Italian Sangiovese Braised Pork | Coppa di Maiale Brasata al Sangiovese con Prugne e Cipolline
This is a whole pork collar braised slowly in Sangiovese with dried prunes and small flat onions, served in its own reduced cooking liquid. It is farmhouse cooking from the Emilia and Romagna side of the Apennines, where the cut is cheap, the wine is the one already open on the table, and the dried fruit came out of the same winter store as the onions.
What makes the dish work is the cut. The coppa, the muscle group of the pig's neck, carries more fat inside the meat than any other piece of the animal, and that fat is the reason a three hour braise leaves it soft rather than stringy. The prunes do the second half of the job, but only if they go in at the right moment, which is not the beginning.
Nothing here needs special equipment. One heavy pot, a low oven and an afternoon are enough.
Yield: 6 servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Salting: 12 hours. Cook: 3 hours 30 minutes. Rest: 20 minutes. Total: about 4 hours 20 minutes plus salting. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: secondo piatto. Region: Emilia Romagna.
The Story
Coppa is the name northern Italy gives to the pig's collar, the group of muscles that runs from the base of the head along the top of the shoulder. In Emilia and Lombardy it is coppa, in Puglia and Calabria capocollo, and in most of Italy the word now brings to mind something cured rather than cooked: Coppa Piacentina DOP, Coppa di Parma IGP, Capocollo di Calabria DOP, all salted, spiced and hung. That is what happened to the best coppe. The rest stayed in the kitchen, and this is the dish they became.
Fresh coppa was the cheap Sunday roast of the Po valley farms and the braise of every week that followed. It was never a butcher's showpiece, because it looks untidy raw and cannot be cut into neat portions, so it sold for a fraction of the loin and went into the pot whole. On the Romagna side of the hills the liquid was Sangiovese, for the simple reason that Sangiovese was the wine in the house. Nobody was pairing anything. They were using what they had.
The prunes are older than they look. Dried fruit cooked with meat is one of the oldest habits in Italian kitchens, ordinary in medieval and Renaissance cooking and still alive in the north long after the rest of the country dropped it: rabbit with prunes in Piedmont, pork with dried fruit in Trentino and Friuli. The reason was practical: plums ripened all at once in late summer and were dried on racks to last until spring, so from November onward the only fruit in the house was dried fruit.
The onions come from the same store. Cipolline, the flat onions of Boretto and the villages along the Po near Parma, were grown to be kept, preserved in vinegar or held in a cool room over winter. They are sweeter and denser than a round onion and hold their shape in a long braise, which is why they go into the pot whole.
Ingredients
For the pork
Whole boneless pork coppa or collar, in one piece, 4 lb (1.8 kg)
Coarse sea salt, 2 1/2 tsp (15 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, 1 tsp (2 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
For the braise
Yellow onion, finely chopped, 1 large
Carrot, finely chopped, 1 medium
Celery stalk, finely chopped, 1
Garlic cloves, lightly crushed, 3
Tomato paste, 1 tbsp (16 g)
Dry Sangiovese, 3 cups (720 ml)
Light chicken or pork stock, 1 1/2 cups (360 ml)
Fresh rosemary sprig, 1
Fresh sage leaves, 4
Bay leaves, 2
Juniper berries, lightly crushed, 4
For the prunes and onions
Pitted dried prunes, 7 oz (200 g)
Cipolline onions, peeled, or small shallots, 1 lb (450 g)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Red wine vinegar, 2 tsp (10 ml)
For finishing
Unsalted butter, cold, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Fine sea salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Salt the coppa a day ahead
Pat the meat dry and rub the coarse salt and pepper over the whole surface, ends included. Set it uncovered on a rack over a tray and refrigerate 12 hours. The salt dissolves in the moisture it draws out and is pulled back in, seasoning the interior and drying the outside so it will brown. Do not rinse it.
Trim only what has to go
Take off the papery silverskin and any bruised patch, nothing else. Leave every internal seam of fat where it is: the fat is structural here, and removing it makes the coppa fall into separate muscles. Tie the piece at 1 inch intervals so it holds one compact shape.
Brown the meat properly
Heat the oil in a heavy casserole just large enough for the coppa, over medium high heat. Put the meat in dry and leave it alone 4 to 5 minutes a side, turning until every face is deep brown, 15 to 18 minutes in all. Pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of the rendered fat.
Build the base
Add the onion, carrot and celery with a pinch of salt and cook over medium low heat 10 to 12 minutes, scraping up the browned residue as they release their water. When soft and just colouring, add the garlic for 1 minute, then the tomato paste for 2 minutes.
