Bollito Misto

How to Cook Bollito Misto

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1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil with the onions, carrots, celery, bay and peppercorns. Add the salt.

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2. Lower in the beef and the tongue. Bring back to a bare tremble — never a boil — and cook 2 hours.

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3. Add the chicken and cook 1 hour more, still at a tremble.

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4. Meanwhile prick the cotechino, put it in a separate pan of cold water, bring to a bare simmer and cook 2 hours.

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5. For the sauce, chop the parsley, anchovies, capers and garlic together very finely, or pulse briefly. Squeeze out the soaked bread and work it in.

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6. Stir in the olive oil a little at a time until the sauce is loose enough to spoon. Do not blend it smooth.

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7. Lift the tongue out, peel off its skin while hot, and trim the root.

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8. Carve everything at the table, moistening each plate with a ladle of the broth.

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9. Serve with salsa verde, mostarda and coarse salt.

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What Can Go Wrong

1. A tremble, never a boil. Boiling ruins both the meat and the broth.
2. Cotechino cooks in its own water. It would grease everything else.
3. Peel the tongue while it is still hot or the skin will not come away.

Swaps and Variations

• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

The Short Version

Everything goes in at a different time and it matters, because the cuts want between one and three hours and a chicken boiled for three hours is a wet rag. The other rule is that the water must never boil once the meat is in — a bare tremble at the surface. A rolling boil drives the albumin out of the meat into the broth, which clouds the stock and leaves the beef dry and stringy. Cotechino is cooked in its own separate pan of water, always, because its fat would grease the whole broth.

What to Serve It With

Mostarda di Cremona · Boiled potatoes · Barbera

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Tuscan Panzanella, Creamy Parmesan Polenta, Cauliflower Risotto.

Leftovers

Meats keep 3 days in a little of their broth. Reheat in the broth, never dry.

Bollito Misto Nutrition Facts

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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