Cookout Italian Style

The setting sun on a vineyard in Chianti  

As the sun begins to drop over the Chianti hills, the burnt orange and fiery red sky is the perfect backdrop for a Tuscan barbeque. It’s one of my favorite cooking activities to do in Italy, and Tuscany is just the perfect place to have a meat-lovers’ experience. As guests enjoy a happy hour around the pool, I’m busy preparing the grill to cook steaks, ribs and sausages for the feast. 

To start the fire, a simple fire-starter cylinder is used to ignite the natural wood charcoal or carbone, by packing paper at the bottom of the cylinder and placing the burning device on top of a pile of more charcoal. It takes about 40 minutes to get the coals just right while I’m enjoying a cold Italian beer and stoking the fire. But before all the cooking takes place, the most important part is finding the right butcher for the best meats. 

Robert preparing steak, ribs and sausages for his guests

I’ve had the pleasure of preparing barbeques in many places throughout Italy. In Sicily, my family’s hometown Montelepre, is where Giuseppe works the meat counter at the Supermercato di Candela Francesco. It’s just a short walk downhill from my cousin Vitanna’s home, and it’s a tradition for a barbeque when I visit. I love these little stores where the produce attendant gathers your requested order and prepares it for the checkout. Giuseppe is almost always there to service customers with a friendly smile. It’s fun to watch him cut the meat with ease, and the quality of the meat is always premium.

Butcher Giuseppe in Montelepre  

Another butcher in town is Angelo Russo, who works at the local ARD market where he creates many specialty meats for the grill. His creations are a combination of spices and herbs on chicken, beef and veal that are a delight for the palate. It’s always fun seeing him in his element, preparing and cutting meat with style for our culinary grilling events. He is a lively character, who enjoys seeing my photos of the end results from the grill of meats we purchased from his counter.

Butcher Angelo Russo at ARD Market and Roberto using the new grill in Montelepre

Vitanna’s son, Roberto, is a great grill master, and over the years we have had many dinners where he has demonstrated his grilling skills. After years of being hosted by my cousins and watching Roberto do his grilling on a small barbeque that had seen better days, I decided to pick up a much larger and more beautiful grill from a store in Palermo as a thank-you gesture. It was so much fun seeing Roberto’s eyes open wide with great surprise as I rolled the grill into the apartment and out onto the terrace. Since then, we have had many more cookouts on his terrace, experiencing beautiful sunset views of the mountain and bay.

Each year during our Sicily Tour, we visit Trovato Foods in Scicli, Sicily. Since 1995, they have developed passion for the world of meat and its production, giving great importance to traditional and historical Sicilian authenticity. It’s an excellent shop in a wonderful town and the meat is always a big hit with me and our guests.

Employees at Scicli, Sicily’s butcher shop named Trovato Foods

Grilling in the Dolomites is a combination of excellent meats and outstanding views. In Selva di Val Gardena, there is a butcher shop named Macelleria Pramstraller F. & Co. where you can get great local meats. Northern Italians are very choosy about preparing the freshest and best-cut meats, and this is no exception for Macelleria Pramstraller F. & Co.

Grilling in the Dolomites

I didn’t get to barbeque during my stay at the Aosta Valley near the French and Swiss borders, but I did have a dinner with some friends at La Chaumiere Restaurant. The owners, Marco and Lucia, welcomed us to their refined restaurant where we could taste the typical and traditional specialties from the Valley.  I don’t remember ever eating as much beef than on that night. We started with beef tartare seasoned at the table and so tender that it melted in my mouth. Then, beef fillet chateaubriand which is a large front-cut fillet of tenderloin grilled between two lesser pieces of meat (that are discarded after cooking) and served on a hot stone. The place of origin for this dish is in France, which makes sense given the closeness of this bilingual region where both French and Italian are spoken by its citizens. The dream feast was finished with Vanilla Crème Brûlée and a sip of local Amaro.  

La Chaumiere Restaurant’s beef fillet chateaubriand and local amaro

We serve many meat dishes during our Tuscany tour at the 500-year-old Villa Stefano in the Chianti region.  Our favorite butcher in San Casicano in Val di Pesa is Macelleria Frittelli Fabio, owner of a five-generation business with principles that date back to the 1850’s. Fabio was already a master of the trade at 20 years old, having practiced farming, butchering and meat cutting since he was a child. His choice of cattle is the Piedmontese breed, where he started out raising them and then hired a diligent breeder, Luigi Carlo Vallino Company, who meets his standards of exceptional quality.

Piedmontese breed and Butcher Fabio Frittelli of San Casciano in Val di Pesa, Tuscany

The farm located in Piedmont is where the highest concentration of the Piedmontese breed of calves is found. They feed the animals with noble raw materials that are mixed in the company’s plant, so that Luigi can personally check the feed to be sure that they are top quality and free of toxins. The animals' feed is composed of: corn, soy, barley, wheat, bran, beet pulp, whole soy, flax, broad bean flakes, vitamin and mineral supplements, straw, and hay. There are no toxic chemical substances in the feed. Everything is taken care of down to the smallest detail, including transport to the slaughterhouse which takes place with great care not to cause stress to the animals. All the food that is given to the animals is declared and written on the sales receipt you receive at purchase.

Diet for the cattle written on the sales receipt

My all-time favorite place to barbeque is Tuscany, the place of the bistecca alla fiorentina, a cut of sirloin from a young steer or heifer. I love the whole ritual of the process. It was my first place of grilling in Italy, and that grew into a wonderful relationship with Fabio and his family members that work at the shop. Many years ago, I wanted to share with my tour guests the experience of going to the butcher and watching the delivery of one of his cows and having him cut the steak in front of our guests. This turned out to be an endearing experience for the groups over the years. 

When we arrive each Wednesday morning, we usually time it such that the delivery truck is minutes away. It’s fun to watch the delivery man and Fabio work the chains and pulleys to remove the half cow along with containers of the internal parts of the steer. The reason there is only a half cow delivered each week is because in the summer, locals eat less meat than when it is cold. 

The slaughtered cow is stored in a locker at the farm for 15 days so there is absolutely no blood dripping when it gets to Fabio’s store. This resting period is important for the butchering process. It is interesting how much blood is in the package of beef I bring home from the markets in the USA; I guess the resting period is much shorter here. 

Getting the half carcass off the truck and into the meat locker is a physical task and Fabio, despite some gray hairs, still makes it look easy. He then takes us back to the butchery to cut the sirloin. The guests get a true understanding of the process from beginning to end when we visit the shop.

Tour group visit to the butcher and delivery time at the butcher shop

Now, back to our barbeque story of the bistecca alla fiorentina. The cut of beef needs to be cooked at room temperature in a certain way, a certain thickness, and grilled over certain coals. It’s grilled close to the coals at first for the aromatic crust to form the amino acids and reducing sugars that create the compounds that have a distinctive flavor. Then, the steak is cooked further from the coals for about 5 minutes per side, and it is finished by standing on the side of the T-bone for about 5-8 minutes. The outside of the steak should be almost charred with distinct grill lines and the inside is very rare. But, don’t let that scare you away, the combination of the two makes a delicious culinary experience.

T-bone steaks being grilled on their edges

We start the feast with ribs, sausages, and an assortment of roasted vegetables. Then, we finish with the delicious main course, bistecca alla fiorentina! However, there is always room for dessert; a tasty lemon gelato is the perfect way to end the night!

After preparing a meal like this and seeing how much my guests enjoyed their dinner, I get such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.  Knowing I am giving them the very best products and memorable experiences, I relax under the star-lit sky to listen to the happy laughter in the distance as my guests settle into their night’s slumber.