Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [5]
“‘Practicing charcuterie’ is the right way to phrase it for two different but related reasons. The first and most important is that you’re always learning, always practicing, never perfecting, because the conditions are always changing on you. Much of charcuterie is in your control, but much isn’t—the humidity, the water content of the fat you’re using; whether it is hot summer or chilly fall; how hot your grinder got while grinding—those things and more come into play, so that for me, I always feel that I’m practicing, always learning. Also, the work of the charcutier is like that of a doctor, who is always learning, always discovering something new about patients and treatments and care.
“For me, charcuterie is the most beautiful part of the kitchen, the most satisfying work there is. Its rich history, its diverse cultural variations, and the delicious results of these techniques, some of them as old as humankind, that’s what does it for me.
“My love of charcuterie has only ripened as I’ve grown as a cook and a chef. When I was a kid, sausage was common on our table. I did the grinding and enjoyed it.
“But this romance with charcuterie didn’t start till my early twenties, when I went to work at the Golden Mushroom, outside Detroit, for Milos Cihelka, a Czech immigrant, my mentor and one of Michigan’s great chefs. I’d been cooking five or six years and thought I knew something. But when I started grinding meat and smoking sausages for Chef Milos, I realized how little I knew. I was also fascinated by the process. I got to work early and left late. I took notes like crazy. I smoked with all kinds of wood, anything I could find, apple, cherry, alder, ash, hickory, as well as nonwoods, herb branches and corncobs (corncobs make good pipes, but their smoke is awful).
“I loved smoke, this way of imparting flavor that few other chefs my age were doing. A decade later, when I became a partner in a restaurant in Pontiac, Michigan, I built a smoker in the alley behind the restaurant to smoke fish, game, poultry, sausages, and those became some of the most popular items on the menu.
“So first with Milos, and then on my own, I learned the value of taking inexpensive cuts of meat and changing the texture and flavor in a way that was very personal, completely my own. By curing, smoking, and brining my own meats, by making pâtés and terrines and mousselines, I distinguished my food from that of other restaurants in my area, and did so in a way that was unusual in Michigan and also very economical.
“I’ve always had some kind of smoked or cured meat, some kind of pâté or terrine on my menus. I offer a charcuterie platter, and it’s my best-selling item—my customers won’t let me take it off the menu. This proves to me that the work that goes into it is valuable to people. It makes them happy, which is what being a chef is all about to me.
“When I was asked to teach charcuterie at Schoolcraft, my alma mater, I’d been practicing it for nearly twenty years, but when a student asked me, “What’s a meat emulsion, how does it work?” I couldn’t explain it. It’s one of the fundamental charcuterie techniques used in many pâtés, mousselines, and sausages, but I could not put it into words; I didn’t really know myself that a meat emulsion, like a mayonnaise, is the suspension of fat in another medium, in this case in protein, with the help of a little water. That’s when I dove into the subject, began to study the science and chemistry of it. Here is another level of interest for me—the complex manipulations of fats, proteins, salt, acids, seasonings required for great charcuterie. It’s a fascinating science as well as a craft.
“I travel in Europe at least once every couple years, and one of the things that only recently dawned on me is that everywhere I go, charcuterie is part of the