Explore the world · Recipe · Italy · Reference page
Insalata di farro
insalata di farro alla crudaiola
A cold Italian summer salad of boiled farro (emmer wheat) with raw courgette, tomato and celery, olives and sun-dried tomatoes, dressed with a blended herb sauce and topped with hard-boiled eggs. The recipe is from the Italian food magazine Scatti di Gusto.
- Servings
- 6
- Preparation
- 30 min
- Cooking
- 30 min
- Resting
- 40 min
- Total
- 1 h 40
- Difficulty
- Easy
Equipment
- Large saucepan; colander
- Large tray for cooling the farro
- Stick blender for the herb sauce
- Large serving bowl
Ingredients
Salad
Herb sauce
Method
Rinse the farro under running water. Pearled farro needs no soaking; hulled (decorticato) farro must soak overnight.
Why Pearling removes the outer bran, so the grain absorbs water and cooks faster.
Boil the farro in plenty of salted water, about twice its volume: about 30 minutes for pearled or semi-pearled, about an hour for hulled.
Timer · 30 min30:00When cooked, leave it 10 minutes to absorb the water, then drain. Spread on a tray, drizzle with oil, separate the grains with a fork and leave to cool.
Why Oil and spreading out stop the grains sticking together as they cool.
Timer · 10 min10:00Wash the vegetables. Slice the courgettes and celery thinly and dice the tomatoes. Pick the herbs and chop the half garlic clove, if using.
Blend the herbs, garlic, a little coarse salt and 2 tbsp water with a stick blender, adding oil in a thin stream until creamy.
Put the farro and vegetables in a large bowl with the olives and the sun-dried tomatoes. Dress with half the herb sauce, mix well and top with the egg wedges. Serve the rest of the sauce on the side.
Substitutions
- Hard-boiled eggs → Leave them out for a vegan salad.
- Garlic → Leave it out, as the source allows; add a seeded fresh chilli for heat, as the source suggests.
Common mistakes
- Rinsing the farro after cooking: it loses flavour (editorial). Cool it on a tray instead.
- Dressing it hot: the vegetables wilt.
Storage & reheating
Keeps 1–2 days in a covered container in the fridge if the eggs are kept separate (source).
Safety
Contains gluten (farro is a wheat), celery and egg. Keep the salad cold; do not leave it out for more than 2 hours (UK FSA).
Allergens
Gluten · Celery · Egg
Check labels: stock, bacon and sauces can contain further allergens.
Dietary
vegetarian
An ancient wheat back in summer bowls
Scatti di Gusto calls farro a wheat grown since the Neolithic, much used by the Etruscans, while the Romans cooked it into puls, a kind of polenta that stayed the most common poor food until the empire. Because each spikelet usually bears a single grain, it gave the lowest yield of the cereals and was slowly replaced by others. It survived in some areas, such as the Garfagnana in Tuscany with its zuppa di farro, and has come back with the renewed interest in regional food.
A cold farro salad is the magazine's answer to summer heat: lighter than a rice salad, it says, and a grain that holds its shape after cooking.
Cook, rest, spread
Pearled farro needs no soaking and cooks in about 30 minutes; hulled farro needs a night's soak and about an hour. Either way it is left ten minutes to absorb the last water, drained, spread on a tray with a little oil and forked apart to cool, so the grains stay separate. The vegetables go in raw (alla crudaiola), and the dressing is a green sauce of basil, mint, chives and parsley blended with oil.
How it connects
Place
- origin Italy In preparation
Recipe
- similar Tabbouleh
