Italian Grilled Horse Meat Skewers with Myrtle and Bay Leaf | Spiedini di Cavallo alla Griglia con Mirto e Alloro
Horse meat is the leanest red meat that regularly reaches an Italian grill. It carries almost no intramuscular fat, so it behaves nothing like beef: there is no marbling to melt, nothing to keep the inside wet while the outside colours. What it has instead is a high iron content, a deep colour that stays almost purple before cooking, and a glycogen level higher than beef or lamb, which is exactly why the cooked meat tastes faintly sweet. These skewers are built around that fact rather than against it.
The technique is short and unforgiving. Large cubes, a very hot fire, a few minutes, and the meat comes off rare to medium and no further. Fresh myrtle and bay leaves are threaded between the cubes so that their essential oils are released straight onto the meat by the heat of the coals. Salt goes on at the end, never at the start, because on a meat this lean an early salting pulls juice to the surface and takes it away.
Serves 4. Prep: 20 minutes. Rest in the marinade: 45 minutes. Cook: 8 minutes. Total: 1 hour 15 minutes.
The Story
Italy eats more horse meat than any other country in western Europe, and it eats it in specific places. In Salento the butchers of Puglia grill pezzetti and bombette of horse over wood in the evening. In Verona it becomes pastissada de caval, a long braise with wine. In Catania it is grilled on the street. Sardinia belongs to this map too, and the island brings to it the aromatic that defines its entire kitchen: mirto, common myrtle, the shrub that covers the low Mediterranean scrub from the coast to the hills.
Myrtle in Sardinia is not a garnish, it is a cooking material. Roast suckling pig is traditionally laid on a bed of fresh myrtle branches while it rests, so that the residual heat draws the oils out of the leaves and into the skin. Boiled hen becomes gallina al mirto by being wrapped in the same branches overnight. The dark berries, picked in late autumn, are steeped in alcohol to make mirto rosso, the liqueur poured at the end of every Sardinian meal. Bay grows in the same scrub and is used with the same freedom.
Putting those leaves directly on a skewer between cubes of lean horse is the logical conclusion of that habit. The fire does the work, the leaves do the perfuming, and nothing stands between the meat and the smoke.
Ingredients
For the skewers
Horse meat from the round or the rump, well trimmed, 2 lb (900 g)
Fresh myrtle leaves, 30 to 40
Fresh bay leaves, 16
Garlic cloves, lightly crushed, 2
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Freshly cracked black pepper, 1 tsp (2 g)
Metal skewers, or wooden skewers soaked for 30 minutes, 8
For finishing
Coarse sea salt, 2 tsp (10 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Lemon, cut into wedges, 1
Myrtle berries, lightly crushed, 1 tsp (3 g), optional
Preparation
Cutting the meat into large cubes
Trim the muscle clean of silverskin and sinew, which on horse is tough and will not soften in eight minutes over fire. Cut the meat into cubes of about 1 1/2 inch (4 cm), noticeably larger than you would cut beef. This is deliberate: a small cube on a lean meat dries out before its surface has had time to take colour, so the cube has to be big enough to survive the sear. Keep every piece the same size and pat them dry.
Dressing with oil, garlic and crushed leaves
Put the cubes in a bowl with the olive oil, the crushed garlic, the black pepper and a handful of myrtle leaves bruised between your fingers. Turn until every face carries a film of oil. No salt, no lemon, no wine, no vinegar. Acid would tighten the surface proteins of a meat that has no fat to defend it. Cover and leave in the refrigerator for 45 minutes, then take the bowl out and let the meat come back toward room temperature.
Threading meat and leaves in alternation
Discard the garlic. Thread the cubes onto the skewers, sliding a fresh bay leaf or two or three myrtle leaves between one cube and the next, so that each piece of meat is in contact with a leaf on both faces. Four or five cubes per skewer is right. Leave a hair of space between the pieces: cubes pressed tight against each other steam at the join instead of browning, and the leaves will not sit properly.
Building a fire that is genuinely hot
Burn the charcoal down to embers glowing bright orange under a thin grey coat, then rake them into a deep bed on two thirds of the grill and leave the last third almost bare. You want to be unable to hold a hand at grate level for more than two seconds. On gas, run the burners at maximum for at least fifteen minutes with the lid down. Clean the bars and wipe them with an oiled cloth.
Searing the first face
Lay the skewers over the hottest part of the bed, all running the same way, and leave them completely still for about 90 seconds. Do not lift them to look. The first face has to set and colour in one contact, because every time the meat is moved it loses the crust it was building. You will hear the leaves start to crackle and smell the resin coming off them almost at once.
Turning through the four faces
Give the skewers a quarter turn and repeat, then again, and again, for a total of six to eight minutes. Horse takes colour fast because of that high glycogen, so watch the edges rather than the clock. If the flames flare from dripping oil, slide the skewers to the bare third of the grill for a few seconds and bring them back. Pull them at rare to medium: a cut cube should still be rosy and wet at the centre.
Salting and resting
Only now does the salt go on. Scatter the coarse sea salt over the hot meat so it sticks and half dissolves, add the crushed myrtle berries if you are using them, and let the skewers sit on a warm plate for four minutes. Salting at this point seasons the crust without having spent the previous hour drawing juice out of the interior. Finish with the last spoon of olive oil poured over.
Plating and Presentation
Serve the skewers whole and still threaded. Part of the point of this dish is that the leaves are visible between the cubes, blackened at the edges and clearly spent, which tells the person eating exactly where the aroma came from. A warm platter of plain terracotta or unglazed stoneware holds heat better than a cold plate and keeps the lean meat from stiffening in the first minute at the table.
