: a good dish, a different one. The whole muscle protects its own interior, while cutting it first multiplies the surface exposed to tannin until the meat turns astringent.

Skipping the alcohol boil. Putting the lid straight on traps the ethanol, which condenses and returns for hours, and the sauce ends up with a bitter metallic edge and no fruit. Boil the wine openly first.

Braising too hot. A rolling boil shreds the outside of the meat, clouds the sauce and emulsifies fat into it. You want one bubble every few seconds and a lid that never rattles.

Carving the meat immediately. Straight out of the pot the gelatin is still liquid, so the slices collapse under the knife. Twenty minutes under loose foil is the minimum.

Boiling the sauce after the butter. The emulsion makes the sauce cling and shine, and it breaks permanently at a boil, separating into oil and thin liquid. Whisk it in off the heat and serve.

Wine Pairing

Barolo DOCG: The dish is named for it, but the bottle you drink should not be the one you cooked with. Reach for one with eight or ten years behind it, where the fierce young tannin has resolved into something fine grained and the tar, rose and dried cherry have arrived. That tannin still has work against the gelatin and the butter, and the acidity keeps a rich braise from closing the palate down.

Barbaresco DOCG: The same grape from the other side of Alba, on marl that ripens earlier, giving the same architecture with a softer shoulder. It is the better choice when the sauce has come out sweeter, because its fruit meets that sweetness instead of arguing with it, and its violet perfume runs with the juniper.

Gattinara DOCG: Nebbiolo from the volcanic porphyry of northern Piedmont, leaner and more mineral than the Langhe wines, with an iron and smoke character and a sharper acid spine. That acidity slices through the butter emulsion and the pancetta fat, and the smoke meets the dried porcini.

Valtellina Superiore DOCG: Nebbiolo again, called Chiavennasca, from terraces above the Adda in Lombardy. Altitude gives a wine lighter in body but firmer in acidity, with wild herb and juniper scented aromatics off the hillsides the berries grow on. Served around 60°F (16°C) it keeps a heavy plate alive.

Barbera d'Asti DOCG: The everyday Piedmontese red and the practical Sunday answer. Barbera has very high acidity and low tannin, the inverse of Nebbiolo, and here that works: the acid cuts the fat and the reduced wine sauce, while nothing competes with the tannin already on the meat. Choose an unoaked bottling.

Storage & Reheating

This dish genuinely improves overnight. Cool the beef whole and unsliced in its cooking liquid, then refrigerate it in that liquid, sealed, for up to 4 days. Never store it sliced and never dry: the liquid keeps it from drying at the edges. Lift the set fat off before reheating and keep it for roasting potatoes.

Reheat it whole and gently, back in its liquid in a covered pot over low heat or a 275°F (135°C) oven, over 30 to 40 minutes. Then slice it and finish the sauce fresh with cold butter. With sliced meat only, cover the slices with sauce in a shallow pan and warm it tightly covered over the lowest heat 10 minutes. The microwave toughens the fibres and breaks the sauce.

The braise freezes well, unusually for beef, because the gelatin protects the fibres through the freeze and the thaw. Freeze it whole in its liquid up to 3 months and thaw it in the refrigerator. Do not freeze it once the butter is in the sauce, nor the sautéed porcini, which turn to water.

Nutrition

Per serving, based on 6 servings, beef and sauce only:

Calories: 520 kcal
Total Fat: 26 g
Saturated Fat: 11 g
Trans Fat: 0.5 g
Unsaturated Fat: 13 g
Cholesterol: 165 mg
Sodium: 690 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 9 g
Fiber: 1.5 g
Total Sugars: 4 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 52 g
Lactose: 0.2 g
Principal micronutrients: iron, zinc, selenium, vitamin B12, niacin, vitamin B6, phosphorus, potassium