Beef crumbles from Busto Arsizio
Beef crumbles is a traditional meat dish from the area around Varese, where farmers made it from cheap, irregular and chewy meat cuts.
Busto Arsizio is a city in the comune of Varese north of Milan in Lombardy, where the poorer people used to cook bruscitti, which means ‘briciole’ or crumbs in the local dialect, from meat left on the bones after the primary cuts had been sold. The original recipe still prescribes the use of neck, clod, flank, shin and rib, but in my opinion any kind of beef can be used.
Ingredients
50 g butter (or more)
20 g chopped bacon or pancetta
1 kg beef
3 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 glass of red wine
Salt and pepper
Preparation
Cut the meat in small regular almond-sized dices or smaller (Some make their beef crumbles so small they resemble ground or minced meat).
Melt the butter in a casserole, fry bacon (or pancetta) and beef
Add salt, pepper, peeled garlic and fennel seeds that can be tied up in a disposable tea bag, if you want to be able to remove them, when the dish is done.
Cover the casserole with a lid and let the meat simmer over low heat for up to 3 hours.
Lift the lid every 15 minutes and stir with a wooden spoon to ensure that the dish does not burn. It the meat seems too dry add more butter (but try to avoid water and other types of liquid).
Pour a glass of red wine over the dish 15 minutes before the beef is done.
Let it boil and merge with the meat. Remove the fennel seeds, unless you like to eat them.
Serve the beef crumbles with polenta or mashed potatoes.
Wow! Mette this looks amazing. Wish this was going to be my lunch today.
Would fit beautifully into a pure protein diet.
Yummy! :)
Thanks.
I love this recipe. I’ll definitely be trying this. It seems every region has a traditional type recipe to make delicious meals out of cheaper tough cuts of meat.
Fajitas from Mexico comes to mind also.
I like Mexican food though I don’t know how to cook it. Might give fajitas a try. Thanks for the inspiration.