Culatello – Tasting Notes

It was a long journey, but the culatello is finally ready. Actually, it was ready about 4 months ago. We cut into it to celebrate the birth of my son as it just happened to have lost enough weight by then and felt hard enough to go for it. It lost a total of about 40% weight in about 7 or 8 months in the curing chamber. I guess I was so excited to taste it that I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing before cutting it!

Capocollo di Calabria

In the southern part of Italy what’s “coppa” in the north is called “capocollo”. That’s where the American term “capicola” or “gabagool” comes from. Most of the Italian immigrants to the US were from Southern Italy, bringing with them the term and product “capocollo”
I’ve already gone through the whole coppa making process in a previous post, but this one is slightly different. My buddy Scott at Sausage Debauchery, who’s family is original from Calabria, is a Calabrian FREAK. He’s so obsessed with the place that he opened a store to source and resell Calabrian chili pepper and other goodies. All I hear from him is how Calabrian cured meats are the best, tastiest, blah blah blah. Mostly in an effort to shut him up, I made a capocollo following the Calabrian DOP production methodology.