My Diet

The Cure

As told to Max Alexander
Apr 10, 2008 - 4:05:19 PM

A noted artist introduces you to his other obsession, making artisanal meats

I create large-scale glass sculptures for buildings designed by architects such as Frank Gehry and Norman Foster. But I have another creative interest: I make artisanal cured meats at home, a hands-on obsession that began four years ago. The two processes are surprisingly similar. Stretching glass to its limits requires discipline. Once a piece goes into my 3,000-degree kiln, natural processes take over that can't be controlled. Careful planning encourages spontaneous results that are charged with visual power and life. It's the same with salami.

Once a month, my friends and I meet in my kitchen for an afternoon of salami making. I control the ingredients and the environment, like in an experiment. I combine organic pork, salt, garlic, wine, spices, and curing salt, hang the casings in a modified wine fridge set to a specific temperature and humidity, and then introduce a bacteria culture to prevent spoilage and enhance the salami's flavor. Depending on the size of the salami, curing can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. The meat transforms into something both surprising and sublime, and it tastes far more complex and nuanced than anything mass-produced. Served with a full-bodied beer and some olives as an appetizer, a slice of homemade salami is hard to beat. It's more than food. It's art.

Homemade salami also happens to be far healthier than the processed stuff sold in most grocery stores. I source the hogs from an organic farmer who lets the animals roam freely and doesn't treat them with antibiotics or growth hormones. The hogs rummage for roots, nuts, and berries, and they occasionally eat organic grain. Paul Bertolli, a chef and salami expert in Berkeley, California, says that free-range pork live and die with far less stress than conventional confinement-raised pigs. That results in their meat often having a higher pH, which affects texture and taste. Curing my own meat has confirmed my belief in the importance of doing things myself. It requires patience, care, and delayed gratification, but if you're game, here's how to get started.


THE PLAN Cure your own old-world, Italian-style bacon

For a simple introduction to curing meat that doesn't require the use of curing salt, which can get complicated, try making the little-known Italian delicacy guanciale. Made from pig jowls, guanciale has a stronger pork flavor than bacon and isn't quite as lean as pancetta. Making it yourself is less problematic than making salami because the curing salt is optional; after curing the jowls for a month, you simply cook the meat as you would bacon. Use it in the delicious Roman pasta dish Bucatini all'Amatriciana—a favorite at Mario Batali's restaurant Babbo—or add it to an omelet as a simple upgrade.

Guanciale (Cured Pork Jowl)
½ cup sugar
½cup kosher salt
1 tsp. crushed fresh black peppercorns
4 sprigs fresh thyme leaves
½tsp. dried hot-pepper flakes
1 pork jowl (sometimes called cheeks), about 2 lbs., skin on

Note: Use pork belly instead to make regular bacon.

1 Combine all dry ingredients. Rub mixture all over pork jowl.
2 Place the jowl in a nonreactive container such as a casserole dish. Cover and refrigerate for a week. Turn it over and redress the mix over the meat every other day.
3 Transfer the jowl to a clean container fitted with a baking rack to elevate the meat and provide air circulation all around. Do not cover. Return to the refrigerator for three weeks, turning every day or so. (If you have room in your fridge, hang the jowl from a piece of twine and place a container beneath it to catch any drips.)
4 Within a week, slice and cook the meat like bacon. It can also be frozen.


THE ESSENTIALS Learn more about making salami

Outfit your kitchen. The two most essential pieces of equipment you’ll need are a meat grinder (for small home batches, the attachments sold for Kitchen-Aid stand mixers work well) and a quality manual sausage stuffer, such as the Italian-made Tre Spade. Equipment and supplies like casings and curing salts can be ordered from butcher-packer.com. To find an organic pig farmer near you, visit localharvest.com.

Get busy. Grind the meat and fat, add the spices and curing salt, evenly pack the mixture into casings, and then hang the salami in a cool, relatively humid environment (50°F and 70 percent humidity are ideal). A cool cellar will work well, but for more consistent results, invest in a small wine refrigerator with temperature and humidity controls. That’s a greatly simplified summary of the salami-making process. Before trying it yourself, read Cooking by Hand, by San Francisco chef Paul Bertolli, and Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.

Be patient. You’ll need to let the meat cure as long as three months before it’s ready to eat. Good salami is like wine. They’re like living things and certain types age very well, while others can be enjoyed within a matter of weeks.

Nikolas Weinstein, 39, is a San Francisco-based glass artist who specializes in large-scale installations. nikolas.net


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