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Italian · Main

Pappardelle al Ragù di Cinghiale

  • Advanced
  • 45 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

gently hot · umami-deep · floral · briny Leads with a warm current of chile, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, ending saline and clean.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg wild boar shoulder, in 2 cm dice
  • 750 ml Chianti or other dry red wine
  • 8 juniper berries, crushed
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 6 black peppercorns
  • 100 g pancetta, finely chopped
  • 60 ml olive oil
  • 150 g onion, finely diced
  • 100 g carrot, finely diced
  • 80 g celery, finely diced
  • 2 sprigs rosemary
  • 400 g tinned peeled tomatoes, crushed
  • 300 ml beef or game stock
  • 10 g fine salt
  • 500 g pappardelle
  • 60 g Parmigiano Reggiano, grated

Equipment

Grater / zester

The skills inside

Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedRendering fat: and cooking in what runs outSteaming: basket, leaf and lidMarinating: acid, salt and timeThe overnight rest: letting a dish marryKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias

Allergen screen

Found: dairy · celery · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Marinate the boar overnight IN THE FRIDGE in the wine with the juniper, bay and peppercorns, then drain it, keep 300 ml of the marinade and dry the meat on cloth.
  2. Render the pancetta in the olive oil and brown the boar hard in three batches, so the pan stays dry enough to colour rather than steam.
  3. Soften the onion, carrot and celery in the same fat until sweet and just catching, then return the meat with the reserved marinade and boil off the raw alcohol.
  4. Add the tomatoes, stock, rosemary and salt and hold at 90C to 95C (194F to 203F), partly covered, for 3 hours, until the dice collapse under a spoon. 180 min
  5. Boil the pappardelle a minute short of al dente, drag it into the ragù with a ladle of its water, toss until the sauce clings, and finish with the Parmigiano.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

The overnight rest: letting a dish marry 29 recipes

  • Cooled quickly before it went in (spread out, decanted, or stood in cold water) rather than carried to the fridge hot in the pot it was cooked in.
  • Protected from the rest of the fridge once cold: covered, or given space where nothing strong is sitting beside it. A rest this long is long enough to take on whatever it shares the shelf with, and some dishes want the open air.
  • Given the whole time. This is the one technique whose entire content is waiting, and cutting it short leaves the dish exactly as it was when it went in.
  • Brought back deliberately: reheated gently, or brought up to the temperature it is meant to be eaten at, rather than served straight out of the cold because it is late.
  • Tasted and corrected AFTER the rest. Seasoning and brightness both flatten in the cold, so the dish is finished at the end of the wait rather than at the start of it.

Where it goes wrong It went into the fridge hot and covered. It held its own heat for hours in the range where food spoils, and the lid sweated and dripped back into it all night: what comes out is duller and wetter than what went in, which is the exact opposite of the point.

Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes

  • Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
  • The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
  • It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
  • The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
  • Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.

Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.

At the Table

The Pour
Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
Also Right
The braising wine itself, better bottle
From the Taps
Belgian dubbel
Zero-Proof
Beet & blackcurrant shrub

Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Pappardelle al Ragù di Cinghiale Search YouTube: Italia Squisita on Pappardelle al Ragù di Cinghiale A YouTube search for Italia Squisita and this dish. No affiliation.