It sounds basic but I’ll just get it out of the way first: cured meat isn’t cooked. Curing was one of the key discoveries our species hit upon to make meat last for a long time at ambient temperatures and not get us sick. Curing is what differentiates a sausage (uncured) from a salami (cured).
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People have been curing meats for millennia. For most of that time, no one understood the chemistry behind the process. But for centuries before refrigeration was invented, even if folks didn’t know why curing worked, they knew that once it was done—a process that could take a few weeks to a few years, depending on […]
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I grew up in Michigan. We often had summer sausage in the fridge. But mention summer sausage to a friend from California and chances are they’ve never even heard of it. Why is it so ubiquitous in the midwest and so unknown elsewhere in the country?
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If you’ve gone out to eat or looked at menus for restaurants in New York City in the last few years, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed one ingredient show up again and again: nduja. It’s everywhere: in egg dishes, on burgers, with pasta, with vegetables, with fish or shellfish, with cheese. Its status as […]
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A decade ago, the only way to eat good salami in the US was to smuggle it in from Europe. That’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Practically no one was making traditional salami in the US. How times have changed! In the last few years suddenly it seems like there’s a new salami maker […]
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When Herb and Kathy Eckhouse decided to locate their acclaimed cured ham house, La Quercia, in Norwalk, Iowa, they didn’t mean it as a statement. They wanted to make a positive impact in the place they’d long ago decided to raise their family. “We wanted to do something for Iowa. Something we can be proud […]
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It’s been a dirty little secret for decades. The Italian salamis all of us merchants sell aren’t Italian. Also, the Spanish ones aren’t Spanish. The French ones aren’t French. In fact, none of them are what they seem. That’s because, with a handful of exceptions, foreign salamis are not allowed in the United States. We […]
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