For the Love of Charcuterie

Charcuterie board from the Happy Gnome.  Photo by Rob Robitaille.

I don't like charcuterie.  I am passionately in love with it.  I can think of few things so gratifying to eat.  Charcuterie, when well executed, is incredibly flavorful and decadent.  But, what is charcuterie?  If you are unfamiliar with the term, I will bet that you know exactly what it is and have probably eaten it.  Charcuterie was a way to preserve meat, typically pork, in the days before refrigeration.  The process typically involved some type of salting/curing, smoking, drying, or potting.  Today it exists simply because it is delicious.  Some common, modern examples of charcuterie are ham, bacon, dry cured sausage, pastrami, corned beef, confits, and rillettes, to name but a few.  I have always dabbled in the art of charcuterie, but really became passionate in the past ten years. So, lets dissect this a bit and talk about some of the main areas of charcuterie that most people would care about.

Salt Cured Food

This is one that most people are familiar with.  The important thing about salt cured foods is that most, but not all, also use sodium nitrate/nitrite, which are critical in dry cured foods in order to protect against botulism.  The process is complex, but just be aware of the role sodium nitrate/nitrite plays in curing.  Examples of this type of food are bacon, prosciutto, pancetta, ham, corned beef, pastrami, sausage, beef jerky, and gravlax, just to name a few.  This is a prime example of the carry-over from the need to preserve, to not being able to imagine life without these.  Can you imagine a world with no bacon?  Steven King couldn't even top that horror.  Once cured, some of these foods, like corned beef, are simply cooked.  Some are served as is, like gravlax.  Some are smoked, like bacon, pit ham, and certain types of sausage.  And then there are some that are hung to dry without any cooking, like prosciutto, pancetta, some types of ham, beef jerky, and sausages like salami, soppressata, pepperoni, chorizo, and bresaola.

Although most salt cured foods are a type of animal protein, it is not limited them.  Fruits and vegetables can be salt cured as well.  Examples of this are sauerkraut, preserved lemons, fermented pickles like the ones you get at a good deli, and kimchi.  Not surprisingly, I have every one of those examples in my fridge right now.

Confit and Rillettes

Confits are essentially foods that have been cured, placed in an earthenware container, covered in fat, then slowly cooked until extremely tender.  Then, they are left to cool so that the fat firms up, thus sealing the food and preserving it for an extended period of time.  On the of most popular examples is duck confit, a personal favorite of mine.  Duck leg quarters are salt cured with some aromatics.  Then rinsed, dried and placed in a crock or similar dish and completely covered in rendered duck fat.  The duck is then slowly baked in the oven at round 180 degrees for several hours.  Once done, it is allowed to cool in the cooking vessel and then stored.  They are good right away, but are even better when allowed to "ripen" for a week or two in the fridge. They can be used as ingredients in other dishes, or roasted until the skin is crisp and eaten as is.  They can also be turned into rillettes.

A rillettes is often, but not always, made from a confit.  One thing that remains fairly constant, is that the meat is cooked with a descent amount of fat.  Other things can be added such as onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and any other herb or spice that you like.  The whole thing is then turned into a paste that can be spread on bread.  Like confit, it can be potted and covered with fat as a form of preservation.  In the age of refrigeration, this is mostly just a decadent and wonderful accompaniment to a great craft beer.

Dry Cured Foods

Dry cured foods, as we have already discussed, are foods that have been salt cured then allowed to dry.  Because they are cured and are dry, they will keep without refrigeration for along time.  These are among my favorite because of the buttery feel they have due to the amount of fat in them.  However, this is perhaps the most difficult of all charcuterie in the it is very finicky about temperature and humidity.  Also, our friend, and sometimes enemy, mold can jump in an wreak havoc on even the bet laid plans.  To be honest, outside of jerky, which is sped along with a dehydrator, I haven't dabbled much in this area as I do not have, what I feel, are the right conditions or location for this.  Add a few house cats into the mix and it gets even worse.  So, I have this one on my bucket list and will attempt it at some point when I find the right place.

Smoked Foods

We have already touched on this above, because to really preserve a food, smoked food must first be cured with salt and sodium nitrate/nitrite.  Then, the food is smoked, which adds another layer of preservation on top of the curing.  The process of smoke curing is so complex, that I am not even going to attempt to explain it here.  Let's just say a really complex set of chemical reactions take place that help cure and add flavor.  Again, this is not something that we need to do any longer to preserve our food.  The real fun is more to do with using the smoke as a seasoning.  Different foods lend themselves to different types of smoke.  Fish go better with lighter smoke flavors from woods like alder.  Pork and poultry is good with fruit woods like apple, and nut wood like hickory and pecan.  Beef can take a lot of flavor, so it can be paired with mesquite, hickory, pecan, and walnut.  Let's not forget the little known, but wonderful corn cob, which is great with pork and poultry.  Seriously.  I wouldn't lie about charcuterie.

I hope this has helped you understand charcuterie a little better.  As I said, most people have eaten, or at least heard of most of these foods.  This is just a basic primer into charcuterie, but the subject is very extensive and whole books have been written about it.  If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend CHARCUTERIE The craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.  It talks about the stuff I discussed above in much more detail and is filled with recipes that most people can do at home (perhaps with the exception of dry curing).  If you really want a deep dive into what really happens when you cure meat and smoke it, I recommend On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.  McGee, as it is sometimes simply referred to, is arguably the best text on the subject of food and cooking.  It goes into great detail on the physics and chemistry of the kitchen.  Be advised, it is not an easy relaxing read.  It is basically a text book written at the college level, but I recommend it for anyone that takes cooking seriously and wants a great reference for the kitchen.  Have fun.