Deglaze and reduce the wine
Pour in the Sangiovese, raise the heat and boil until reduced by roughly a third, about 8 minutes, scraping the bottom as it bubbles. Add the stock, rosemary, sage, bay and juniper. The liquid should taste sour and savoury now, since it sweetens later on its own.
Set the braise and close the pot
Heat the oven to 300°F (150°C) and return the coppa to the pot. The liquid should reach between halfway and two thirds up the meat, no higher, so the exposed top keeps concentrating. Bring it to a bare simmer, cover tightly and move it to the oven, turning the meat once an hour.
Add the prunes at the halfway mark
After 1 hour 45 minutes, tuck the prunes into the liquid around the meat. They go in now for the reason explained below: from here they have long enough to soften and release their sugars, not long enough to disintegrate. Do not stir them, since the skins loosen as they rehydrate.
Cook the cipolline separately and add them late
Peel the cipolline whole, root end trimmed flat. Put them in a wide pan with the butter, the vinegar, a pinch of salt and about 1 cup (240 ml) of liquid ladled from the braise, and cook covered over low heat 20 minutes. Add them to the casserole for the last 25 minutes.
Rest the meat and finish the sauce
At 3 hours 30 minutes the coppa should give way to a fork with no spring left. Move it to a warm dish, cover loosely and rest 20 minutes. Lift out the prunes, onions and herb stems, skim the fat and reduce the liquid until it coats a spoon. Off the heat, swirl in the cold butter and correct the salt.
Plating
Cut the twine and carve across the grain into slices about 3/4 inch thick, with a sharp knife and no sawing. The slices will not be tidy discs: the muscle seams separate as the knife passes, and that loose open structure tells anyone at the table which cut they are eating. Serve two overlapping slices a person.
Use hot plates. This is a fat rich dish and the sauce sets on a cool plate within a minute. Spoon the reduced liquid over the meat rather than around it, set three or four prunes and three onions to one side, and leave the other side bare.
Soft polenta is the traditional accompaniment and the best one, spooned beside the meat so the sauce runs into it. Avoid anything acidic or leafy alongside: the plate already has its sweetness and its edge.
Professional Technique
The coppa carries the densest web of intramuscular fat of any cut on the pig, and that single fact makes it the most forgiving piece of the animal to braise. The neck works constantly while a pig roots and lifts its head, and the muscle it builds is not one clean bundle but a group of small ones separated by fat. What matters is not how much fat there is but where it sits. A loin carries its fat as a cap on the outside and bastes from one direction. The coppa carries it in a network running through the whole interior, so as it melts the meat is bathed from inside at every point at once.
The consequence is practical. You cannot trim a coppa: the fat is what holds the muscles together, and taking it out leaves three or four separate pieces instead of a roast. Nor does it need larding or barding, the two tricks cooks fall back on with lean cuts, since it already holds inside the meat what larding tries to push in and what barding tries to lay over. And it tolerates an extra hour where a leaner cut would have dried out, because the internal fat keeps rendering long after the water in the muscle has gone.
The prune is the other half, and it behaves the opposite way to what most cooks assume. A dried prune holds around 30 percent water where a fresh plum holds around 85, so in a braising liquid it acts as a sponge: for the first hours it absorbs liquid instead of giving anything up. Only once it has rehydrated does it release its sugars and its sorbitol, and those are what give the finished sauce its gloss and its body. That is why it goes in halfway. Added at the first minute it has three hours to break down: the skins dissolve, the flesh disperses, and what you pour over the meat is a dark syrup with no fruit left in it.
Texture and Moisture Control
The coppa is done at a texture, not at a temperature, and the texture arrives when collagen has converted to gelatin. That conversion runs slowly from about 160°F (71°C) and completes between 195°F (91°C) and 203°F (95°C) at the centre. Probe it if you like, but the fork is the better instrument: when it turns with no resistance, the collagen has gone.
Moisture here is not water but rendered fat and dissolved gelatin, and both stay in the meat only if the liquid never boils. Bubbles at the surface mean the interior is heading towards 212°F (100°C), the fibres contract and squeeze out what the long cooking has just produced. A sealed lid at 300°F (150°C) prevents that.
The 20 minute rest is not optional. Carved straight out of the pot the slices shed liquid and eat dry; rested, the gelatin cools just enough to hold. The sauce thickens for the same reason, gelatin from the meat and sorbitol from the fruit, which is why it needs no flour, only reduction and the cold butter.
Professional Mise en Place
Almost everything happens the day before or unattended in the oven. The only timed moments are the prunes at 1 hour 45 and the onions at 3 hours 5, so set two alarms.
