Race for the Cured

The meat slicer could be the first appliance to earn a place on the kitchen counter since the espresso machine. That’s because American artisans are no longer hiding the salumi — Italian for cured meats. The process by which cuts of meat, usually pork, are salted and aged in a place that’s cool, dark and drafty, like a mountain cave (the traditional method) or a well-ventilated meat locker (the Food and Drug Administration’s preference), is now being mastered on these shores.

The only way to enjoy salumi is when it’s sliced paper-thin, preferably just before eating. But try using a knife on a salame (plural: salami) and you’re putting your knuckles at serious risk. Ergo a deli-style slicer like the Chef’s Choice VariTilt 632, available by Internet order at Williams-Sonoma ($280; www.williams-sonoma.com).

It cuts thinly and evenly every time, and the rakishly tilted blade allows your slices to fall nicely onto a waiting platter. Best of all, you can stock your fridge with slabs of meat that will never make it to supermarket, like coppa from Salumi Artisan Cured Meats in Seattle or lardo from Taverna Santi in Geyserville, Calif. They can turn a snack into a sumptuous spread in less than five minutes. Just watch your fingers.

Bresaola Bresaola is a lean cut of beef that’s been salted and air-dried. The Fatted Calf in Berkeley, Calif., takes grass-fed eye round from Marin Sun Farms, cures it with sea salt and spices for two weeks, then slathers it with a funky coat of red wine and garlic paste and lets it hang for another eight weeks. $35 per pound; go to www.fattedcalf.com.

Coppa It’s like prosciutto, except that it’s made from pork shoulder and neck; when sliced, it’s a delicious swirl of fat and rosy meat. The coppa from Salumi Artisan Cured Meats is salted and sprinkled with sugar and pepper flakes, then aged for 10 weeks. $16 per pound; go to www.salumicuredmeats.com.

Lardo Sometimes euphemistically called “white prosciutto,” lardo is pork back fat that’s been salted and aged. It’s advanced salumi, and nearly impossible to find. But the executive chef Dino Bugica of Taverna Santi makes it with an intensely flavorful rub of ground allspice, cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, peppercorns and star anise. A half-pound piece of lardo is $7; go to www.tavernasanti.com.

Mortadella Mortadella isn’t salumi — it’s cooked, not cured — but it’s one of the all-stars of Italian sausage.

Fra’ Mani, Paul Bertolli’s salumeria in Berkeley, just started making a mortadella with finely chopped (instead of puréed) Niman Ranch pork; like the real stuff from Bologna, it dissolves in your mouth. Just don’t call it baloney. Available this spring; go to www.framani.com for information.

Prosciutto A ham hind leg that’s been boned, salted, air-dried and traditionally aged for at least eight months, prosciutto is the big game of salumi. Most prosciutto is crudo, which means salted when raw and then aged. The prosciutto from Benton’s Country Hams in Madisonville, Tenn., is made with Berkshire pork and aged for 15 months; there’s sugar in the cure, and the unorthodox depth makes it a favorite at pork-obsessed restaurants like Manhattan’s Momofuku. Deep in the heart of Iowa’s pig country, La Quercia makes a pure prosciutto with heirloom breeds. Rarer still is prosciutto cotto, where the leg is cured and then cooked. You can find it at Col. Bill Newsom’s Aged Kentucky Country Hams in Princeton, Ky., and as the centerpiece of the artisanal ham tasting at Manhattan’s Bar Americain.

Salame and Soppressata Salame is cured sausage; gourmet stores sometimes use “salame” and “soppressata” interchangeably, though soppressata is a kind of salame often made with cuts from the head of the pig. Salame is produced in New York by such institutions as G. Esposito & Sons Pork Store in Brooklyn and Calabria Pork Store in the Bronx, but a delicious newcomer, the salame Toscano from Fra’ Mani, is cured with garlic, red wine and sea salt, and it tastes like the Tuscan — or Berkeley — hills. $175 for seven pounds, including shipping; go to www.framani.com.

Speck Made from the same cut of the leg as prosciutto, speck is smoked before being salted and aged, an extra step that reflects its Dolomite origin and Austrian influences. The buttery speck from La Quercia is aged up to 10 months, about twice as long as most speck, and then cold-smoked with applewood. $24 per pound; go to www.laquercia.us.