Many consider Chianina the finest meat for cooking, the best quality to prepare the typical Florentine beefsteak. In this snippet we will reveal you everything you need to know about this typical breed of cattle from Tuscany: the price, where you can taste Chianina meat in Florence and the list of the restaurants provided with a quality certification
For those who come and visit Florence, as well as for those ones desiring to taste the famous typical Florentine beefsteak, a drawback could wait behind the door. This is the case both for people trying to prepare it by themselves at their own home – it’s very hard to prepare the coals for a suitable cooking – and for those ones deciding to taste it in a good restaurant, possibly experiencing a good quality and reasonable prices. In a preceeding piece, we just provided some useful tricks to recognize a good Florentine beefsteak as well as some good practices to hit the right restaurant, but we believe in the opportunity to provide more information, because of the large popularity of the Chianina meat as one of the most suitable candidate for preparing this traditional Florentine dish.
A reason for tasting Chianina meat in Florence
The answer is quite simple: this breed of cattle, nowaday raised exclusively to derive this cut of meat, is typical from Tuscany, thus representing a characterizing element of this special country. The chianina cattle owes its name to the region Val di Chiana, even if this breed of cattle can be considered as autochthonous both in Tuscany and in Umbria. More information about its history and technical features can be found in Wikipedia. What we are interested to reveal in detail is the strong suitability of consuming the chianina meat in a nutritional diet. The finest quality of this cattle is derived from the female, named “scottona” because of its tenderness and a quite limited dimension: this breeding has to be sedentary or “bounded in a box”- as the farmers in Val di Chiana use to say – in order to foster the best raising for this animal and the best quality of its meat. Of course, in Florence you can taste also other excellent types of meat from other Italian Regions, just like the “fassona” from Piedmont, the “marchigiana”, the “limousine” and many others; by the way, for those who desire to be fully compliant with the genuine Tuscany Taste and Cousine, the chianina meat (or, at least the rarest calvana from Prato).
Little Tips to find the genuine chianina in Florence
Of course, each restaurant in Florence could offer you a Florentine beefsteak. By the way, it is very far from stating that you could taste the chianina steak wherever you go in Florence. As an example, Florence is full of reastaurants offering you a “florentine steak”, but if you pay more attention to these advertises, you will observe that almost nowhere the cattle of creed is explicitly mentioned in the menù. Furthermore, this is a very important information telling you more about the price and the quality of the meat you are going to taste. In fact, if a typical but unspecified beefsteak is priced in a range varying from 40 euros to 60 euros for kilos, for a chianina beefsteak the price is up to 10 euros, at least, for each kilos. If someone offers you a florentine beefsteak for 15-17 euro, you can bet that it is a price out of the range for a genuine chianina, because of this quality of meat is more precious. Sometimes, someone try to offer you a chianina beefsteak to a cheaper price, but in the most case it is possible only because its not a genuine pure chianina but it is probably a cross cattle of creed. In order to manage this kind of situation, there is a system for pedigree and certifications: in fact, it was established a National Genealogic Book; this book is managed by the Anabic(The National Association of Italian Farmers for Bovine Breedings); it delas with the registration of the pure race animals. This check and certification activities are supervised and granted from the Igp from Vitellone Bianco from Appennino Centrale, including, the chianina, the marchigiana and the romagnola. Our only recommendation is the following: if you are looking for a genuine chianina in Florence, be carefull with the Igp certification for quality. In other words, we are not claiming that the restaurants without this Igp certification will offer you a not original chianina beeksteak; by the way, everyone possessing this certification is glad to put it on his customers’ evidence, because at the current time, the Igp mark is the only warranty evidence for bovine meat quality approved and recognized also by the European Union for Italian cattle of creed. If you have some doubts about what you are going to eat, the customer has the right to ask for the quality certification of the cooked beeksteak.
Some Recommended places to taste a genuine “certified” chianina
More and more are the restaurants in Florence where you can taste a good beefsteak but only a few can provide the Igp cerification. Of course, these last ones follow the policy for a “dry aging” during not less tahn 15 days – this is the recommended time to increase the tenderness of the meat – but very often they extend this process to one week further. A certified chianina can be found in the centre of Florence at Lungarno23 (Lungarno Torrigiani), at Grotta Guelfa (via Pellicceria), at Trattoria dell’Oste (via Alamanni 3/5) and at trattoria Il Portale (via Alamanni 29/r). Out from Florence, you can find a certified chianina beef at the Mangiando Mangiando tavern (sited in Greve in Chianti), at Da Verrazzano restaurant (sited in Greve in Chianti) and at Gramola (sited in Tavernelle Val di Pesa).
Some Tips and suggestions from the restaurateur
“The Chianina Florentine beefsteak provided to our customers – as told by Mr. Antonio, the owner of the tavern Trattoria dell’Oste, in Florence – need to assure some specific features: it has to be origined from a female “scottona” cattle, with a white fat ranked as ‘3’ (the classification for the type of fat ranges from 1 to 5) and a “dry aging” lasted within 25 and 30 days. As a result, we obtain a tasteful, dry and fragrant meat. Its ideal cooking never has to last over the 20 minutes, divided in 5 minutes for each side. It has to be waited on the soapstone from Valtellina, in order to keep warm the meata s longer as it is possible. We adopt salt crystals from Maldon, because this kind of salt grains develops flavour in the meat and in the mouth faster than other traditional kinds. Reviewing the salt prices, a good kind of salt could be almost more expensive than the meat.. The best side dishes for complete fully tasting of chianina are surely the roasted potatoes or the white beans. Finally, the chianina beefsteak has to be associated with a red classic Chianti wine, served at a room temperature.”
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