Culinary Explorer
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Peposo all'Imprunetese
Created by Chef Graziella
Beef braised in a river of Chianti with a startling quantity of black pepper. The dish that Brunelleschi's workers ate while building the dome of Florence. Five ingredients. Five hours. Nothing else.
This is not a stew you cook. It is a stew you assemble and forget. Terracotta workers in Impruneta would place an earthenware pot beside the kiln at dawn, filled with nothing but beef, wine, garlic, and an amount of pepper that seems reckless until you taste the result. By evening, after hours in the residual heat of dying coals, they had dinner.
There is no browning, no fond, no soffritto. The method violates everything I usually teach about building flavor from the bottom. And yet it works, because the wine does the work that technique would otherwise accomplish. Two full bottles submerge the meat, and over five hours they reduce into something concentrated and magnificent.
The pepper is not optional, and the quantity is not negotiable. Three tablespoons of whole peppercorns sounds like a mistake. It is not. The long cooking softens their bite while preserving their warmth. What emerges is pepper transformed, no longer sharp but deep and almost sweet. The Florentines call this dish peposo for a reason. If you are timid about pepper, cook something else.
Ingredients
beef shank
Quantity
3 pounds
cut into 3-inch pieces, bone-in
Chianti or dry Tuscan red wine
Quantity
2 bottles (1.5 liters)
whole black peppercorns
Quantity
3 tablespoons
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| beef shankcut into 3-inch pieces, bone-in | 3 pounds |
| Chianti or dry Tuscan red wine | 2 bottles (1.5 liters) |
| whole black peppercorns | 3 tablespoons |
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