Steak & Meat
Tuscan meat: a guide to the local breeds and cuts
Chianina, Maremma cattle, Cinta Senese. The complete guide to Tuscan meat: native breeds, traditional cuts and how to recognise quality.
Tuscany’s native breeds: a heritage worth protecting
Tuscany is not only a region of wine and olive oil - it is also one of Italy’s areas with the richest and historically most significant native livestock heritage. Three cattle breeds (Chianina, Maremmana, Calvana), a pig (Cinta Senese), and several sheep breeds - all with histories dating back to the medieval or even pre-Roman period, all adapted over time to the Tuscan territory to produce meat with characteristics impossible to obtain elsewhere.
The risk of losing this heritage is real and documented. Post-war industrialisation of livestock farming brought the massive replacement of native breeds with foreign commercial breeds - more productive in terms of quantity, less distinctive in terms of flavour. The Calvana is still critically endangered; the Cinta Senese was almost extinct thirty years ago; even the Maremmana has gone through periods of significant reduction in numbers.
The revival of these breeds over the last twenty years is the result of joint work between animal scientists, farmers, chefs and aware consumers - all sharing the conviction that the quality of native meat deserves to be preserved not only for cultural reasons but for concrete gastronomic ones.
The Chianina: the queen of the bistecca
Already described in detail elsewhere, the Chianina deserves in this guide a precise summary of its role in Tuscan meat culture.
It is the most famous breed - the one that made bistecca fiorentina a dish known worldwide. Its imposing white cattle graze in the Val di Chiana, and their lean meat, with well-defined muscle fibre and little intramuscular fat, expresses itself best in rare grilling over charcoal.
The loin cut - the T-bone - is what produces bistecca fiorentina. But Chianina also produces other excellent cuts: the rib, the silverside, the eye round for carpaccio, the tail for braises and stews. It is not only a bistecca breed - it is a complete butchery breed, where every part has its proper use.
The Maremmana: the herdsmen’s meat
The Maremmana is Italy’s most wild cattle breed - raised semi-free in the Mediterranean scrubland of the Grosseto Maremma, managed by the butteri (the Tuscan on-horseback herdsmen), with almost no human intervention for much of the year. Its wild character is directly reflected in the meat.
The Maremmana is grey, with tall and imposing lyre-shaped horns. It is smaller than the Chianina - bulls rarely exceed 1,200 kg - but has compact musculature, developed by semi-wild activity. Its meat is darker than Chianina, with a more intense and slightly wild flavour, and the yellowish covering fat typical of extensively grazed breeds.
It is not the meat for a rare grilled bistecca - its coarser muscle fibre requires longer cooking methods that tenderise the meat. Braised Maremmana, slow-cooked in red wine for three hours, is a dish of a depth of flavour that Chianina in the same preparation would not achieve. Maremmana oxtail, mixed bollito from the Maremma, stews with the artichokes of Grosseto - these are the dishes that bring out the best in Maremmana.
Cinta Senese pork: aristocratic and rare
The Cinta Senese has its own dedicated article, but here the relevant point concerns the cuts and how the Tuscan butcher uses them.
The division into cuts of the Cinta follows that of conventional pork, but with important differences related to the different ratio of fat to lean. The Cinta shoulder has a thicker layer of fat than normal - it is that shoulder which, roasted slowly for three hours, melts into the meat and produces a natural sauce without needing anything else. The leg, salted and aged, becomes Cinta prosciutto - with marbled fat that smells of the forest.
The Cinta guanciale - the jowl, salted and aged - is one of the most used ingredients in traditional Sienese cooking: it is melted into bean soups, used for the soffritto of ribollita, added to cannellini beans with sage to give richness and depth.
Traditional cuts of the Tuscan butchery
The Tuscan butchery tradition has a whole-animal approach that precedes today’s nose-to-tail trend by many centuries. Every part of the animal - including parts that other culinary traditions would consider scraps - finds its preparation:
Lampredotto: the four bovine stomachs (rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum), boiled in broth with aromatics and served in a roll with green sauce. This is the quintessential Florentine street food, available from lampredotto vendors throughout Florence.
Trippa alla fiorentina: tripe cooked in tomato sauce with Pecorino. The most noble of the poor dishes in Florentine cooking.
Peposo from Impruneta: a medieval recipe - beef muscle, abundant black pepper, garlic, red wine. Slow-cooked for hours in terracotta from Impruneta, the same material used for the traditional Tuscan garden pots.
Arista di maiale: pork loin roasted in the oven with rosemary and garlic - one of the simplest and most satisfying Tuscan second courses.
How to read the label and recognise the provenance
Buying quality Tuscan meat means learning to read labels consciously.
The IGP mark “Vitellone Bianco dell’Appennino Centrale” guarantees provenance and breed (Chianina, Marchigiana or Romagnola). The DOP “Cinta Senese” guarantees the breed and the pig’s farming method. The labels of artisanal butchers who work with local farmers often directly indicate the farm of origin - a sign of transparency that is worth as much as any institutional mark.
Ristorante Alcide in Poggibonsi selects its meats with the same attention it gives to Tyrrhenian fish - provenance is certified, ageing is respected, the cut is correct for the preparation. This is not rhetoric: it is the foundation of every meat dish that arrives at the table.
Want to taste it for real?
At Ristorante Alcide you will find it on the table - made the right way, with fresh ingredients and the care of the Ancillotti family since 1849.
