Bistecca alla fiorentina

The word bistecca was borrowed from the English beefsteak in the early 19th century.^[1] An 1863 dictionary defines it as:

Italian: ...una larga fetta di carne, tagliata dalla culatta o d'altronde, poco arrostito sulla gratella, or altramente, e che si mangia così guascotta. ...a thick slice of meat, cut from the rump or elsewhere, lightly cooked on a grill or otherwise, and eaten undercooked.^[1]

Bistecca alla fiorentina is obtained from the cut of the sirloin (the part corresponding to the lumbar vertebrae, the half of the back on the side of the tail) of a young steer or heifer of the Chianina breed: in the middle it has the T-shaped bone, that is, a T-bone steak, with the fillet on one side and the sirloin on the other.

Today the steak is cut 3–4 fingers high (5–6 cms) in the loin. An average bistecca alla fiorentina when ordered at a restaurant weighs between .9 and 1.2 kilograms. The cost can range from twenty to one hundred euros per kilo.^{[citation needed]}

The Italian gastronomist Pellegrino Artusi, in his 1891 cooking manual La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene' (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well), defines the cut of the steak as follows: "Florentine steak. From beef-steak, an English word that is worth the rib of an ox, came the name of our steak, which is nothing more than a chop with its bone, a finger or a finger and a half thick, cut from the sirloin of a steer."^[2]

In 2021, the dish was added to Italy's list of traditional food products, prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale (PAT).^[3]

Media related to Bistecca alla fiorentina at Wikimedia Commons

• Tuscan cuisine
• List of beef dishes
• T-bone steak