Among Crotone’s ancient art, culture and tradition, it is also to be found in its flavors: from the first to the second to the outline, from wines to sweet, salty to spicy, the city has a panorama of the gastronomic taste with a unique and unmatched range of products.
▪ CAVATELLI Fresh pasta gnocchi, prepared with hard wheat flour, water and salt. They are consumed as a first course dish with sauce on the ragu of pork.

▪ BREAD FROM CUTRO Prepared with a high percentage of hard wheat flour, soft wheat flour, natural yeast, water and salt, is characterized by the shape, lengthened or rounded, and for the crust, thick and crunchy. It can be stored more days without losing its freshness. It is included among the best Italian breads and is also exported to many regions of the north.

▪ PECORINO CHEESE Cheese made from sheep’s milk, local production

▪ SALSICCIA Salami prepared with pork thighs, finely cut, and worked with salt and red pepper. With the dough you get filled with natural buds.

Among the typical sweets are the Easter cakes, the cuzzupe and the pitte, and the Christmas ones the “crustuli” and the “tardiddri“.
► Cuzzupe: are sweet made with hard wheat flour, yeast, water and eggs; Normally they are shaped like letters in the alphabet, especially the initials of the names of children, birds and other animals. Someone, if there is a couple of boyfriends in the family, usually their mother-in-law toward the future generous, use a large heart-shaped cuzzupa inside of which some eggs come in, once the baking tray is ready At 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes, at the end of the cooking some use to sprinkle the cuzzupa with “the annaspero”: a white creme made with white sugar of egg and lemon juice to be bumped continuously for not to solidify it.
The operation should be carried out immediately after cooking otherwise it will not cling to the cuzzupa, above the alcohols add as if it were not enough, colored chocolate grains.

► Pitte: they are essentially easter sweets even if someone uses them also in Christmas things. The nom pita comes from Arabic “pita” which means crushed, in fact it is made of pasta of hard wheat paste that is crushed with a rolling pin and exuded to the inside of a metal and circular baking tray. The first sheet is large enough to cover the bottom of the whole pan, then starting from the center begins to fill it with circular leaves with inside raisins and almonds, dripping from the outside looks like a rose. Once filled with each baking tray, these bins are fired at 180 gtadi for about one hour and a quarter. At the exit some use it to wet it with the vermouth, others add some oil, some honey. For cooking, some use oven ovens, but another typical way is to go to the bakeries in the week before the festival. Since the trays are many times similar, in order to avoid confusing them, each one puts a sign of evidence, this can be represented by a confetti, an olive branch, a toothpick, and so on.

► Crustuli: They are sweet made with soft wheat flour with a very liquid dough. Turning on the fire in the oil-containing pan, the women, fired the dough, make circles over the boiling oil by lowering the dough, which immediately takes shape and swells by joining in a vaguely circular shape. With a metal spindle it is turned to cook it on the other side. After finishing, which lasts less than a minute, they are usually warmed first by passing them into a plate containing sugar and then another containing cooked alive. Tardiddri, they are fried desserts made with dull wheat flour and covered with honey. Usually put into a plate one above the other, if consumed after a few days, they are difficult to detach for the solidification of honey.

► As wineries, the territory is rich in valuable vineyards in the lands north of Crotone. Typical wines of the area are: the renowned Cirò Melissa DOC, which is the primary source of the economy of Cirotano, and Val di Neto with a typical flavor in respect to the traditions and history that have strongly characterized this stretch of the Calabrian coast from the era of Magna Grecia .