Olleta de músic from Alcoy: step-by-step recipe

What it is and why it is called “de músic”

The olleta de músic is a hearty winter stew: small beans, pencas, turnip and pork cooked in a single pot. The version on this page is the one published by the outlet AQUÍ in April 2022, from María Dolores Flores, a cook with decades at the stove. According to that source, in Alcoy it is called either olleta alcoyana or olleta de músic, after the musicians who open the fiesta on the night of 21 April. Alcoy’s tourist office titles it just “olleta alcoyana” and does not mention the musicians. What follows is AQUÍ’s recipe, with the differences between sources stated where they arise. Our history of Valencian cuisine shows where this mountain stew from Alicante fits in.

The beans: soaking and first boil

Everything starts hours earlier. The beans are left to soak for half a day, about 12 hours, and put on to boil in the pot; as soon as they start to boil, the water is changed twice. The recipe asks for the Villena bean, a small pulse with a buttery texture that, according to the cook, thickens the broth. If you cannot find it, Alcoy’s tourist office asks for a small white bean; whichever you use, keep to the soak.

Then the chopped meats go in, the ribs and the offal, and also the pencas and the turnip. Alcoy’s tourist office does it similarly: it puts the beans in cold water with the meat in chunks and the pencas stringless, speaks of fifteen minutes’ cooking, and adds the turnip and the parsnip to cook everything covered, over a low heat, for around an hour and a half, adding cold water to keep the level up until the beans are tender.

The sofrito goes separately

The onion is softened in a frying pan with a little paprika and poured into the pot. The base recipe does not say when the onion black puddings go in, which is why we declare it: here they go in with the sofrito, which is when Alcoy’s tourist office adds them (there they are morcillas de carne, meat sausages). In that recipe the olleta carries on for another half an hour; in the base recipe, once the sofrito is in, everything cooks for an hour and a half to two hours.

No rice and no pumpkin: what the sources say

If you search for “olleta” you will see recipes with rice and pumpkin, and it is worth keeping them apart. The olleta alcoyana of the base source and the one from Alcoy’s tourist office have neither. Turespaña’s “olla de músico” does: pumpkin, chickpeas and rice, and its page mentions neither Alcoy nor 21 April. It is another stew, also from the Valencian Community, and it is not mixed in here.

There is no single figure for everything, either. The offal is 500 g in AQUÍ’s recipe and 150 g in Alcoy’s tourist office’s; pork fat appears only in the second, and the water is measured only in the second, with two litres for 400 g of beans. We have taken one whole recipe, AQUÍ’s, and so the water is left to your judgement: cover well and top up if needed.

Heat, time and serving

The olleta is a long cook: an hour and a half to two hours over a medium heat, stirring constantly. The cook names the quality of the ingredients and the time as the two keys: the cooking time averages around two hours and should never drop below an hour and a half. Although tradition calls for a wood fire, the same source admits that gas or induction is easier, because flames are hard to control for so long. It is a pulse dish meant to see you through the cold, mountainous winter of that part of the province.

It is served hot, in a deep plate, with meat, pencas and the black pudding. If you like pot stews with beans and turnip, look at the arròs amb fesols i naps, which shares pencas and turnip but ends in rice. Another spoon dish from Alcoy is the borreta, a thick potage of salt cod, potato and spinach with set egg.

The olleta at the fiesta

AQUÍ tells how on the night of 21 April the musicians gather at nine o’clock in the Plaza de España to play the fiesta anthem and that, afterwards, musicians and festeros (fiesta participants) go together to the headquarters of the twenty-eight filaes, where they have supper with the olla dish. The same source adds that at the Mig Any, in late October, each filà presents its olleta to a competition. In Alcoy the comparsas are called filaes: the glossary explains what a comparsa is and how the Moors and Christians entrance is organised.

If there are lots of you at a fiesta and you would rather leave the cooking to a kitchen, we cook for local fiestas.