Ah, pot roast… The aroma of a pot roast slowly simmering for hours at the back of the stove, filling with house with its promise of a delicious dinner. And then there’s the meal itself of tender, flavor-filled slices of beef slathered with lots of gravy. Those are powerful memories for many of us. It may be heresy for some, but I’ll take pot roast over prime rib or filet mignon any day of the week.

Pot roasts are popular throughout Europe, and Italy is no exception. Italian actually has two generic words for pot roast, brasato, which means ‘braised’, and stracotto, which means ‘overcooked’. We’ve seen various Italian brasati before on this blog: the brasato al vino rosso from the Piemonte region braised in red wine and the homey brasato con funghi (with mushrooms). We’ve also featured Rome’s favorite pot roast seasoned with cloves called garofolato and the Italian-Jewish pot roast braised in lemon called girello al limone.

No doubt the most famous stracotto is from Florence, aptly enough called stracotto alla fiorentina. It is simmered in abundant tomato sauce, and as it simmers the sauce develops a marvelous meaty flavor. In fact, the dish may have originally been prepared largely for the sauce, rather like a ragù alla napoletana The 19th century gastronome Artusi has a recipe for stracotto where he says “it’s common among the Florentine bourgeoisie to use stracotto to dress macaroni and make risotto”.

Today stracotto alla fiorentina is principally a main course. After a long, slow simmer, the meat is sliced and then napped with its sauce. That said, any leftover sauce really is delicious on pasta or in risotto.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

One beef pot roast about 1-1.5 kilos (2-3 lbs) (see Notes)

For preparing the roast:

2-3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

For browning the roast:

Olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
Salt and pepper, q.b.

For braising the roast:

250ml (1 cup) red wine
1 jar tomato passata or 1 large can of tomatoes passed through a food mill
A spoonful of tomato paste (optional)
Water or broth

Directions

Prep the roast

Slice the garlic thinly and mix it in a small bowl with a pinch of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Cutting small slits in the roast with a paring knife, insert the seasoned garlic slices here and there.

Now tie the roast up with kitchen string to help it keep its shape. (See Notes for details.) Salt and pepper the outside of the roast generously.

If you have the time, let the roast rest for an hour or two to allow the seasonings to penetrate the meat.

Brown the roast

Heat a Dutch oven (preferably oval) just large enough to hold the roast. When it’s quite hot, cover the bottom generously with olive oil, then sauté the roast over medium heat, turning it from time to time, so it browns nicely on all sides. Remove to a plate.

Lower the heat and add the onion, carrot and celery. Sauté gently until soft, taking care that the vegetables don’t brown. Add back the roast and let everything sauté together for another 5 minutes or so.

Braise the roast

Pour over the wine and turn the roast so it is covered all over with the wine. Let the wine cook off, scraping any brown bits from the bottom of the pot.

Now add the tomatoes, along with the tomato paste if using. If you’re using a thick passata, thin it out with a glassful of water.

Raise the heat so the pot comes to a simmer, then cover the pot, leaving the cover slightly ajar to allow for some evaporation, and lower the heat.

Let the roast braise over a gentle flame until it is quite tender, turning it every 30 minutes or so. (See Notes for cooking times.) Adjust the heat if need be so that the tomato sauce simmers gently but steadily. The sauce will reduce a bit but don’t let it get too thick. Top it up with water or broth as and if needed.

Taste and adjust the sauce for seasoning.

Rest and serve

Remove the roast from the pot and let it rest on a cutting board for at least 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, check on the sauce. Taste and adjust for seasoning. It should be quite flavorful. If it’s too thick for your taste, dilute it with some water. If you find it too thin, let it simmer further while the roast rests, raising the heat so it reduces quickly. For a perfectly smooth sauce, you can pass the sauce through a food mill or purée it with a hand blender.

Remove the string. Slice the roast fairly thickly, arranging the slices on a warmed serving platter, napped with some of the sauce. Serve the rest in a gravy boat for guest to add more, which they are very likely to do.

Stracotto alla fiorentina (Florentine Pot Roast)

Notes

Stracotto allal fiorentina is typically served with boiled or mashed potatoes or with boiled cannellini beans. Althougn not particularly Tuscan, it is also very good with polenta.

