What is pašticada?
Pašticada is the ultimate dish from the region of Dalmatia.
Traditional Dalmatian pašticada (or Dalmatinska pašticada) is slow-cooked beef prepared in a rich red sweet and sour sauce, usually served with gnocchi (njoki) or homemade pasta.
How to make pašticada
In its traditional form, this dish can take up to two or three days to make, as the meat is first marinated in a vinegar preparation, then braised slowly with vegetables for 4 to 6 hours. After cooking, the vegetables are blended to make a rather thick sauce.
In Dalmatia, this peasant dish is prepared for important feasts, including weddings and baptisms and it is also a traditional recipe for Mardi Gras.
The dish is quite popular throughout the southern coast of Croatia but there isn’t one way to make an authentic pašticada. Every family from Split to Dubrovnik will have its own version of this beef stew.
101 Dalmatians. 101 pašticada recipes.
One recipe from Dubrovnik was found and actually dates from the fifteenth century. The origins of pašticada are not entirely known but one can assume that it is related to variants from Greece, eastern Italy and even southern France.
Indeed, pastitsada (or παστιτσαδα) is a pasta and veal dish in tomato sauce from Corfu. Venetian Pastissada de caval is an ancient horsemeat stew from the Middle Ages which is now also made with beef (pastissada de manzo).
Dalmatian pašticada is also a distant cousin of daube provençale, a traditional beef stew from the south of France. As far as I am concerned, this dish made me think of goulash, a traditional Hungarian dish dating from the ninth century and that we had the pleasure to taste as we visited neighboring Vienna in June.
Traditional pašticada is prepared with tomatoes and is served with potato gnocchi (pasticada s njokima) but these two ingredients were probably not part of the original recipe as they are New World ingredients that were introduced in Europe only in the past 3 to 4 centuries.
One of the other key ingredients of the recipe is wine. The original recipe (or at least one of the most famous) calls for a dessert wine named Prošek (which has nothing to do with Italian Prosecco, which is a dry sparkling white wine). Prošek is a type of straw wine or raisin wine.
Straw wine is made from grapes that have been dried to concentrate their juice. The grapes are dried on straw mats under the sun, hence their name. Any sweet dessert wine, like an Italian passito (a straw wine) or sweet Port wine, can also be used.
Another interesting ingredient of this recipe is parsley root. Parsley root, as well as celery root, give an interesting flavor to pašticada, in addition to the consistency they bring to the blended sauce.
Pašticada
Ingredients
- 3 to 4 lb beef round (or other cut)
- 5 cloves garlic , sliced
- 4 oz. bacon , cut into ½-inch/1cm pieces
- 4 cups wine vinegar (or more)
- ½ cup olive oil
- 1 cup vegetable broth (or beef broth)
- 3 onions , quartered
- 2 carrots , peeled and cut
- 1 celery root , peeled and quartered
- 1 parsley root , peeled and quartered
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 4 whole cloves
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 bay leaf
- ½ cup prosek (or other sweet dessert wine)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- ½ cup red dry wine
- 4 prunes
- 1 lb gnocchi
- Parmesan cheese (optional)
- ½ bunch parsley , chopped
- Salt
- Pepper
Instructions
- Pierce the meat with a sharp pointed knife and insert pieces of garlic, bacon and cloves in it.
- Place the beef in a large dish. Cover with vinegar and leave it overnight in the refrigerator.
- The next day, remove the meat from the vinegar.
- Remove the bacon and garlic and save them.
- Put meat in Dutch oven or deep pot. Dust meat with flour, then add olive oil.
- Cook on medium high heat. Remove the meat when it takes on the color from all sides after about 8 to 10 minutes.
- Fry the onion, garlic and bacon in the same oil for a few minutes.
- Return the meat to the pot, add broth and cook for about 6 to 8 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste diluted in sweet wine, then add the carrots, celery root, parsley root. Incorporate red wine and sugar, and cook covered on low heat for 3 hours or until the meat is tender.
- Halfway through cooking, add the bay leaf and prunes.
- When the meat is tender, remove it to a plate and cut into thick slices.
- Purée the vegetables and sauce left in the pot with a hand blender.
- Serve with potato gnocchi.
- Garnish with parsley or grated parmesan cheese (optional).
Video
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Vesna says
When meat is done cooking, DISCARD root vegetables: they will alter the true taste of wine and meat and make the “gravy” lighter in color. Pasticada must be very dark. If you have cooked the meat long enough, the onions will fall apart and there will be no need for blending the gravy. It is OK for it to be rustic.
Ash says
My family really enjoyed this dinner. It was difficult to find some of the vegetables at my local grocery store, so there where some substitutes. However, in the end it tasted delicious, but my sauce did not turn out a nice red like the picture it was more of a dull brown.
Marko says
Chocolate brown, that is the colour you are aiming for. I would say you got it spot on!
Rita says
This is a originally an Italian recipe
Mike Benayoun says
Yes Rita, it is one of the origins we discuss in the article.
Ivan says
Originated in Italy (horse meat), but it got a final form in Dalmatia !
Nicole Rossetti le Strange says
Good point, Ivan!
David says
No, Rita, if you look for the classic Pastissada de caval or also the Pastissada de manzo (you can google it in Italian), you would see that those are two different recipes from the Croatian Pašticada. Pastissada never contains vinegar, prunes, celery root, parsley root nor sweet dessert wine. Croatian Pašticada is more similar to Sauerbraten than Pastissada while Pastissada ressembles more a Macedonian Chomlek or French Boeuf Bourguignon.
Carol Caywood says
Is the bacon cooked that you stuff in the beef overnight?
Mike Benayoun says
Hey Carol, good question. It is uncooked. It is fried later.