Vecchio Salami

Cured for flavor and longevity

Curing is an ancient process that makes meat safe by keeping it inhospitable to the microbes that would otherwise cause rot. Most commonly, this is done by salting, smoking, and drying. When cured slowly and traditionally, these techniques not only make the meat safe to keep, they also make it extra delicious. Salami will last for weeks or even months if stored correctly and unsliced.

We don’t necessarily ship salami with ice packs. Since it’s cured, it’s healthy and happy at warm temperatures. To prolong its life at home keep it refrigerated. But hours or even days at warmer temperatures won’t harm it a bit.

You can’t have a salami without mold

Downy white mold is as essential to salami flavor as blue mold is for blue cheese. Every good salami has mold on it at some point in its life. It’s a sign the salami is aging well; the mold protects the fat from going rancid. If you’re buying one without mold it was probably washed off at some point. It’s edible, but you can also wash it off with a bit of vinegar and water if you’d like. If a little mold returns in time it’s a good sign.

Sliced to order

A whole salami keeps its integrity. It stays moist and sweet. As soon as you slice a bit off the air starts to change the flavor. We ship all of our salamis whole so the flavor stays intact. Slicing them is easy. Don’t worry about slicing thin pieces. Many salami lovers think a little thicker is better.

Don’t be mislead by visible fat

Just because you see more fat in one salami than another doesn’t mean it has a higher fat content. It often means it was ground a little more coarsely. Most good salamis are about 1/3 fat, give or take.

Smaller is bigger

Smaller salamis usually have more intense flavors. In a similar way to wine, where petite grapes have a higher skin to fruit ratio and therefore more tannins, small salamis have more rind to meat ratio, therefore the rind molds have a greater effect on flavor. Smaller salamis also expel moisture faster which intensifies their flavor.

Use your senses

A good salami has a short ingredient list with no corn syrup. It is glowing pink on the inside, but not too red (in which case it might be artificially colored). It has a sweet, porky smell with clean flavors and no chemically, powdered garlic aftertaste or sourness which is a telltale sign of a bad cure.

Like with most traditional foods, if you serve salami at room temperature you’ll get a lot more flavor than if it’s eaten cold, just out of the refrigerator.

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.