American Cheese and Charcuterie Gift Box

What to expect when you’re expecting cheese

In warmer months (early April to mid September), we ship cheese with two business day service plus warm weather care. We employ an ice pack and insulation defensive strategy to protect against warm delivery trucks and warm warehouses and ensure your shipment arrives in great shape. The rest of the year (late September to the end of March), the shipping method will either be flat rate service (1-4 business days) for our durable hard, aged cheeses or two business day service for our younger and more perishable cheeses.

If you see oil, that’s just moisture leaking out of the cheese. Cheesemongers call it weeping, which sounds sad, but it’s natural and there’s no need for condolences. Just wipe your wedge with a cloth.

When you open a wrapped piece of cheese that’s been closed in a box the aroma can be strong. The tight quarters don’t let it breathe well. Don’t worry. Give it a half hour of fresh air when you want to eat it

How to store your cheese

Cheeses love temperatures around 50 degrees. Don’t worry if it arrives a bit warmer or a bit colder – cheese is durable. Place it in the door of your refrigerator or in a drawer where the temperature is consistent but not too cold, ideally the spot closest to 50 degrees. 

Keep the cheese in the cheese bag it came in, which will keep it better for longer. The next best option would be parchment or wax paper. After you open the cheese for a nibble, any remainders can be put back into the bag and closed with a simple roll or fold. 

Do not freeze your cheese! Cheese is a living thing. Freezing will stop the natural processes that keep cheese so tasty. 

How to enjoy your cheese

Take your cheese out of the fridge about 20 to 30 minutes before you plan to serve it. Cheese tastes better at room temperature. It makes a world of difference: the aromas expand, becoming more complex; more of the fat spreads on your tongue, which makes the flavor more intense. When cheese is warm you’ll eat less of it and enjoy it more.

In central Wisconsin, about halfway between Minneapolis and Green Bay sits the small town of Thorp, home to Holland Family Cheese. The farm was founded by Rolf and Marieke Penterman, immigrants from the Netherlands. Land was too expensive to set up a cheesemaking enterprise in Europe, so, lucky us, they settled in Wisconsin and starting making cheese.

The Pentermans make gouda every day, all year round, from their closed herd of about four hundred cows. The cows live indoors on comfy beds of playground sand, feed on silage and hay, and have access to spinning bristly brushes dangling in the corners of their pens to scratch their back when it itches. Automated scrapers remove manure from the floors and each cow wears a kind of bovine fit-bit that monitors their temperature, behavior, eating habits, if the cow is in heat (!), etc. The level of technology used may sound antithetical to artisan producers, but it’s not used to make the cows give more milk, just to keep them healthy. When 100% of the milk for your cheese comes from your own cows you tend to take care of them very, very well. These are well loved and well cared for animals and they produce really flavorful milk that becomes really flavorful gouda that rivals the best goudas coming out of The Netherlands.

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 popping up every other week.

It’s not a coincidence that the rise in American salami coincides with the growing interest in eating better meat and the rise of whole animal butchery. Using the whole animal means not discarding the fat and trimmings—and the traditional way to use them is to turn them into salami.

New traditions, old techniques.

In Europe, many of the best salamis are made by masters who have been curing meat most of their lives. To become a salami maker, you apprentice with a master for years or decades. Eventually, when the master is ready to retire, you take over the business. In the US, since we don’t have venerable old salami makers to apprentice under, the new crop of American salami makers are largely self-taught. They might reach out to an expert or go to Europe to work a brief stint with a butcher, but for the most part, they learned to make salami by reading books or watching videos and then tinkering until they come up with a recipe they really like.

But while they’re creating new salamis, they’re not inventing new techniques. The best new American salamis start with really good meat, which more times than not means heritage-breed pork raised on pasture without any hormones or antibiotics. The only other ingredients they add are simple and pronounceable, like garlic, wine, or sea salt. They encase the salamis in natural casings that grow patchy white mold on the outside (an essential part of the maturing process that protects the fat in the salami from going rancid while it cures). And they cure the salamis for weeks or months until they reach their peak of flavor.

Selecting and serving superior salami.

Not all of the salami made in the states these days is great. Some of them are overly spiced so you can’t taste the pork, or too small so they dry out quickly and get tough. But the good ones are really, really good—I’d even say that the best ones rival the best salamis made in Europe. When choosing a salami, look for one with a glowing pink color, a sweet, porky aroma, clean flavors without any sourness, and a pleasant texture that’s not too tough or too soft. Serve it at room temperature to get the maximum flavor. Eat the casing or not—your choice. Slice it yourself as you’re eating, that way it dries out less, and try some cut on the thicker side so you can really taste the pork.

Nduja (pronounced en-doo-ya) is soft, spreadable cured pork, spiked with plenty of chiles. In the charcuterie world, nduja falls into the category of “spreadable salamis” (I promise that’s a real thing). Mmm, spreadable meat—can’t you just picture Homer Simpson mumbling it? You might think of it as spicy pork butter, though there’s no dairy involved.

It starts out like salami: raw pork and pork fat are mixed together with seasonings, then hung to cure for several weeks. Like all salamis, nduja was traditionally made with the meat left from butchery. The difference that makes salami solid and nduja spreadable is in the proportions. Most salami is about 75-80% lean meat and 20-25% fat. Nduja is the opposite. All that extra fat makes the texture luscious and spreadable.

A few decades ago, nduja was all but unknown outside of its hometown of Spilinga in Calabria.

Calabria has long been known for its fruit and spicy chiles. Nduja is a more recent export. In fact, the nduja we get today isn’t an export at all—in the US it’s illegal to import Italian salami, so essentially all of the “Italian-style” salamis you see at the store are made right here in the states. Maybe nduja stayed a secret because of those tricky export laws or maybe the people of Spilinga just wanted to keep it all for themselves. But eventually word got out, and over the last decade it’s been making a big impression in the food world. It’s no surprise—tasting nduja for the first time is a memorable event. There’s the punch of spice, the unctuous richness, the silky texture, the deep, savory meatiness. The Wall Street Journal’s Jane Black said: “If Joan Jett were an Italian, and a sausage, she’d be ‘nduja.”

Our nduja is made by Tony Fiasche, a fifth-generation nduja maker.

Tony’s grandparents owned a butcher shop near Spilinga. Tony’s father, Agostino, was born there and grew up helping his father in the shop. As a boy he remembers breaking down whole hogs and grinding meat by hand with a crank—”not like we do today!” he recalls. Growing up, he says “my parents didn’t have money to buy me shoes. But there was always bread, always salami, always nduja.” He ate it on bread, mixed into pasta, on pizza.

Tony’s nduja starts with heritage-breed pork and chiles imported from Calabria.

His classic recipe features Berkshire pork. Berkshire is one of the most popular heritage breeds with chefs. It’s tender and has big flavor—to me it’s especially “porky.” Tony gets his Berkshire pork from a collection of family farms in southwest Minnesota. The pigs live free range, roaming and rooting as they please, spending their days outdoors as the weather permits. They never receive subtherapeutic antibiotics or growth-promoting hormones.

Of course, with the recent nduja craze, Tony’s not the only one making it.

One less traditional approach comes from the pork curing masterminds at La Quercia in Iowa. Rather than make their nduja with raw pork, they begin with the trimmings leftover from their prosciutto, speck, and coppa, after the meat has cured for months. While there’s still plenty of spice involved, the smooth, savory flavor of the cured pork carries through.