Category Archives: Charcuterie

Introduction to Charcuterie

April 4, 2018 allansuddaby Leave a comment

This is the information I provide students in my Charcuterie at Home class, which I run a few times a year for Metro Continuing Education.

A charcuterie plate with air-dried beef in the top right.

What is charcuterie?

Charcuterie is a French word, from char for flesh or meat, and cuit for
cooked.
Originally this was a medieval guild that was allowed to prepare certain cooked
meat dishes like pâté and terrine.
These days it broadly refers to cured meat, whether bacon, ham, salami,
prosciutto, or even duck confit and jerky. It also encompasses other meat preparations like fresh sausages.
Most charcuterie techniques – salt-curing, smoking, and air-drying – were
developed as a way to preserve meat.
Even though we now have ways to pasteurize, refrigerate, and freeze
meat, we

Beef, Charcuterie, Meat, Seasonal, St. Patrick's Day

Corned Beef

March 15, 2017 allansuddaby 6 Comments

Originally posted on March 18, 2012

Corned beef, also known as salt beef and spiced beef, is a national dish of Ireland. Recipes vary, but the cure is usually made of kosher salt, curing salt, a heap of brown sugar, and spices like clove, allspice, black pepper, and mustard seed. The cured meat is gently simmered (usually in water, sometimes in beer) until tender, and can be eaten hot or cold.

To clarify, corned beef has nothing to do with maize. “Corn” was once a broad English term for a small bit, whether a grain of wheat, or a crystal of salt. “Corned beef” is beef that has been covered in corns of salt.^[1]

Like most charcuterie, corned beef … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Dumplings

Butcher’s Cake

March 12, 2017 allansuddaby 1 Comment

I’ll mention right off the hop that this concept is from the brain of Emmanuel (Manu) Thériault. He might have made this when he was at Woodwork, but I’m not sure. He calls it “Butcher’s Cake”. He told me about it and I think it’s one of the most brilliant food ideas I’ve heard in a very long time.

Part of the reason I am so enamored with butcher’s cake is because I work in a sandwich shop. When you work in a sandwich shop, you have at least three significant sources of possible waste. The first is bread. Bread is a problem ingredient because it has such short shelf life. It can be difficult to maintain fresh inventory, and … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pâtés and Terrines, Québécoise

Cretons

November 24, 2016 allansuddaby Leave a comment

Originally posted December 15, 2009 (if you can believe that). Re-posted today with some major corrections. I first read about cretons in an article in The Ottawa Citizen by then-food-columnist Ron Eade. He presented cretons as a Quebecois variation on rillette. A while back Emmanuel (Manu) of Pied Cochon, Joe Beef, and Woodwork fame gave me the skinny on cretons, and they really are not like rillettes at all. I am not able to find that original Ron Eade article to expose it. Presumably someone from the lower St. Lawrence forced him to remove it as libel or lies. Anyways.

Cretons is a pork spread made by simmering ground pork and aromatics like onion, bay, and clove in milk or … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Cured Fatback – Lardo

November 17, 2016 allansuddaby Leave a comment

Originally posted on July 5, 2014.

This post is about cured fatback, most commonly known by its Italian name lardo.

Fatback is the subcutaneous fat that covers the pork loin. Resist the urge to say “back fat”: it’s called fatback. Industrially-raised pigs are intentionally grown very lean, so the fatback is typically only an inch thick. Heritage pigs can have three inches or more of fatback. These are the animals you need in order to make lardo.

Two autumns ago I got a side of Tamworth pork from Nature’s Green Acres. The fatback was two and a half inches thick in some places. It was the first pig that I ever cut that truly deserved to have … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pork, Sausages

Plain Jane Garlic Sausage

September 20, 2016 allansuddaby Leave a comment

It recently dawned on me that I don’t have any sausage recipes on this site. Which is crazy. So I’m going to post a bunch. For details on procedure and technique, I have two posts linked below. Also… I happen to be teaching a sausage-making class for Metro Continuing Education on October 19, 2016.

This simple sausage goes by many names in my house, among them “everyday sausage”, “plain Jane”, and occasionally “garlic brat”, though it is not a bratwurst in the strictest sense.^[1]

I wanted a relatively neutral sausage that would go well with most of the food I cook at home, which I would describe as North American farmstead with a serious … Continue reading.

Sausages

Breakfast Sausage Recipe

September 19, 2016 allansuddaby Leave a comment

I wanted to create an artisan version of the little sausages you get at dive-y breakfast institutions like the Commodore. The kind of diners that that pour you bad coffee all morning.

North American breakfast sausage is usually made entirely of pork. It is ground quite fine and mixed to emulsify so that it has a very delicate texture. It is often flavoured … Continue reading.

Austrian, Charcuterie, Meat, Pâtés and Terrines, Regional

Preßwurst

December 29, 2014 allansuddaby Leave a comment

Preßwurst, transliterated “presswurst” and pronounced “PRESS-voorst,” is Austrian headcheese.

Headcheese is a polarizing preparation with a terrible name, but I think borrowing a trick from Preßwurst can make headcheese much more palatable to North Americans.

Both dishes are made from pork head and trotter. The meat is brine-cured so it is rosy pink, then simmered until tender. The meat is strained, shredded, and packed into a mold with some of the gelatin-rich cooking liquid, which firms into aspic when chilled. Full details on the procedure can be found in this post.

The most important way in which Austrian Preßwurst differs from North American headcheese is that after being packed into the mold, a heavy weight is rested on … Continue reading.

Austrian, Charcuterie, Meat, Regional

Schmalzfleisch

December 22, 2014 allansuddaby 1 Comment

Schmalzfleisch is one of the staple Aufstriche (spreads) at an Austrian Heuriger. If that sentence made absolutely no sense to you, read this post before proceeding.

Schmalzfleisch literally means “fat-meat”. It is one of several dishes Austrians have developed to use up irregular scraps of cured meat, like the very end of a ham that can’t quite be passed through the meat slicer.

The process for making Schmalzfleisch is simple: pieces of cured meat are ground, then mixed with rendered lard to form a cohesive paste that can be spread on bread. Traditionally cured meat and fat are the only two ingredients. I like to add a touch of mustard for balancing acidity.

If you grew up in … Continue reading.

Austrian, Charcuterie, Ham, Meat, Regional

Schweinsbraten – The Ultimate Ham

December 15, 2014 allansuddaby Leave a comment

Schweinsbraten literally means “roasted pork”. If you order it in an Austrian restaurant, you will get a slice of greyish meat, usually but not always from the shoulder of the animal. If you order it in an Austrian Heuriger, you will get something a bit different.

Thinly sliced Schweinsbraten All the food at a Heuriger is served cold, and meat is typically cured. Schweinsbraten at a Heuriger is cured, like ham. What makes this particular ham so special is the cut of meat it is made from: the Schopf.

The Schopf extends forward from the loin of the pig, into the shoulder primal. It has the same round cross-section as the loin, only it also has a very healthy amount of … Continue reading.

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