Culatello and its "secret ingredient"

It’s one of the most famous products of the Italian food and wine tradition, so much that it has earned the title of "King of Cold Cuts": Culatello is a pride of the pork butchery in Parma, a historically important product because, from its success, it depended part of the sustenance of local families who worked the meat (from its sale it was obtained a good gain that would have helped a lot the family).

What is that makes Culatello so special?

First of all, the fact of being produced with the most precious part of the pork leg, that is the breech. Secondly, the origin of the strictly Italian meat of the same pigs belonging to the PDO circuit of Parma ham. And finally for the processing technique, rigorously handmade by expert craftsmen. Following this, a slow maturation of at least 10 months.

What is the secret ingredient of Culatello?

There is no trick: once the meat has been trimmed to remove the excess fat, it is salted by hand (simply using salt and peppercorns) and after about a month it is stuffed into a natural bladder of pork. It is a legend that the mysterious touch, that ingredient that makes it so good, is simply the fog: so present once in the "Bassa" of Parma, and today replaced by environments with high humidity and moderately low temperature.

This is how at Cav. Umberto Boschi we prepare our Traditional Culatello. A sweet taste, enveloping and full of persistence, to be enjoyed in purity, perhaps with a curl of butter and a good glass of wine from the Colli di Parma.