While the recipe for stracotto alla fiorentina involves a good number of steps, none of them is particularly difficult, except perhaps for the tying of the roast (for which, see below). Otherwise, the recipe really just requires a bit of patience and some attention every so often to tend to the simmering roast. That said, there are some points to bear in mind.

Choosing the cut

You can use any of the usual cuts for pot roasting. Many Italian recipes for stracotto alla fiorentina often don’t specify the cut, but when they do they genearally call for scamone, girello or noce, all from the rear of the animal, or for a shoulder cut like girello di spalla.

Meat cuts are notoriously confusing across borders, but here in the US, my favorite cut for pot roasting and slow cooking in general is chuck (shoulder), pictured in this post. (I understand the most common name is “braising steak” in the UK.) With it generous marbling, it is still very juicy after a slow braise like this. It makes for excellent eating, but isn’t perhaps the most elegant of cuts. It has an irregular shape and, if it’s tender enough, tends to shred when sliced. For this reason, it’s particularly important to tie a chuck roast (see below). And let a cooked chuck roast rest for longer, minimum 30 minutes but even better several hours or even overnight. The longer rest will firm up the roast for neater slicing.

If you are cooking for company, a bottom round (aka rump) roast or eye round (aka silverside in the UK) roast, both from the hindquarters of then animal, make for a more elegant presentation. They have a more compact, regular shape. The eye round in particular slices more neatly. Be aware that these are lean cuts, however, so they have less flavor and tend to be less juicy.

Tying the Roast

While it’s not essential, tying the roast really does help keep it keep its shape during the long simmer so it’s neatly sliceable for serving. You could skip this step if you’re dealing with a compact roast like an eye round. But I’d highly recommend it for a roast with muscle separations, in particular chuck.

If you’ve never done it before, it may take some doing, but tying the roast really no more difficult than tying your shoe or a tie. If I were to describe it in words, it would sound more involved than it really is, so I’d suggest you simply watch this video:

The demo shows a filet mignon but it’s the same technique for any other roast. At the end of the process you want your roast to look something like this:

Larding the roast

If you’re working with a leaner cut of beef like the rump or the eye round, you might consider larding your roast, as many older Italian recipes call for. In his recipe for stracotto alla fiorentina, the estimable Florentine chef and food historian Giuliano Bugialli calls for larding the roast with carrot and pancetta. You make an incision lengthwise straight through the center of the roast, then insert the carrot, as shown at left.

Long strips of pancetta are then inserted on either side of the carrot with a larding needle. The carrot sweetens the meat and the fat from the pancetta helps keep it nice and juicy. And this rather elaborate operation makes for an even fancier appearance at table.

Cooking times

One of the more challenging aspects of pot roasting in general—and this one is no exception—is judging cooking times. Most recipes for stracotto alla fiorentina call for simmering of any where from 2 to 4 hours for a 1 kilo (2.2 pound) piece of meat. In my experience, chuck, with its collegen and connective tissue, takes longer than either the bottom or eye round. (It took me a good 4-1/2 hours for my 2-1/2 pound chuck roast to get reasonably tender.) A lot depends on the size and quality of the meat, how gently your simmer is, and just how tender you like your meat. And on this last point: while you do want a stracotto that is quite tender to the bite, despite the meaning of the name it shouldn’t be so tender it shreds rather than slices.

With its hours long braise, stracotto alla fiorentina is a perfect candidate for pressure cooking. Calculate about 45 minutes under high pressure. Because there will be little or no evaporation, you will probably need to simmer the sauce uncovered for a bit longer while the meat rests.

Variations

While the essence of a stracotta alla fiorentina—pot roasting beef in tomato sauce—remains constant, you will find some variations from recipe to recipe.

There are variations in technique. For example, many recipes have you follow the usual sequence in Italian cookery of starting with a soffritto and then adding the roast to brown in the soffritto. Here I’ve reversed the order so you can get a nice sear on the roast.

There are also variations in how you prepare the sauce. In some recipes, you cut the aromatic vegetables in larger dice or even chunks, so you wind up with s a rustic, chunky sauce. On the other end of the spectrum, you can mill or purée the sauce so it’s perfectly smooth. Personally, I like to finely chopped my vegetables so they mostly melt into the sauce but generally don’t mill or purée it so it retains some texture.