Equipment and tools
Heavy casserole with a tight lid, just wide enough
Rack and tray for the overnight salting
Butcher's twine and a sharp boning knife
Wide saute pan for the cipolline
Ladle, skimming spoon, instant read thermometer
Prepared ahead
Coppa trimmed, tied and salted uncovered, 12 hours ahead
Soffritto chopped fine and covered, up to 1 day ahead
Cipolline peeled, root ends trimmed flat, up to 1 day ahead
Prunes weighed out dry, never soaked in advance
Herb and juniper bundle ready to drop in
Service setup
Plates warming in the oven as it cools down
Sauce reducing in a wide pan, cold butter beside it
Prunes and onions held warm and separate
Polenta or mashed potato kept loose over low heat
Carving board with a lip, knife sharpened in advance
Chef Tips
Ask the butcher for the collar in one piece and tell them not to tidy it. Most will offer to trim the fat seams or to butterfly it for rolling, and both ruin it here. If the only coppa on offer is netted for curing, take the net off yourself.
Buy soft prunes and check them. Ones that have hardened in a cupboard will not rehydrate in 1 hour 45 minutes and arrive chewy with a dry centre. Press one: it should yield easily. If only hard ones are available, give them 2 hours 15 instead.
Use a drinkable Sangiovese. Three cups is a lot of liquid and the finished sauce tastes of it directly, so a thin or oxidised bottle shows up at once. It need not be expensive, only sound and genuinely dry.
If the sauce tastes flat rather than sweet at the end, add a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, not salt. Prunes and reduced wine both push a sauce towards sweetness, and what it is missing is acidity.
Common Mistakes
Trimming the fat off the coppa. The internal fat holds the muscle groups together and keeps the meat moist, so cutting it away gives a dry roast in several pieces. Remove silverskin and blemishes only.
Adding the prunes at the start. Over three hours they absorb, soften and then break down completely, and the sauce becomes a dark syrup with no fruit in it. They belong in the pot at the halfway point.
Letting the braise boil. Bubbles mean the fibres are contracting and pushing out the fat and gelatin the cooking is producing. A bare tremble is the target throughout, which a sealed lid at 300°F (150°C) gives.
Covering the meat completely with liquid. Halfway to two thirds up is right. Fully submerged, the coppa poaches instead of braising and the sauce stays thin and pale.
Cooking the cipolline in the pot from the beginning. They fall apart long before the meat is ready and vanish into the base. Cook them separately and add them at the end.
Wine Pairing
Romagna Sangiovese DOC: The bottle the dish was built with and the one to drink beside it. Its sour cherry and dried herb fruit sits on top of the same fruit already reduced in the sauce, so glass and plate read as one thing. The tannin is moderate and dusty, enough to register against the fat without gripping.
Carmignano DOCG: The small share of Cabernet permitted in the blend gives a dark plum and graphite line that runs straight into the prunes, which no pure Sangiovese does. Its tannin is finer grained, which suits pork rather than beef, and there is savoury depth enough for a three hour reduction.
Valpolicella Ripasso DOC: Refermented on the dried skins left from Amarone, it carries a raisin and bitter cherry character that mirrors the dried fruit in the pot almost exactly. It works because the wine stays dry: the impression of sweetness comes from ripeness and glycerol, never from sugar.
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC: Plush, low in tannin and generous in dark fruit, this is the choice when you want the wine to give way to the food. Its soft texture takes the sweetness of the onions without clashing, and the bitter almond finish keeps the plate from turning cloying.
Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro DOC: The local answer, and the one that surprises people. Take a genuinely dry bottling and serve it cool at around 57°F (14°C): the light fizz scrubs rendered pork fat off the palate between mouthfuls as no still red manages. Its faintly bitter finish does the rest.
Storage & Reheating
Store the coppa whole and unsliced, sitting in its sauce, in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Sliced meat dries in the cold within hours however much liquid surrounds it, so carve only what you serve. Keep the sauce in a separate jar: the fat sets into a cap overnight and lifts off with a spoon.
To reheat, put the piece back in a covered pot with its sauce and a splash of stock and give it 30 to 40 minutes at 275°F (135°C). Never use a microwave or direct high heat, which drive the temperature past boiling locally and squeeze out the fat the braise put in.
It freezes for up to 3 months, meat and sauce together, in an airtight container. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat as above. Leave the cipolline out of the frozen portion, since they turn watery on thawing.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 6 servings:
Calories: 690 kcal
Total Fat: 40 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 24 g
Cholesterol: 160 mg
Sodium: 720 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 33 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 21 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 47 g
Lactose: 0.3 g
Principal micronutrients: thiamine, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, niacin, zinc, selenium, iron, potassium
These figures are estimates. Much of the salt from the overnight salting is lost with the drained fat, and the sugar figure comes almost entirely from the prunes rather than from anything added.
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