Dreaming Small about Artisanal Butchering
Submitted by Editor on Thu, 12/24/2009 - 12:32pm.
Dick Wanner
Lancaster Farming Staff
NEWBURG, Pa. — Justin Severino’s big ambition is to be a small butcher. The Pittsburgh chef would like nothing better than to open a shop to make and sell fresh and cured meats to a core group of dedicated customers who appreciate not just the taste of his offerings, but also the work and the history behind them. And that core group has to be willing to pay double or more what they would pay in their local supermarket.
Severino spoke to and led a discussion group about charcuterie at a field day this past fall at Otterbein Acres, a 96-acre diversified farm owned by the Fisher family. The Fishers are Amish and operate their farm with a minimum of purchased inputs. Paul Fisher belongs to the second generation of the family and concentrates on raising Large Black English pigs, a heritage breed that thrives on pasture. It’s the kind of pig that Severino prefers when he’s curing, cutting and packaging meat for his customers.
Severino’s listeners were mostly members of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA). The PASA-sponsored pastured pork field day drew a sell-out crowd of 65 people, many of whom owned at least a few pigs. Severino was speaking to the choir on this day, and he and they were singing the praises of pigs raised without confinement, and the pork and pork products that can be made from the meat of those pigs.
After graduating from culinary school a dozen years ago, Severino worked in restaurants and on farms, mostly in California. He owned and operated an artisanal butcher business in that state, but eventually moved back East to be close to family. In culinary school, he recalled, there was almost no instruction in the art of butchering. “I was told I’d never have to cut and portion my own meat. So when I became interested in charcuterie — the art of using the whole pig — I had to look for my own answers.”
Culinary schools are returning to butchering, Severino said, and mentioned that he’d had conversations with Penn State about a butchering course they are are contemplating. One of his listeners also mentioned a six-week course in butchering that’s offered in New York state.
When he first started using the whole pig, Severino focused on making fresh sausage, and dry-cured bacon and salami for the cuts he didn’t sell fresh. He uses very little or no nitrites in his work. For bacon, he uses salt and sugar, and also, on occasion, a little maple syrup and bourbon. The salt and sugar draw the moisture from the bacon, the maple syrup and bourbon add a pinch of flavor that Severino likes.
It takes some work to cure bacon without nitrites, he said. He turns it daily, and keeps it in a locker that’s at 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 percent humidity.
His sausages he sells fresh, and his salamis are hung in the same room as the bacon to ferment and dry out for a month or longer.
Severino has recipes for different kinds of salamis. Lots and lots of recipes. Sometimes he follows them. “I started making better salamis when I stopped thinking about the whole process as a science project. You should have 70 percent humidity. Approximately. When I’m thinking about trying something new, I ask myself, ‘What would the Romans do?’ and part of the answer is that they’d mix up their batch and hang it in a cave. The process is as much art as it is science.”
While salamis — ground up meat, fat and spices, fermented in a casing and hung to cure — do go back to the Romans, charcuterie began in earnest in 15th-century France with the discovery that nitrates and nitrites could be used to cure and preserve meat in the days before refrigeration.
Charcuterie methods also add flavors — bold and subtle — that simply can’t be matched by the big batch processing methods that put tons of product at a time in grocery cases. Think brine-cured bacon, for one example.
Even for people willing to pay for artisanal pork products, supermarket meat sets expectations that the tastier and costlier charcuterie products don’t meet. Nitrite-cured meat is pink. Charcuterie isn’t. Smart marketing and consumer education are the only ways to bring back the artisanal products that Severino wants to deal with — the kind of cuts and products Americans two generations back used to buy at the corner butcher shop.
There is a movement, slow but steady, towards that kind of business, Severino believes, and he hopes to be part of it.
A small part.
Dick Wanner can be reached at rwanner.eph@lnpnews.com, or by phone at (717) 419-4703.
Dick Wanner
Lancaster Farming Staff
NEWBURG, Pa. — Justin Severino’s big ambition is to be a small butcher. The Pittsburgh chef would like nothing better than to open a shop to make and sell fresh and cured meats to a core group of dedicated customers who appreciate not just the taste of his offerings, but also the work and the history behind them. And that core group has to be willing to pay double or more what they would pay in their local supermarket.
Severino spoke to and led a discussion group about charcuterie at a field day this past fall at Otterbein Acres, a 96-acre diversified farm owned by the Fisher family. The Fishers are Amish and operate their farm with a minimum of purchased inputs. Paul Fisher belongs to the second generation of the family and concentrates on raising Large Black English pigs, a heritage breed that thrives on pasture. It’s the kind of pig that Severino prefers when he’s curing, cutting and packaging meat for his customers.
Severino’s listeners were mostly members of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA). The PASA-sponsored pastured pork field day drew a sell-out crowd of 65 people, many of whom owned at least a few pigs. Severino was speaking to the choir on this day, and he and they were singing the praises of pigs raised without confinement, and the pork and pork products that can be made from the meat of those pigs.
After graduating from culinary school a dozen years ago, Severino worked in restaurants and on farms, mostly in California. He owned and operated an artisanal butcher business in that state, but eventually moved back East to be close to family. In culinary school, he recalled, there was almost no instruction in the art of butchering. “I was told I’d never have to cut and portion my own meat. So when I became interested in charcuterie — the art of using the whole pig — I had to look for my own answers.”
Culinary schools are returning to butchering, Severino said, and mentioned that he’d had conversations with Penn State about a butchering course they are are contemplating. One of his listeners also mentioned a six-week course in butchering that’s offered in New York state.
When he first started using the whole pig, Severino focused on making fresh sausage, and dry-cured bacon and salami for the cuts he didn’t sell fresh. He uses very little or no nitrites in his work. For bacon, he uses salt and sugar, and also, on occasion, a little maple syrup and bourbon. The salt and sugar draw the moisture from the bacon, the maple syrup and bourbon add a pinch of flavor that Severino likes.
It takes some work to cure bacon without nitrites, he said. He turns it daily, and keeps it in a locker that’s at 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 percent humidity.
His sausages he sells fresh, and his salamis are hung in the same room as the bacon to ferment and dry out for a month or longer.
Severino has recipes for different kinds of salamis. Lots and lots of recipes. Sometimes he follows them. “I started making better salamis when I stopped thinking about the whole process as a science project. You should have 70 percent humidity. Approximately. When I’m thinking about trying something new, I ask myself, ‘What would the Romans do?’ and part of the answer is that they’d mix up their batch and hang it in a cave. The process is as much art as it is science.”
While salamis — ground up meat, fat and spices, fermented in a casing and hung to cure — do go back to the Romans, charcuterie began in earnest in 15th-century France with the discovery that nitrates and nitrites could be used to cure and preserve meat in the days before refrigeration.
Charcuterie methods also add flavors — bold and subtle — that simply can’t be matched by the big batch processing methods that put tons of product at a time in grocery cases. Think brine-cured bacon, for one example.
Even for people willing to pay for artisanal pork products, supermarket meat sets expectations that the tastier and costlier charcuterie products don’t meet. Nitrite-cured meat is pink. Charcuterie isn’t. Smart marketing and consumer education are the only ways to bring back the artisanal products that Severino wants to deal with — the kind of cuts and products Americans two generations back used to buy at the corner butcher shop.
There is a movement, slow but steady, towards that kind of business, Severino believes, and he hopes to be part of it.
A small part.
Dick Wanner can be reached at rwanner.eph@lnpnews.com, or by phone at (717) 419-4703.
