Typical recipes from northern Italy

Italy is full of typical recipes and each region has its own. Rich and tasty dishes all to be enjoyed and discovered!

Some of them are famous all over the world, others are known only to a few people in Italy and completely unknown abroad.

Typical recipes of northern regions are very rich and seasoned, especially with butter, because in the early times in this area of Italy milk was the main resource of people, so their meals were prepared mainly with this ingredient. As a consequence, also the condiments were made with milk, as in this case butter, which is derived from milk fat.

Now we present you the typical recipes from northern regions of Italy. Discover them together!

One of the most loved and popular Lombard dishes is pizzoccheri. They are a typical recipe from Lombard mountains. It is made with handmade buckwheat pasta and a very rich sauce made with cheese, butter, potatoes and savoy cabbage. Pizzoccheri are an enveloping and tasty cuddle for your palate!

Another typical recipe of this region is polenta. This is simply made by boiling cornmeal. It can be combined with different food, for example with enriched meat or lake fish. It can be prepared in different ways: boiled, baked, fried or grilled.

Casoncelli are another typical dish of Lombardy. They are stuffed pasta, in which 3 main ingredients are put: meat, raisins and amaretti. Every person adds other different ingredients in it, basing on their preferences, for example you can add also pears or breadcrumbs. Casoncelli are usually served with butter and sage.

The typical recipes from Veneto are not made with pasta. But we present them to you anyway!

Risi and bisi is the most popular and traditional recipe from this region. This dish is made with rice, peas and bacon. It is typical of spring, precisely it is cooked on the occasion of San Marco’s Day on the 25^th of April.

Another Venetian dish is sarde in saor. The ingredients are fried sardine dressed with vinegar and sweet and sour onions. In Venetian dialect “saor” means “taste”, in fact this recipe is an explosion of different flavours!

Baccalà alla vicentina is another famous dish from Veneto. Baccalà is salt cod and in this recipe is cooked with olive oil and milk. Exactly this dish is made with stoccafisso – dried cod – and not with baccalà.

The main traditional dishes from Piedmont are: agnolotti of plin, gnocchi al Castelmagno and tagliolini.

Let’s start with agnolotti – best known as plin! They are little square stuffed pasta, in which you usually put roast meat and vegetables. It is a typical Christmas Day dish in Piedmont.

Gnocchi al Castelmagno are gnocchi served with a sauce made with Castelmagno cheese, a tasty and high-quality cheese typical of this region.

Tagliolini is homemade egg pasta, which is a little less thick than tagliatelle. The best recipe with tagliolini is that with truffle sauce.

The most known recipe of Emilia-Romagna is lasagne alla Bolognese. Lasagne are a type of sheet-shaped egg pasta. Lasagne has a layered structure, in which one sheet of pasta is alternated with a layer of ragu and bechamel.

This is a historical and classical dish, which represents and is loved by the whole Italian peninsula.

Another typical recipe is gnocco fritto. Its dough is similar to the one of bread, but instead of being baked, it is fried and served with salami and cold cut.

The piadina romagnola is another famous Emilian dish, which is very practical and quick to prepare. It is made with low bread (without yeast) with lard. Once cooked, it can be stuffed how do you prefer. The most popular is piadina with raw ham, squacquerone and arugula.

The recipes of Valle d’Aosta are typical of the mountain, which are all rich and hearty. A joy for the palate!

One dish is cotoletta alla valdostana. This is fried meat stuffed with fontina and ham. We’ll obtain a crispy and crunchy meat outside with a soft and stringy heart. Everyone loves this dish, especially children.

Another typical recipe is polenta concia alla valdostana. This is a very rich, soft and very tasty meal. In this case, cornmeal is cooked with butter and lots of different local cheeses, such as toma.

Zuppa alla valpellinese is another recipe from Valle d’Aosta. It isn’t like the usual liquid soup, but it is drier, because it’s made with bread that dry the liquid part. Other ingredients are savoy cabbage and stringy cheese.

Ligurian cuisine is quite famous in different parts of the world.

The most known recipe is the focaccia di Recco. This focaccia is made with two thin sheets of dough, between which there is cheese, precisely crescenza cheese. This method makes this type of focaccia very soft and delicious.

Another dish which is loved both in Italy and abroad is pesto pasta. Specifically, in Liguria it is made with trofie, a type of thin and stretched pasta and a little bit rolled up.

Pesto sauce is made with fresh basil crushed with oil and pine nuts. Trofie mixed with pesto sauce create a delicious dish that is impossible to resist!

Brandacujùn is a typical recipe specific of Liguria. This consists in creamed baccalà and potatoes.

The recipes of Trentino Alto-Adige are mountain dishes, so they are very rich and tasty!

Canederli is one of the most typical recipes of this region, especially known in the East of Europe. They are big meatballs of stale bread enriched with cheese and speck. Usually, they are served in broth.

Spätzle are another dish of Trentino Alto-Adige. This type of pasta is similar to gnocchi, but they are smaller and irregular. In order to obtain this shape, spätzle are made with a specific instrument similar to a grater. One popular variant is that made with spinach dough.

In this region there is a very famous dessert, which is as crispy as delicious. This is strudel, a dessert made with rolled dough stuffed with apples, cinnamon, pine nuts and raisins. There exist also salted variants.

Finally, we talk about Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The main recipes are: frico, muset e brovade and cjarsons.

Frico is made with potatoes, onions and Montasio cheese. It is a quiche, which can be considered like a single dish. There are two versions, one more soft and another a little bit crunchy.

Muset e Brovade is another typical dish of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Brovadas are turnip creamed in the marc, while muset is cotechino made with snout of the pork. This is typical of Christmas dinners in Friulan homes.

Cjarsons are agnolotti typical of this region, in particular of Carnia area. They are not salty like Piedmont agnolotti, but are sweet. They can be stuffed with different ingredients, but the original ones and the most popular are that filled with ricotta cheese, cinnamon, raisins and chocolate. Unlike the filling, the sauce with which cjarsons are dressed is salty. It is a very special dish with unique and contrasting flavors!