KP’s Cured Meats

Classic Duck Prosciutto

A soft, flavorful cousin of its pork counterpart, duck prosciutto is smoky and delicate on its own. We add garlic and cracked tellicherry black pepper to the cure for a savory product that is sliced as thinly as possible and ideally eaten on its own or with cheese. Similar to pancetta, it can also be sautéed and used in sauces and soups, but we recommend steering away from heavily acidic or tomato-based dishes, as the flavor is delicate and will lose prominence. Think mussels, white wine sauces for seafood, and lighter Italian pasta fare.

Cheese: sharp Cheddars, Compté, Primadonna, Pecorino Gran Cru, and aged, non-smoked Goudas

Wine: Nebbiolo, Lambrusco, Pinotage, soft Pinot Noirs, Grenache; for whites, try a dry Riesling or Gewurztraminer

Pork Filetto

This is prime pork tenderloin. The beautiful thing about the smaller muscle cures like this is that they dry quickly, leaving a nice ring of salty, arid meat around a red, rich center. When sliced, it almost resembles a medium-rare steak. Strong black pepper flavor, garlic, rosemary — this cure has a lot going on, and is relatively addictive on its own. We’d recommend against cooking with it, as the cut is nearly without fat, but it goes well on crackers and even as a decadent sandwich layer.

Cheese: pecorinos, bleues, and generally easygoing cheeses all pair well

Wine: Nero d’Avola, Montepulciano, Coteaux du Lyonnaise, Tempranillo; for whites, Proseccos and Champagnes are a great choice, as well as Pinot Blanc and acidic rosés

Bresaola

One of the few beef salumi from the Italian tradition, Bresaola is a whole muscle cure using the eye of round cut. Lean and subsequently low in fat, the focus is on the cure profile: juniper berry, rosemary, white pepper, and other game spices. We allow this to mature a little longer than what is common, in order to accommodate extra weight loss. This lends the final product a drier, (and in our opinion) bigger, more concentrated flavor. The end result is a great cure for folks who are both new to cured meat and those who are looking for something new.

Cheese: aged Parmesan, Asiago, anything well-crystalized; also young, fresh chèvre or even cheese spreads

Wine: rosé wines do very well, specifically Côtes de Provence or something Grenache-based; otherwise, white blends such as a Bordeaux Blanc or Côtes du Rhône Blanc

Guanciale

The wheels on any good carbonara, guanciale is typically made for cooking purposes as a tasty level-up from bacon. Because of its dense, rich flavor, guanciale adds depth to dishes and offers a lot of fat to render. Chefs usually go low and slow, set aside the meat, and then use the fat to begin sauteing vegetables, garlic, or to build a roux for a sauce. You can’t go wrong in the kitchen if you keep the heat low. But, we hang our guanciale for well over 90 days, bringing it to charcuterie board standard, especially if sliced very thinly. Lightly spicy, but no danger alert.

Cheese: not quite a cheese-pairing cure; go with what you have for the other items on your board

Wine: for cooking purposes, pair with the dish; on a board, Malvasia, Soave, Montepulciano, or a bubbly if the weather is right

There are three major elements to curing meat: time, touch, and science. We think this is a good way to explain the basics of our process.

The time is just that. Preparation, curing, stuffing, oftentimes fermenting—all of this takes, well, time and effort. This is the initial phase and depends on whether we’re curing salume (whole muscle cures like guanciale, pancetta, and prosciutto) or if we’re prepping salame (chorizo, sopressata—dried sausages). In the case of whole muscle cures, they will go through a salting process wherein the cure is left to penetrate the product. Once the proper time has elapsed for the whole muscle cures, we rinse and prep them for the chamber, sometimes using additional spices, rubbing them with wine, and even using larger cases to ensure an even drying process. For salami, all of the cure is mixed into the meat mixture, which is then stuffed into casings, fermented for a short time, and then directly moved to the chamber for maturation*.

The second phase happens in the curing chambers. This is when we touch—in two senses. We physically check to make sure the process is moving along correctly. Also, there’s a culinary-style intuition that lets you know, based on experience, how the final product is shaping up. The color, smell, the evenness of the moisture loss—these are all elements that defy a hard timeline or, in certain cases, a perfectly replicable technique. Very important tweaks are made here and there. It’s worth saying that each muscle is different, and one salami hanging just a few inches away from another isn’t necessarily going to mature at the same pace.

At the end of the maturation segment, science really steps in. We have to check the pH and make sure everything is safe under the microscope, among other things. But the science really starts up front, and luckily the major guidelines that we follow to ensure the whole journey is worth the effort are embedded in a longstanding tradition of curing and preserving meat—from Italy to Scandinavia to Southern Africa to MesoAmerica. We borrow quite a lot from history, check it with contemporary technology, sometimes tweak the cures to a contemporary palette, and happily get to enjoy the results.

*Maturation is a term we use that describes the ‘drying’ period in the chamber. The reason we call it maturation is that much more is happening than just drying. This is when everything is hanging out, looking appetizing.

The KP’s Cured Meats program exists for a couple of reasons. Plain and simple: we’re just fans of cured meat—from French-style saucisson sec to Calabrian salami, to cured products from all over the world. It’s an opportunity to combine the goals of the butcher shop with our desire to bring locally made salumi to the city.

You can go to a grocery store and find mass produced products, which aren't great. Or you can find yourself at a shop that imports great products from Europe and even a few other places in the US. Our aim has been to create a line of products, an entire program, in a small, craft-oriented environment—small-batch, hands on, item by item, and most importantly made here for the people we know.

Automated processes in large facilities can’t emulate the intimacy of human touch. Each recipe, whether it be a salami or duck prosciutto, reacts differently to the myriad of factors involved in the process. Likewise, each cut that we work with benefits greatly from careful attention, experience, and vision. The whole batch isn’t hung and then packed. Nothing comes down or goes out that isn’t exactly to our standards. The difference is night and day, and we think that our friends and customers deserve access to that level of quality.

What we think salumi is all about, like most artisanal food crafts, is its location, its terroir—but it’s also about style, attitude, and palate. Philadelphia is a city that takes the culinary scene seriously, yet is also playful, dynamic. We’re excited to use time-honored techniques and combine it with new flavor profiles to come up with ideas, both unique and traditional.

“If you want proper Prosciutto di Parma, you have to get it from Italy. But you can cure anything anywhere if you can create the right conditions. If you have enough time to experiment and perfect new products, the possibilities are endless. It really takes a lot of time—because that’s how curing works—to even get a basic handle on the European tradition, but I think we’re in a place to see some American-born styles take off.” — Joe Trinkle, KP’s salumier

Sherry-Soaked Calabrese