Tickling your taste buds would always be a great experience as you get to taste various amazing flavors. While there are plenty of cuisines you could try, playing with Italian food would always be something worthwhile. With their mixture of great flavors and textures, you’ll find something you’d be fond of, having a new favorite.
As you explore Italian food near your area, it’ll be great if you’ll order their most exotic and classic dishes. It allows you to taste what they can offer and see which flavors would best fit your taste buds. To help you get started, listed below are the top dishes you need to explore with Italian food:
- Lasagna
If you’re looking for a unique way you can eat pasta is by transforming it into a wide pasta noodle. Instead of mixing the sauce however you want, you’ll need to alternate the pasta, sauce, and cheese layers to create the perfect balance of ingredients. While plenty of restaurants claim to make the perfect lasagna, tasting from an authentic Italian restaurant would surely bring your tastebuds in for a ride as they use classic Italian ingredients, herbs, and spices.
- Risotto
A classic and iconic Italian dish is the risotto. It’s a slow-cooked rice dish that leaves you with a creamy consistency. While it sounds easy to make, this can be quite tricky as you need to ensure that it’s not too soft or too hard when you take a bite. With this simple dish, you can mix it with various flavors, transforming it into a new type of food. You can combine them with truffles, parmigiano Reggiano, or osso buco. As you step into an Italian restaurant, ensure that you order a bowl of risotto to get a taste of iconic Italian history.
- Carbonara
Another one for the books would be the carbonara. While an alfredo pasta is commonly mistaken as carbonara, this dish doesn’t use any milk or cream but uses raw eggs, cured guanciale, pecorino, black pepper, and cheese to create that juicy consistency. While you can taste this at any restaurant as they’re widely popular, trying them out at an authentic Italian restaurant would surely give you a taste of what a traditional carbonara should taste like. Alternatively, you can try to order from their store and wait for great food to arrive at your doorstep.
- Bistecca Alla Fiorentina
Going deeper into Italian cuisine would be the Bistecca Alla Fiorentina. It’s widely popular in Tuscan as it’s a Florentine-style steak made of heifer or veal. To cook this dish, the restaurant needs to age the meat for at least two weeks before they cook it at a rare temperature on a barbeque grill. For maximum flavors, it uses hot charcoals to create an authentic taste to it. It also allows the meat to seep all the flavors in, allowing for full flavor with every bite.
- Bruschetta
If you’re into tasting bread and pastry from Italy, then the bruschetta should be a must-have for your Italian food adventure. This type of food involves grilling bread that’s been rubbed and topped with salt and olive oil. After preparing the bread, you can top it off with cured meats, cheese, beans, vegetables, tomato with basil, or other topping options. It’ll be a great Italian dish classic that you should immediately try out.
- Caprese
Italian foods aren’t just about pasta and pizza, but also with salads. If you’d like to begin your food adventure with a great appetizer, then ordering the Caprese would be a great option. With this type of salad, you’ll only see a mix of tomato, mozzarella, basil, salt, and olive oil for seasoning. While there’s no lettuce or cucumbers involved, it’s the ultimate Italian salad that you should give a try.
- Eggplant Parmesan
A great way to enjoy a hearty vegetable but still give yourself the ability to taste amazing flavors is to order an eggplant parmesan, most commonly known as Parmigiana. It’s an oven-baked dish that involves using thinly sliced eggplants and adding layers of tomato sauce and parmesan cheese. It’s the perfect vegetarian dish that still allows you to get the flavorful taste of Italy.
- Carbonara Pizza
Italian food is popular for its pasta and pizza. But this doesn’t limit them from having separate dishes, wherein they can have the best of both worlds in one single dish. To further explore the Italian flavors, then you should try the carbonara pizza. This dish uses the flavors of carbonara as its main topping. It uses mushrooms, melted cheese, black pepper, earthy mushrooms, and of course, their runny and sunny eggs.
- Italian Sausage And Pepper Frittata Affogato
Another way you can mix the best of both worlds is by combining pizza and frittata in one dish. It would be a great all-day dish that will help keep you full. This type of dish drowns the entire plate with marinara topping. You can taste various flavors, such as those that come from tomato, Italian sausage, mozzarella, basil leaves, red bell pepper, and yellow onion. With this dish, you can surely expect a bursting of flavors with every bite, which you can take at any time of the day. To complete the experience, you might want to order an affogato for your dessert.
- Panzanella
Another salad choice would be Panzanella. Unlike Caprese, this type of salad now uses a variety of vegetables. However, it still doesn’t focus on the lettuce but rather focuses on bread instead. But even so, this is still one of the crowd-favorite salads as they help to provide amazing flavors to everyone’s taste buds. A Panzanella uses bread, onions, and tomatoes. Depending on the season, you can mix it with cucumbers, basil, asparagus, zucchini, peach, or burrata.
- Caprese Chicken Saltimbocca
Leaning toward having more meat on your plate, having Caprese chicken saltimbocca would be a great Italian dish you should try. This type of food focuses on using crispy chicken wrapped with prosciutto and vinegar as its finish. To make things tastier, it’s topped off with fresh tomatoes and, of course, mozzarella for a sweet yet balanced flavor.
Takeaway
As you look for Italian dishes for you to explore, it’ll be great if you could find one near your home so you can easily take a trip and have a quick bite. While some restaurants might offer Italian dishes on their menu, it’ll be best if you could look for authentic Italian restaurants so you can have a full experience of what Italian food must taste like. With this guide, you should be able to find out which Italian dish would best tickle your tastebuds. But if you’re feeling a bit adventurous, try to order something you won’t usually pick and see how their flavors will play inside your mouth.