The ingredient
Bone-in tail joints for a long, gentle bollito.
Beef tail is sold in cross-cut joints with meat around a central bone. The bone and connective tissue are part of the cut, so its purchase weight is not a weight of boneless meat.
- Material
- Beef tail, bone-in
- Form
- Jointed
- Recipe amount
- 500 g for a mixed bollito serving eight
In the kitchen
Ask the butcher to divide the tail at the joints. Simmer the pieces gently until the meat is tender; their size matters more than a single fixed cooking time.
Context
Coda belongs to the mixed-meat pot of Piedmontese bollito, alongside tongue, muscolo and scaramella.
At the table
For an eight-person mixed bollito, use 500 g of jointed tail alongside the other meats. Lift the joints carefully from the broth and leave the bones for diners to remove.
Cook with it
Choosing it
Order beef tail, jointed for the pot. Check whether a quoted weight includes bone and ask for pieces of reasonably similar size. Tail is not a boneless stewing cut.
Keeping it
Keep the raw meat chilled and follow the butcher’s use-by and storage instructions. Keep raw juices away from cooked meat and ready-to-eat sauces.
Questions worth asking
Is 500 g all edible meat?
No. That is the bone-in ingredient weight for a mixed platter, not a boneless serving yield.
Can I use boneless stewing beef instead?
It would change both the cut and the bone-in role of the tail. Buy jointed tail for this preparation.