Seasonings

In addition to seasoned garlic, some recipes for stracotto alla fiorentina have you flavor the meat with rosemary and/or pancetta as well. They all get minced finely into a kind of paste, that is then inserted into the meat as indicated in the main recipe. The pancetta would be especially helpful if you’re using a leaner cut of meat. Pancetta also makes its way into the soffritto in some recipes.

Not all recipes call for the sfumatura with wine (though most do) while I’ve seen a few that call for much more wine than here, which isn’t cooked off but becomes a part of the braising liquid, sometimes co-equal with the tomato.

For an extra layer of flavor, you can add some herbs to the sauce during the braise: a bay leaf or two, a sprig of fresh rosemary or fresh thyme, or a bouquet garni of all three. And some recipes for stracotto alla fiorentina call for adding a clove of garlic to the soffritto.

Making ahead and leftovers

Like many braised dishes, stracotto alla fiorentina can be made entirely ahead. Or you can start the simmer one day and finish it off the next, if that’s more convenient. In fact, it only gets better after resting a day or two. A longer rest will also firm up the roast for easier and neater slicing. If you’re working with a chuck roast (spalla) in particular, which tends to shred when it’s sliced, a longer rest is a good idea.

You will probably have extra sauce from making stracotto alla fiorentina. Those 19th century Florentines were right: the sauce is delicious over pasta—perhaps better than the meat itself. I haven’t tried using it to make risotto, but I’m sure it’s also tasty.

Print Recipe

Stracotto alla fiorentina (Florentine Pot Roast)

Ingredients

For preparing the roast:

2-3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

For browning the roast:

Olive oil
1 medium onion finely chopped
1 medium carrot finely chopped
1 stick of celery finely chopped
Salt and pepper q.b.

For braising the roast:

250 ml 1 cup red wine
1 jar tomato passata or 1 large can of tomatoes passed through a food mill
A spoonful of tomato paste optional
Water or broth

Instructions

Prep the roast

Slice the garlic thinly and mix it in a small bowl with a pinch of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Cutting small slits in the roast with a paring knife, insert the seasoned garlic slices here and there.
Now tie the roast up with kitchen string to help it keep its shape. Salt and pepper the outside of the roast generously.
If you have the time, let the roast rest for an hour or two to allow the seasonings to penetrate the meat.

Brown the roast

Heat a Dutch oven (preferably oval) large enough to hold the roast. When it’s quite hot, cover the bottom with olive oil, then sauté the roast over medium heat, turning it from time to time, so it browns nicely on all sides. Remove to a plate.
Lower the heat and add the onion, carrot and celery. Sauté gently until soft, taking care that the vegetables don’t brown. Add back the roast and let everything sauté together for another 5 minutes or so.

Braise the roast

Pour over the wine and turn the roast so it is covered all over with the wine. Let the wine cook off, scraping any brown bits from the bottom of the pot.
Now add the tomatoes, along with the tomato paste if using. If you’re using a thick passata, thin it out a glassful of water.
Raise the heat so the pot comes to a simmer, then cover the pot, leaving the cover slightly ajar to allow for some evaporation, and lower the heat.
Let the roast braise over a gentle flame until it is quite tender, turning it every 30 minutes or so. (See Notes for cooking times.) Adjust the heat if need be so that the tomato sauce simmers gently but steadily. The sauce will reduce a bit but don’t let it get too thick. Top it up with water or broth as and if needed.
Taste and adjust the sauce for seasoning.

Rest and serve

Remove the roast from the pot and let it rest on a cutting board for at least 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, check on the sauce. Taste and adjust for seasoning. It should be quite flavorful. If it’s too thick for your taste, dilute it with some water. If you find it too thin, let it simmer further while the roast rests, raising the heat so it reduces quickly. If you like a perfectly smooth sauce, you can pass the sauce through a food mill or purée it with a hand blender.
Remove the string. Slice the roast fairly thickly, arranging the slices on a warmed serving platter, napped with some of the sauce. Serve the rest in a gravy boat for guest to add more, which they are very likely to do.
Stracotto allal fiorentina is typically served with boiled or mashed potatoes or with boiled cannellini beans. Althougn not particulary Tuscan, it is also very good with polenta.

Notes

Most recipes for stracotto alla fiorentina call for simmering of any where from 2 to 4 hours for a 1 kilo (2.2 pound) piece of meat. A lot depends on the size and quality of the meat, how gently your simmer is, and just how tender you like your meat.