A rich mixed-meat stew from Trentino, in which pieces of beef, pork and fresh luganega sausage are simmered slowly in a dark, deeply browned flour gravy and ladled over polenta. The word tonco is dialect for a thick braising sauce, and the dish is essentially that sauce made substantial with meat. The gravy is built on a brustolin — the local roux of flour toasted in fat until it is the colour of hazelnut — which gives the dish its dark look and its toasty depth. It is winter and feast-day cooking, common across nearly all the Trentino valleys, and is almost always served with a slab of polenta to soak it up.
Tonco de Pontesel is country cooking from the Trentino farmhouse table, a way of stretching a mixture of cuts — and often the leftovers of a roast or boil — into a generous dish thickened by little more than toasted flour. It belongs to the gastronomy of nearly all the Trentino valleys rather than to a single town. The second half of the name, pontesel, is the dialect word for the small wooden balcony or walkway of old Trentino houses; how exactly it came to name the dish is unsettled, and various local tales attach to it. A common popular etymology linking the name to the Pontesei dam is mistaken, as that lake lies across the border in the Veneto, not in Trentino. The dish carries no protected designation.
The meat is braised until it is fork-tender and slightly falling apart, coated in a thick, glossy, dark-brown gravy that clings rather than runs. The sauce tastes of toasted flour and long-cooked meat, savoury and rounded, with the sausage adding a garlicky, fatty richness through it. Spooned over soft yellow polenta, the two eat as one: the bland, creamy cornmeal carries the intense, meaty sauce. It is plain, warming, deeply flavoured food — the kind of stew that improves on the second day, when the gravy has thickened and the flavours have settled.
The thickening comes from the brustolin, a dark roux: flour cooked in fat past golden to a deep brown develops toasty, nutty Maillard flavours, and its starch, once let down with broth, swells and binds the liquid into a glossy gravy. Browning the flour deeply trades some of its thickening power for flavour, which is why the gravy is bound but not pasty. Searing the meat first builds a fond and a browned crust that deepen the sauce, and the long, gentle simmer melts the connective tissue in the tougher cuts to gelatin, so the meat turns tender and the sauce gains body. Adding the sausage part-way through keeps it from breaking up while still letting its fat enrich the whole pot.
Variations
The mix of meats varies with what the kitchen has — beef and pork are the base, with luganega the usual sausage, and some cooks enrich it with pancetta or lard. It is a natural way to use up leftover roast or boiled meats. The constant is the dark toasted-flour gravy and the polenta beneath it; in places the polenta is made with potato. Other Trentino braises share the brustolin technique, but this mixed-meat tonco with its dialect name is its own dish.
On the Palate
Where Tonco de Pontesel sits in the Italian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
8 steps · 40 min active + 1 hour 50 min waiting
- 120 min
Cut the beef and pork into chunks; season and brown them well in batches in lard or oil, then set aside.
Watch outBrown the meat well in batches — crowding the pot steams it grey; the browned crust and fond are the backbone of the gravy.
- 28 min
Soften chopped onion in the same pot, scraping up the browned bits.
- 310 min
Make the brustolin: in a separate pan, toast the flour in fat over low heat, stirring constantly, until it turns a deep hazelnut brown.
Watch outToast the flour in fat, stirring nonstop, to a deep hazelnut brown — that dark roux is the flavor and thickener; let it burn and the gravy goes bitter.
- 45 min
Whisk hot broth into the toasted flour to make a smooth dark gravy, then pour it into the pot with the meat.
- 590 min
Add a bay leaf and a splash of wine, cover, and simmer very gently for about 90 minutes, stirring now and then.
- 630 min
Slice the luganega into pieces and add it for the last 30 minutes so it cooks through without breaking up.
- 75 min
Adjust the seasoning and the thickness of the gravy, and let it rest off the heat.
- 85 min
Serve hot, ladled generously over freshly cooked soft polenta.
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