How to celebrate New Years Eve like you’re in Italy

Thinking about hosting a themed party for NYE? What about an Italian New Years Eve dinner party?

For me, New Year’s Eve is all about celebrating with friends. After spending Christmas with family I like having friends over to ring in the New Year’s Eve with an Italian dinner.

Hosting is more work, and a lot more chaotic with kids and pets, but allows you far more flexibility than celebrating at a restaurant. It’s the messiness that makes for memorable celebrations!

Many Italian cities have large outdoor celebrations with live music and you can watch them on tv. Here in Italy, a long dinner isn’t an uncommon event any day of the year and perfect for December 31.

There are traditions on what to eat for luck and prosperity for the year to come.

And the key elements are pretty simple: lentils, pork, and grapes.

An Italian Inspired New Year’s Eve Dinner

The Italian New Year’s Eve dinners begin with starters around 7pm. As friends arrive prosecco is handed out to drink enjoy with simple starters.

All you’ll need are a few local cheeses, cured meats (but homemade chicken liver pate on toasted bread is the best), and bread. I add hummus, tortilla chips and raw vegetables to include celiacs and vegetarians. Whatever is simple and on hand.

Once everyone has arrived and sitting at the table, the Italian New Year’s Eve dinner begins. The primo starts, followed by a secondo, and then comes the lentils with cotechino.

Begin the New Year’s Eve Dinner with ‘Il Primo’

A primo is a pasta, risotto or gnocchi dish. For New Year’s eve it should be decadent and festive. One year we had truffles, another it was salmon and last year an artichoke risotto.

Continue your Italian New Year’s Eve dinner with ‘Il Secondo’

A secondo is the meat or fish dish, or the ‘main course’ in English. Try to keep it simple and small, because there’s some much food.

Chicken cacciatore is one option and can be made in advance. In Umbria they don’t use tomatoes. An Umbrian chicken cacciatore dish is full of herbs, olives and white wine. Something like this one or this. But don’t dice up the garlic, here it’s simply cut in half and left alone.

And add the side dishes or ‘contorni’

On the side is always a selection of contorni, or side dishes. Something green, like cooked spinach, and everyone‘s favorite potatoes. Dress the potatoes with olive oil and not butter for an Italian feel.

A salad is also a good idea. Fennel and oranges are in season and make for a colourful refreshing palate cleanser. Or go head and skip the secondo and go straight to the lentils and cotechino.

At midnight it’s all about the lentils

Lentils are important as they represent wealth for the new year. The more lentils you eat the richer you’ll be next year.

Try and find Umbrian lentils, famous throughout Italy, from Castelluccio. Grown in a valley in the east of the province, the lentils of Castelluccio are small with a nutty flavor.

This dish is easy, and even better if you can cook them the day before. Just warm it up before eating. I found these two recipes, here and here, which seems pretty similar to my husbands.

Added to the lentils is a cotechino. It’s really just an over the top version of a large fatty sausage. A zampone is another option, it’s a pig trotter stuffed with pork, and spices like the cotechino.

Cook the cotechino slowly, boiling it for several hours. The pork is fatty, symbolizing the hope for riches and abundance in the new year. If you can’t find any, then use some local sausages instead.

This dish pairs well with the local red wine since the lentils and cotechino are so rich.

Ringing in the New Year

The brindisi, or toasts, are with a spumante.

Spumante is just a general term used for sparkling wine.

Normally it will be a sweet sparkling wine for toasts. Not my favorite, I sneak some leftover prosecco (meaning a dry sparkling wine) from the beginning of the meal instead.

After all the savory dishes come the grapes

At the end of the feast grapes a must. Yes, an Italian Christmas cake like panettone or pandoro cake is expected, but grapes are eaten for good luck. And in the hope you’ll be frugal with your newfound wealth.

If you don’t want to still have people at 3am it’s a good idea to begin dessert after the New Years toasts have died down. Plan on the lentils to be eaten around 11 or 11.30.

Finish the evening off with some games

We end the evening with card games. Mandarin oranges, leftover christmas baking, and digestivo liquors are for anyone who still has room.

Like many countries around the world the New Years in Italy is brought in with fireworks. Almost every small town puts on a fireworks display. Hopefully you have a spot to enjoy some of the celebrations.

Interested in visiting Umbria during the holiday season? I’ve written a post all about the important days for the Christmas season in Italy and ideas on how what to do.

Make this year’s special with an Italian New Year’s Eve party to bring good luck and fortune in the year to come!