Bigoli con ragù d’anatra (Bigoli with Duck Ragu)

I recently received a package of fresh bigoli from Verona. That was cause for celebration since bigoli, the signature. pasta of the Veneto region, is hard to come by where I live, and the fresh kind basically impossible to find. So I knew I had to do something special with them. The best known way to dress bigoli is in salsa—with an onion and anchovy sauce—but that I had made many times. I decided to try another classic preparation, bigoli con ragù d’anatra, bigoli dressed with a duck ragù.

The dish, called bigoi co’ l’arna in the local dialect, was originally a kind of piatto antispreco—a by product of boiled duck meant to use parts of the bird that might otherwise be thrown away. While duck itself was served as a second course with sauces such as the local favorite pearà, the giblets were chopped up and sautéed in butter as a sauce for a first course of bigoli, which were cooked in the duck’s cooking broth.

Well here’s a contemporary take on the dish I suspect would be more appealing to modern tastes. You take your duck, skin it and bone it, then mince the meat. Using the rendered skin as your cooking fat, you sauté the minced meat with a soffritto of aromatic vegetables and then braise them, either with or without a bit of tomato, for a couple of hours until it all turns into a rich, intensely flavorful sauce. Meanwhile you make a broth from the bones for thinning the sauce and boiling the pasta.

It’s a dish that, like its ancestor, doesn’t waste a thing. And tastes intensely of duck. Fresh bigoli have a rough texture and chewy texture, perfect for catching and absorbing this rich sauce. In this version of the dish, you lose your second course, but you won’t miss it. It can serve easily as a one dish meal, or a hefty first course before a light second.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 400g (14 o) bigoli, preferably fresh

For the duck ragù:

• 1 kg (2 lb) duck legs or 750g (1-/2 lb) duck breast
• 1 onion, peeled and finely minced
• 1 stalk celery, peeled and finely minced
• 1 Tb tomato paste (optional)
• white wine
• butter
• salt and pepper
• a sprig of fresh sage
• a bay leaf

For the duck broth:

• Bones from the duck legs
• 1 onion cut in half, left unpeeled
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1 carrot, trimmed and peeled
• A sprig of two of fresh parsley
• A bay leaf
• salt

Directions

Prep the duck

Skin the duck pieces and set the skin aside until needed. If using duick legs, cut the meat off the bones and start making your broth with the bones as instructed below.

Cut the duck meat into very small cubes. (Or use a meat ginder.)

Simmer the duck broth

Place the duck bones along with aromatics and herbs in a large pot with enough water to cover by a good three fingers and a good pinch of salt.

Bring to a simmer, skimming off any scum that might rise to the surface. Continue simmering at least an hour.

Render the duck fat

Take the duck skin into largish pieces. Place it in a cassreole or sauté pan with a small drizzle of vegetable oil. Let go under a gentle flame, stirring from time to time, until the fat is complete rendered out and the skin has crisped up. (Think crispy bacon.)

Remove the cracklings and set aside.

Prepare the duck ragù

Mince the onion and celery together just as finely as you can. (A food processor works well here.)

Sauté the minced onion and celery gentlyy in the casserole or sauté pan with the rendered duick fat until they are perfectly soft. Lightly salt as you go, and add a drizzle of water from time to time to prevent browing.

Add the duck meat and mix with the butter and aromatics. Raise the heat and continue sauteing over a lively flame until all the duck juices have cooked off and the duck has just lightly browned.

Add the wine and let it cook off as well. Then add a ladleful of the simmering duck broth, the sage and bay leaf and, if using, the tomato paste.

Simmer for a good two hours, stirring from time to time and adding a bit of broth or water as needed if things are drying out too much. The sauce will be done when the duck meat is perfectly tender and the sauce is dark and thick. Keep it fairly liquid, however, as bigoli, especially if fresh, is very absorbent.

Cook and dress the bigoli

Remove the duck bones and aromatics from the broth. Add enough water if need be to cook the pasta, then bring the broth to a rolling boil and salt well.

Toss in the bigoli and cook until al dente.

When the bigoli are done, transfer them to the casserole with the duck ragù, along with a small ladleful of the duck broth.

Toss everything together for a minute or two, until the ragù clings to the pasta strands, adding more broth if needed.

Serve right away, with some grated chese on the side for those who want it.

Notes on bigoli con ragù d’anatra

This dish is one of the few examples in Italian cookery of pairing pasta with poultry. Other cultures (especially Americans, it seems) love the combination, but most Italians consider chicken on pasta a culinary abomination. That said, there are a few rare, little known exceptions, like the lasagnette alla cacciatora di pollo we featured some time back. Duck, for some reason, is more acceptable, and there are a few classic pasta and duck dishes like this one in the Italian repertoire.

In any event, needless to say, bigoli con ragù d’anatra is not exactly an every day dish. You should budget about 3 hours for its preparation, although you can reduce that a lot if you use a pressure cooker (see below). That said, besides the somewhat fussy prep work involved, the actual cooking is pretty straightforward.

Bigoli

As explained in our post on bigoli in salsa, bigoli are a kind of thick extruded long pasta typical of the Veneto. Click here to learn more.

