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There’s something powerful about hacking apart a pig, slathering it with salt and spices, tying it up, and letting it hang in the cellar until covered with mold. “It shows what you’re capable of doing,” says Christine Mullen, executive chef of San Francisco’s CAV Wine Bar & Kitchen. “Not everybody can make their own salami and have a great product.”
The art of preserving or curing meat, charcuterie includes everything from pâtés and terrines to bacon and headcheese. Many chefs, like Mullen, are making their own in wine cellars and walk-ins across the country, turning previously undesirable pig parts into artisanal salamis, hams, and sausages. It’s a centuries-old European tradition that is experiencing a major renaissance.
Blame it on Batali and Bertolli. Mario Batali’s father, Armandino, operates a salumi shop in Seattle using skills he learned in Italy. When Mario opened Babbo in New York City in 1998, he began curing meats, too, using recipes his father helped to develop.
Paul Bertolli made his first charcuterie around 1982, while a chef at Chez Panisse. He later evangelized it at his annual Whole Hog Dinner menu at Oliveto in Oakland, California. His 2003 book Cooking by Hand contains an extensive chapter on curing pork that has inspired many chefs to give it a try.
“There’s a whole subculture in the food world that wants something authentic, wants something genuine, and wants to be transparent about it,” says Bertolli, who recently founded Fra’mani Handcrafted Salumi in Berkeley, California.
No two pieces of cured meat taste alike. The unique temperature, moisture, and mold conditions where each product hangs contribute to a subtle uniqueness that some compare to the terroir in wines. “These are products that you don’t put between mustard-slathered slabs of bread,” says Bertolli.
But there are dangers in the seemingly mystical transformation from raw to cured. If you don’t closely monitor temperatures, or if you use too little salt, harmful bacteria can flourish. For instance, homemade pancetta needs to be rolled very tightly, as pathogens can grow in air pockets.
Because of the risks, there are stringent health-code rules for charcuterie in most cities. In May, New York City health inspectors confiscated and destroyed several years’ and thousands of dollars’ worth of charcuterie after they found that the curing room at Il Buco was six degrees warmer than the health code allowed.
However, some chefs choose to break the rules. Mold flavors the meat, and to grow mold you need certain temperature and humidity levels—levels that the law might not always permit. “If you take [mold] . . . away, it’s just not gonna happen,” says Mullen. “You’re not gonna get the ‘wow’ factor.”
Here’s our recipe for homemade pancetta. It’ll make you feel powerful. Or at the very least, it will add bacony, fatty goodness to whatever it touches. Just don’t be scared of a little mold.
-Jason Horn
Photography by Susan Burdick. Illustration by Olivia Warnecke.
MORE MEATY MATTERS
If you want to learn more, here are some charcuterie books that have been helpful to us.
The Art of Making Sausages, Pâtés, and Other Charcuterie, by Jane Grigson (Knopf, 1976)—An oldie but a goodie; the title says it all.
Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn (W.W. Norton, 2005)—With more than 140 recipes, ranging from the classic prosciutto and pancetta to the nontraditional vegetable terrine and smoked salmon, this is the bible for curing meat at home.
Cooking by Hand, by Paul Bertolli (Clarkson Potter, 2003)—This cookbook/food memoir by the former Chez Panisse and Oliveto chef helped spark today’s charcuterie trend. The chapter titled “The Whole Hog” explains what to do with an entire pig.
Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen (2nd Edition), by the Culinary Institute of America (Wiley, 2004)—Used as a textbook at America’s most prestigious cooking school, this tome features recipes and instruction in making food that isn’t cooked with heat, like cold soups and sausages.
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I'm pretty sure that Armandino Batali is not native to Italy.
Thanks for pointing that out. We've made a change. Hope you like the story!
--Jason from Chow
This is one of the best piece I have ever read/watched in a food magazine. Can you make one on salami next?
We'd love to do salami, ngardet. It's a more complex process, but we'd like to offer a project for it someday. In the meantime, check out some of the books listed above. Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman is a great resource for the home-curer! (And let us know how your pancetta turns out.)
