🧄 Bagna cauda
Bagna cauda, Piedmontese for “hot bath”, is a warm dip of garlic and anchovies slowly melted into olive oil and butter until smooth and mellow. It is kept warm at the table over a small flame, and everyone dips raw and cooked vegetables into it — peppers, cardoons, fennel, cabbage, carrots, beetroot and boiled potatoes. The flavour is intensely garlicky and savoury.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 heads garlic (about 30 cloves), peeled
- 150 g salted anchovies, rinsed and filleted (or oil-packed fillets)
- 200 ml olive oil
- 50 g butter
- To serve: about 1.5 kg mixed vegetables — red peppers, fennel, cardoons or celery, cabbage, carrots, boiled potatoes, roasted beetroot
Method
- Halve the garlic cloves and remove any green sprouts. Put them in a small pan with water to cover, simmer for 10 minutes until very soft and drain.
- Put the garlic in a heavy terracotta or thick-bottomed pan with a little of the oil and mash it over very low heat.
- Add the anchovies and the rest of the oil and cook very gently, stirring, for 20–30 minutes until the anchovies dissolve and the sauce is smooth; it must never fry.
- Stir in the butter just before serving.
- Keep warm over a small burner and serve with the cut vegetables for dipping.
How to make it lighter
- The dip is mostly oil and butter, so dip lightly and let the vegetables be the bulk of the meal.
- Choose mostly raw and steamed vegetables, keeping potatoes to a few pieces.
- Leave out the butter at the end — the dip stays smooth with oil alone.
History
Bagna cauda comes from Piedmont in north-western Italy and is traditionally linked to the autumn grape harvest and the cardoon season. Salted anchovies, said to have arrived along the old salt roads from Liguria and Provence, became part of the cooking of this inland region. Today it is eaten in late autumn and winter, often at convivial gatherings where the pot is shared.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →