Pork is actually a staple foodstuff of your mountain regions of northern Italy, in which it’s often mentioned that a properly butchered pig ought to depart ‘almost nothing though the oink’ powering. To be a pig is often all around thirty% Unwanted fat, thrifty locals needed to come up with a method to use and preserve this beneficial supply of protein, and The end result is Lardo.
Lardo di Colonnata, to provide it its comprehensive identify, is often a delicacy generated from pork Body fat in and round the Tuscan mountain city of Colonnata. Happily for fans of cured meat, it’s not merely a frugal means of preserving pork Fats over Winter season – it’s delightful too!
It’s built in large vats generally known as conche, fashioned from marble quarried in the nearby ‘white mountain’ of Cararra, which are very first liberally rubbed with garlic. Upcoming, levels of pork Fats, salt, as well as a Exclusive mixture of herbs and spices are added till the vats are complete. The conche are then sealed using a picket lid and left in interesting mountain caves for six months or more time to mature in the thoroughly clean air.
After the maturation time is about, the conche are opened to reveal a silky-smooth, meltingly tender ‘meat’ that may be eaten in Considerably exactly the same way as Parma Ham or other prosciutto.
Even though Lardo is usually accustomed to maintain roasted meats moist by placing a skinny layer more than the pores and skin, It's also delicious simply just sliced thinly and eaten with bread, olives, and a great additional virgin olive oil as Component of an antipasto study course. It is actually not at all tough or greasy, and is also well really worth hoping even if the idea of having pure Excess fat leaves you a little bit apprehensive!
Despite the extended many years of creating Lardo in the normal way, a lot of the examples that you simply may perhaps come across in your local deli or shop could have been designed in a much more industrial environment, predominantly due to modern-day hygiene legislation using precedence about customs and heritage. Gone are definitely the marble conche as well as the mountain air, changed by chrome steel and air con.
Nevertheless, visitors to the realm all around Colonnata should be lucky and acquire hold of Lardo created in organic the aged way that has been established around the centuries – just don’t tell the authorities if you are doing!