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.
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
Goualsh is a beef stew originally from Hungary but eaten all over Central Europe. It is the kind of preparation that Europeans will fight to the death over. Matters like whether it is properly called a stew or a soup, whether it contains tomatoes, or potatoes, or what starch it is served with (if any) often become violent. It is estimated that 12 Europeans are killed every year in goulash-related arguments.[1]