They are very hard to find here in the US, but dried bigoli can sometimes be sourced online. And, as mentioned at the top, I just found a source for fresh bigoli from Verona-based Pasticio de Angeglis via Shopify. (US readers: beware of tariffs if you order them directly from Italy.)

You can also try your hand at making them yourself. A little chef’s tip: try to find duck eggs for an extra ‘ducky’ taste experience.

There are some acceptable substitutes for bigoli. Perhaps the closest pasta are pici from Tuscany, but they can be equally hard to find and, in any event, they are rolled not extruded, so have a different texture. And although they lack the same chewiness, the easiest substitution would be spaghettoni (thick spaghetti). Or even regular spaghetti. You will find recommendations for bucatini as a substitute, though to my mind they are a bit too thick.

The ragù, I find, also goes very nicely with ribbon shapred egg pastas like tagliatelle, fettuccine or pappardelle. These aren’t terribly DOC choice, but in fact there is a lovely Tuscan dish of pappardelle with duck, pappardelle all’anatra which shows the combination works.

Choosing and prepping the duck

While you could use a small whole duck for making bigoli con ragù d’anatra, it’s probably more practical—and certainly more economical— to work with parts. Personally, I like the leg, which has juicy meat that stands up well to a long, slow simmer like the this recipe calls for. And as a bonus, you get bones you can use to make the broth. Be aware, however, that skinning and boning a leg can be a bit fussy. You”ll definitely need a good boning knife and decent skills. Because the skin and bones weigh so much, expect to get only half the weight in actual duck meat.

A breast is easier to work with, as they are usually boneless. The skin can usually be pulled off without the help of a knifed. You also get a better yield, though again the skin is bulky so expect to get maybe 75% of the weight in actual meat.

Where I live, you can buy ducks breasts in the fancier supermakets around town Legs are harder to find, but I can get them as Asian supermarkets in the area. You can also buy whole ducks, but here in the US, at least, commerically avaiable ducks tend to run 4 pounds or more. Rather too big unless you’re planning on doubling the recipe, or perhaps saving half the duck for another use.

And by the way, whatever you do, don’t throw out those duck cracklings. They won’t be enough for guests, but keep them as a little treat for the chef. Sprinkled with a little salt, they are delicious!

The broth

Though not a complete necessity some much of the flavor in this dish comes from the rich duck broth that infuses both the pasta and the ragù with its ducky aroma. A whole carcass is ideal, of course, but even a few bones will add flavor. Of course, if you don’t have bones—say you’re working with a boness breast—then home made chicken broth will do. Or even—and believe it or not, I got this from none other than the famous Gualtiero Marchesi—throw a bouillon cube into your pasta water.

Pressure Cooking

The ragù lends itself nicely to pressure cooking. After you’ve added the tomato, herbs and broth, close the pot. Cook on high pressure for 40 minutes, then let the pot release pressure naturally. Let the sauce simmer uncovered for a few minutes longer until it reaches the right consistency. Then proceed as per the main recipe.

Variations

The OG recipes for bigoli all’anatra

As mentioned at the top, the oldest recipes for bigoli all’anatra have you boil a whole duck with aromatic vegetables as if you were making a broth and use the giblets (along with the raw liver if you have it) for the sauce. In a variation you will still find recipes for, you skin and bone the boiled duck, chop up the meat and sauté it in butter, sometimes with just a sprig of fresh sage, sometimes with aromatic vegetables. Yet others have you roast a duck (or parts) then handle them in the same manner. The carcass can be used to make the broth.

In other recipes, you leave the duck whole or cut it into pieces, then braise until tender. You remove the duck, skin and bone it, then chop the meat and return it to the braising liquid.

Other variations

As for variations on this recipe for bigoli con ragù d’anatra, you can ground the duck meat if you aren’t up for the admittedly tedious task of mincing the meat with a knife. (Personally I find that mincing produces a more interesting texture and worth the effort.) In some recipes, you leave the skin on the meat on and ground them both to produce a richer mince. In that case, sauté the soffritto in butter rather than rendered duck fat.

Speaking of which, the soffritto can vary as well. Some recipes, perhaps most, call for the usual trinity of onion, carrots and celery. Some for onion only. I like this mix which omits the carrot (too sweet) and relies on a bit of celery, whose astringency works well to offset the richness of the duck and its fat.

You can also mix up the herbs if you like. Sage is perhaps the most common but some recipes also call for bay leaf, rosemary or thyme. Or a mix, of course. For an unusal twist, maybe throw in a few juniper berries.

Most recipes call for white wine, but a few will use red.

Also as mentioned, you can make the ragù in rosso (with tomatoes) or in biano (without). I like to add just a spoonful of diluted tomatoes pastas as in the recipe above for a little color, but you will find recipes where you add peeled tomatoes as well.

Making bigoli con ragù d’anatra ahead

You can make the duck broth and the ragù entirely ahead. As well as the bigoli, if you’re making them yourself. Then cook the bigoli in the broth and toss it with the reheated ragù right before you’re ready to eat.