Tartare or Battuta?
What does tradition says?

    

The concept of raw meat as food to be eaten without adequate cooking is quite recent but it is assumed that the term «tartare» derives from the nomadic people of the Tartars. These people, having to move often from one place to another, tended to keep the meat under the saddle of the horses, in this way during the journey the continuous pressure ground, or rather, "minced" the meat, which upon arrival it was ready to be consumed.

Certainly it is only a hypothesis and there are more chances that over the years, in a more domestic environment, during the preparation of dishes such as meatballs, people have tried to taste the ground meat (perhaps already seasoned) until it was baptized as a real dish able to be presented and eaten raw.

There are different procedures to prepare raw meat and in this case Piedmont is closely tied to its traditional recipe.

In both cases, whether we are talking about tartare or battuta, the presentation on the plate is often circular or disc-shaped and it is only at the time of serving that we can notice its peculiar characteristic: it has been cut with a knife!

The tartare is minced by machine when we use it for preparations to be cooked, such as hamburgers, meatballs and meat sauce, for the tartare however, where the taste of raw meat must be appreciated, the same rule applies for the battuta : it is necessary to cut the meat with the tip of a knife and beat with the blade, avoiding in this way the fraying of the meat and the changing of the organoleptic properties of the raw meat.

The typical Piedmontese recipe does not allow changes, the knife is the only tool for "beating" precisely the meat which must possibly be from Fassona.

Being the tartare a more French than Italian recipe, another big difference can be in the type of seasoning, richer in the tartare and simpler in the battuta. Another big difference could be the way the tartare is eaten in France and in Italy: the use of multiple sauces such as Worcester, mustard, mayonnaise and ingredients such as capers, olives and spices, or even burrata and eggs in the French recipe, whereas the original Piedmontese tartare is appreciated in its lightness, as natural as possible, seasoned only with salt and oil.

Don't we want to leave our battuta alone? We need to accompany tradition in the best way.

Our Roero Arneis DOCG, harmonious and balanced, is our first choice for this meat dish which is eaten even during the summer thanks to its freshness and lightness.