Great article. But it seems like the other half of this piece is missing, namely, sourcing outstanding meat. Batali in Seattle uses a small farm in Oregon's wine country (Carlton Farms). If you read Heat by Bill Buford, you know that Tuscany's most famous butcher, Dario Cecchini, sources meat from Spain of all places because the chianna are used partly as work animals, imparting a better flavor to the meat. Where can we foodies find meat like this? At the moment, most of us are at the mercy of our local butcher. Going online is confusing if you don't know what to look for. I'd love you folks to help us find good quality artisan meats. What do we look for? Who are the best providers? How do we get the artisan meat revolution to the tipping point? Help us out.
I own the Charcuterie book and it's great. I bought it for the brine information, which is very good, but a tricky process of time, size and strength.
Plus it's a darn good read!
Great article here, thanks!
Regarding the meat source question above: www.eatwild.com should yield a good start. But before that...read The Omnivours' Delema
Glad you all liked the piece. I agree with Peghead, that eatwild.com is great for sourcing meats from smaller farms. Www.heritagefoodsusa.com is also good, and has an online store. On this topic, stay tuned to Chow.com throughout the week. It's Meat Week, and we have some great articles coming up including one about buying an entire side of beef from a farmer, and another about how small farms process their meats.
http://www.chow.com/stories/10178
So once you have fully cured pancetta in your fridge.. how long does it keep?
It will keep for at least 2 to 3 weeks in the fridge. You can also cut the whole pancetta into chunks, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze for up to 4 months or so. (I advise cutting it and freezing, so you can make it last a while.)
my pancetta developed a mold while hanging....what do i do? it has about 2 more days to hang....help
Burgin, what does the mold look like (white, green, red?) and where is it on your pancetta? Also, is it humid, or damp where you live (has it been raining?) Does it smell foul? (A meaty, cured, slightly tart smell is fine.) Finally, did you omit any ingredients from the cure, such as the juniper or curing salt? I need a little more info. I hope we can salvage your pancetta!!
it's a green fuzzy mold on the end. I cut that section away, and the rest is fine. no ingredients were omitted. my rh gauge has been reading between 60 and 70 %.......i think it's gonna be ok....thanks for responding.....b
I followed the recipe and here are my results!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daryck/s...
Is there a way to make this kosher? I love pancetta and would like to pass on the goodness.....but have friends who can't eat pork? Is there a comparable cut of beef that would work in this recipe?
Hi,
I have mold down the seam of my pancetta. The color of the mold is light green and white. Otherwise it is kind of moist in the interior and smells spectacular.
What should I do? Is this type of mold ok?
Jeff
I've been trying to work up the nerve to get a pork bely and make rillettes. I made it with rabbit once (exquisite, iidssm), but pork is the real thing. Why don't restaurants offer this great dish?
Kosher Version: You can use Veal Breast instead, it will have a similiar look and texture, however, it's still veal and not pork.
Could someone let me know when you post such amazing stories on chowhound! Thanks for the props. For more great charcuterie info check out Professional Charcuterie by John Kinsell and David T. Harvey.
Christine Mullen
CAV wine bar and kitchen
I'm making my own bacon right now, and pancetta will be next, so thanks for the videos! I met Micheal Ruhlman when he was in town promoting his new book the Elements of Cooking, and had him sign his book Charcuterie for me. He left the following comment on my bacon post and asked me to pass it along:
"btw, i looked at the chow recipe. they say pink salt is the same as saltpeter. this isn't true. saltpeter is potassium nitrate. pink salt is sodium nitrite. important difference."
I posted elsewhere but there seems to be people with a similar issue here.
The pancetta I produced has developed white patches, primarily on meat surfaces, on the 4th day of hanging. I the conditions are right but air circulation might be a bit low. I didn't use sodium nitrate salt as I am allergic to it. Instead I used extra salt and was very careful and generous with the whole procedure. The smell is sweet and similar to the ingredients used in curing. The patches seem firm, taste salty and are pure white in colour.
I have no qualms about eating mold but I would rather not get food poisoning or something.
Cheers,
Jade
Back on Oct 28, 2006 jerryketel wrote:
" I'd love you folks to help us find good quality artisan meats."
I never saw a complete answer to that. Has any one found or created a list of these local artisan meat suppliers? I would like to find local (PNW) sources for lamb, goat, pork, fowl and beef. If you know of a good local source send it to me and I will create a list and post it.
Eat well and prosper,
skipperr
I followed the recipe, and came out a winner...albeit a bit moldy:
http://www.sweatyrobot.com/ericmlevy/...