Pancetta to Prosciutto: Everything You Need to Know About Italian Cured Meats

Italian cured meats are more accessible than ever — and with the rising popularity of crafting at-home snack-able platters of meats and cheeses, that's a very good thing. But knowing the difference between prosciutto and coppa, or when to use pancetta versus guanciale can be difficult if you're not intimately familiar with the world of salumi. Learn the language of these lusciously savory cured meats and enter a new world of flavor.

What Is Salumi?

Not to be confused with 'salami' (which is a type of salumi), salumi is an umbrella term that broadly describes Italian-style cured meats. In French cuisine, the word charcuterie is used to describe meat products usually prepared in a French style, including things like pate or terrines; Italy's counterpart is salumi.

Salumi can be divided into two general categories: whole muscle and salami. The first is whole muscle cuts, usually taken from a pig. The most common of the seven main muscles are the leg, loin (back), belly, jowl, and shoulder. The salami category represents a mixture of the muscles and other scrapes or offal. There are, of course, different regional salumi from all around Italy, but these are the most commonly found varieties.

Essential Types of Salumi

Bresaola

The only product on this list that's not pork, bresaola earned its spot with its unique flavor. Deep crimson in color and made from beef, bresaola is like jerky but better. It is an excellent reprieve on any charcuterie board with a chewier texture and less of a salty twang than most cured meats.

Unlike most of the other meats on this list, bresaola is made from incredibly lean meat and has almost no marbling or fat cap. Bresaoloa's striking deep ruby shade creates a dynamic visual for any presentation.

Coppacola

Also known as coppa, coppocollo, or gabbagool, this cured meat is similar to prosciutto but cranked up to eleven. Coppa comes from the neck or shoulder of the pig and is salt-cured similar to other salumi, but with a twist: most types come in sweet or hot varieties. Sugar is added to the standard salt cure for a balanced coppa.

Get the recipe: Capicola Canapes

Chili flakes or Calabrian chili is added for the hot variety, with the occasional addition of other warming spices like clove or nutmeg, depending on the region. Deep in flavor with a funky bite, coppa is a shining star and prefers to be the only diva on the plate.

Lardo

If you're a fan of pork belly or Southern fatback, lardo is for you. This luxurious meat from the fat on the back of the pig is rubbed with a mixture of spices, including black pepper, rosemary, garlic, coriander, and anise. Confusingly, lardo is lard, but you don't generally cook with it.

Where high-fat cured meats like guanciale or pancetta are great for cooking, lardo is best enjoyed raw and by itself. Sliced paper-thin, lardo absolutely melts in your mouth and is an explosion of impossibly silky condensed pork flavor.

Mortadella

Think of mortadella like grown-up bologna. Like bologna, mortadella is also a cooked, cold cut made of pork. Unlike bologna, mortadella boasts the texture of a silk pillowcase. Flecked with little pockets of fat and often studded with black peppercorns and pistachios, this is not your elementary school sandwich filling.

Mortadella is best left uncooked but is perfect, of course, for sandwiches. It also shines bright as a finishing touch on pizza, especially with pesto. Mortadella is having a moment right now; it's popping up more and more on menus in exciting ways like whipped as a spread or fried as garnish.

'Nduja

Where Mexico has chorizo, Italy has 'nduja. A heavily spiced, fermented, and spreadable pork sausage hailing from Calabria, 'nduja is a flavor powerhouse. Like most sausage and salami, 'nduja is made from the butcher's leftover scraps and is blended with a high amount of fat, warming spices, and plenty of fiery Calabrian chili.

Stir it into mac and cheese, swirl it into polenta, dollop it on pizza, toss it with roasted veggies, or simply spread it on a piece of bread and go to town. You'd be hard-pressed to find a dish that doesn't welcome 'nduja with open arms.

Pancetta

Sometimes called "Italian bacon," pancetta is a cured but unsmoked pork belly. It is often rolled into a round log and studded with plenty of black pepper. Pancetta is often a cooked ingredient, rendered and used for its fat, like guanciale.

Get the recipe: Spicy Eggplant and Pasta with Pancetta

Unlike guanciale, it has a higher meat-to-fat ratio. This means there's plenty of rendered fat but also no shortage of crispy, meaty bits. Try pancetta wherever you might use bacon but want a more pork-forward flavor unobscured by smokiness.

Pepperoni

Pepperoni in Italian means sweet or mild peppers. So if you order a pepperoni pizza in Italy, you will get something with roasted bell peppers or even raw slices, not the pepperoni we know and love here in the states. This product is usually called "salami picante" or "spicy salami" in Italy. Everyone knows the super oily, highly-processed pepperoni you'll find in every pizzeria in America, but salami picante can be so much more.

Salami picante is usually smaller in diameter than most other salami and is flavored with even more spices and often a few different types of chilis. In terms of texture and appearance, the chilis tend to turn the fat an orange-ish hue, and the flecks of fat are generally more integrated into the meat mixture. Salami picante is much firmer than most pepperoni we think of for pizza, making it perfect for eating with other antipasti or diced up in a delicious ragu.

Prosciutto

Everyone's favorite cured meat! In Italian, prosciutto loosely translates to "ham," but it's so much more than that. All prosciutto comes from the back legs of a pig or boar and is aged anywhere from 1 to 3 years. Prosciutto is usually dry-cured, meaning it's coated in salt and dried and is not smoked or cooked.

There is one notable exception: prosciutto cotto. This is a product that is closer to cooked ham. There are many types, such as Prosciutto di Toscano, which is cured with a mixture of spices in addition to the standard salt, and the lauded Prosciutto di Parma, which can run you up to $40 per pound.

Most nomenclature for prosciutto denotes a specific city or region where it's produced, generally with strict guidelines surrounding the salting and aging process. Prosciutto is nearly unmatched in its versatility. Throw it in a sandwich or eat it plain on a charcuterie board; prosciutto's saltiness is always a welcome addition.

Salami

Salami (singular, salame) encompasses a whole family of hundreds of similar but slightly different logs of cured, fermented meat. Most loosely, salami is chunks of meat — usually pork, but sometimes beef, boar, duck, goose, and other meats — pressed into a casing with about 25% fat and cured. There are hundreds of different flavor combinations, from knock-your-socks-off spicy to salty-sweet.

Get the recipe: Chef John's Salami Bread

Pre-sliced Genoa salami is the most typical variety that you'll run into in your local grocery store. It is typically wide in diameter (around 3-4 inches) and flavored simply with black pepper, salt, and garlic. Genoa salami is a softer salami and is excellent for sandwiches, pizza, or a quick snack.

Another popular variety of salami that is usually pretty easy to come by is soppressata. Hailing from Calabria, soppressata is a hard salami, usually only about an inch or so in diameter. Soppressata is flavored with whole peppercorns and often Calabrian chilis. It's a hard salami, so it's cured for a long time, sometimes up to 3 years, and is best sliced a little thicker and eaten plain to enjoy its robust flavor and chewy texture.

Speck

Like a cross between prosciutto and bacon, speck is perfect for when you want the soft saltiness of prosciutto but with a spicy kick. Like prosciutto, speck is made from the leg of the pig and is salt-cured and aged. Unlike prosciutto, speck is rubbed with a flurry of spices and is smoked.

Speck comes from northern Italy and is similar in flavor to Austrian meats of the same name due to the spice rub, but German and Austrian speck are usually from the pork belly while Italian speck is cut from the hind leg.

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