Lay the skewers parallel rather than crossed, and put the lemon wedges at one end without squeezing anything yourself. Any residual olive oil and meat juice on the platter should be left where it falls. A plate of grilled bread rubbed with a cut garlic clove, or a simple bowl of bitter leaves dressed only with oil, is the whole accompaniment this needs. Nothing creamy, nothing sweet, nothing that competes with the myrtle.
Professional Technique
The technical problem with horse is not toughness, it is dryness. A cut from the round of a young horse is already tender, so there is no collagen argument for slow cooking and no reason to tenderise. What there is, is almost no intramuscular fat, which means there is no internal reservoir of melting lipid to keep the fibres lubricated as the temperature climbs. Past medium, the muscle proteins contract and squeeze out the water that is doing all the work, and the meat goes from juicy to sawdust across a very narrow band of temperature.
Everything in the method exists to shorten the time the interior spends above that band. The fire is fierce so the crust forms in seconds rather than minutes. The cubes are large so the ratio of surface to centre is favourable and the middle is still rare when the outside is brown. The leaves are fresh rather than dried because a fresh leaf is mostly water: it releases its volatile oils in a puff of aromatic steam instead of igniting and going bitter, which is what a dry leaf does on a grill this hot. And the salt is held back to the end, because salt applied in advance draws water to the surface of a lean muscle by osmosis and the grill then evaporates it away.
Texture and Moisture Control
Aim for an internal temperature of 125F (52C) for rare or 135F (57C) for medium, and take the skewers off five degrees below the target because they will carry on climbing while they rest. Above 145F (63C) this meat is finished, and no resting will bring it back.
The texture you want has two distinct layers. The outer two millimetres should be dry, dark and slightly brittle, a proper crust that carries the smoke and the resin. Immediately under it the meat should be soft, close grained and wet, closer to a good seared tuna than to a steak. If the whole cube has the same texture all the way through, the fire was not hot enough and the meat cooked instead of searing. The four minute rest matters more here than on a fatty meat, because the juice that has been pushed toward the centre by the heat needs time to move back out through the fibres.
Professional Mise en Place
This is a dish with almost no service window, so everything happens before the meat touches the fire.
Trim and cube the meat in the morning and keep it covered in the coldest part of the refrigerator.
Pick the myrtle and bay the same day and keep the leaves in a damp cloth so they stay pliable.
Thread the skewers up to two hours ahead, lay them on a tray and cover them loosely.
Take the tray out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before service so the cubes are not fridge cold.
Light the fire early and have the platter warming, the salt in a dish and the lemon cut before the first skewer goes on.
Chef Tips
Ask the butcher for meat from a young animal and for the round or the rump. Older horse is worth braising, not grilling.
If you cannot find fresh myrtle, use fresh bay alone rather than dried myrtle. Dried leaves burn before they perfume.
Metal skewers conduct heat into the centre of the cube and shorten the cooking time. Use flat ones so the meat cannot spin when you turn it.
Keep a few unsoaked myrtle twigs beside the grill and throw them on the embers in the last minute for a second wave of aroma.
Common Mistakes
Cutting the cubes small: it feels safer, but a small cube on a lean meat is dry before it is brown. Cut at 1 1/2 inch (4 cm) and accept that the centre stays rare.
Salting at the start: on a meat with no fat, salt applied an hour ahead draws moisture to the surface and the grill removes it. Salt the crust after cooking instead.
Marinating in wine, vinegar or lemon: acid firms the outer proteins of lean muscle and turns the surface grey rather than red. Oil, pepper and leaves are the whole marinade.
Cooking it to well done: the single most common and most final error. Horse has no margin past medium. Pull it early, rest it, and cut one cube open to check before serving the rest.
Wine Pairing
Cannonau di Sardegna DOC: The island's own red and the obvious partner. Its ripe red fruit and warm alcohol meet the faint sweetness that the high glycogen leaves in the cooked meat, while its dry, slightly dusty tannin finds enough protein and iron to grip in a meat that offers no fat to soften it. The herbal, scrubby note that runs through Cannonau is the same Mediterranean register as the myrtle on the skewer.
Cagliari DOC: The red bottlings of this southern appellation are built on Monica, a lighter and softer grape with low tannin and a gentle blackberry fruit. That lightness is the point: it refreshes between mouthfuls of a dense, iron heavy meat without adding any structure of its own. Serve it slightly cool and it works the way a well chosen everyday red should at a grill.
Alghero DOC: From the north west of the island, where Cagnulari gives a red with real savoury depth, firm acidity and a peppery edge. The acidity is what earns it a place here, cutting the char and the finishing oil, while the peppery character lines up with the cracked black pepper in the marinade rather than fighting the resin of the bay.
Storage and Reheating
These skewers are made to be eaten off the fire and they reward nothing else, but leftovers keep. Slide the meat off the skewers, discard the spent leaves, and refrigerate in an airtight container for up to two days. Do not freeze cooked horse: it is lean enough that ice crystals wreck the fibre structure and it thaws grey and dry. To reheat, slice the cold cubes thin and warm them for no more than 30 seconds in a pan with a spoon of olive oil, off the direct heat. Better still, dress the cold slices with oil, lemon and rocket and serve them as a salad.
Nutrition Information
Per serving, based on four servings:
Calories: 395 kcal
Total Fat: 16 g
Saturated Fat: 4 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 11 g
Cholesterol: 145 mg
Sodium: 810 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 1 g
Fiber: 0 g
Total Sugars: 0 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 57 g
Lactose: 0 g
Iron: 9 mg
Zinc: 7 mg
Vitamin B12: 5 mcg
Potassium: 780 mg
Allergens: none of the fourteen listed allergens are present in this recipe as written.
These figures are estimates calculated from the quantities given and will vary with the cut, the trimming, the degree of doneness and the amount of finishing oil retained.
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