Mark LaFay

Spices are the spice of life. You can find a lot of localized flavors in the charcuterie of an area, which can make this craft very fun for those who are adventurous. The rule of thumb, quality in equals quality out, applies very much to spices and other auxiliary ingredients for your recipes. M.studio / Adobe StockFollowing are some tips for finding and using the best ingredients: Spices and ingredients produced locally to your recipe are a great starting point.

To put it simply, fresh bacon is pork belly that is rubbed down with a mixture of salt, sugar, and sodium nitrite (pink salt). The pork belly is then refrigerated for one to two weeks, after which it is hot smoked until its internal temperature is 145 degrees Fahrenheit. The mixture of salt, sugar, and pink salt is the “cure,” and the bacon is considered to be “fresh” because it must be stored at refrigeration and has a finite shelf life.

True to their name, sausage stuffers are specialized pieces of equipment intended primarily for stuffing sausages. They come in all sizes and shapes. When I launched into the sausage-making business, I started off with an 11-pound-capacity manual stuffer. We upgraded to a No. 30–capacity stuffer and used it for a couple of years.

In the wild world of sausage, you have two options for finishing your product. You can either leave your sausage mixture loose (an option really reserved for ground, not emulsified sausages), or you can stuff your sausage into a casing. Casings are the tubes that form and hold your sausage mixture together. They come in a lot of different shapes, sizes, and materials, and they all have different applications.

The Old-World technique of dry curing meats was once used out of necessity to preserve the various parts of an animal that couldn’t be consumed before they spoiled. However, today dry curing is done because this technique produces absolutely wonderful meats with incredible flavors and textures. If you’ve never had guanciale that has been dry cured and aged for six months, you haven’t lived!

What originally got me interested in meat processing, sausage making, charcuterie, and the like was hunting. I started hunting squirrels with my father when I was 12 years old, and I shot my first deer when I was 14. As an adult in my late twenties, I found my interest starting to turn into more of a passion. I love putting venison in the freezer.

Meat grinders are machines designed specifically to break pieces of meat and fat into smaller pieces by forcing them through a metal plate with several small holes. Sausage in its most basic iteration is simply ground meat with seasoning; in USDA terms, it’s a non-intact meat product. You can choose from several different types of meat grinders.

If you want to get connected to your food, there is no better way than to purchase directly from a farm. There are many options today for doing this, whether through a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program, online grocery delivery services like MarketWagon.com, or your local farmers market.One of the many benefits to purchasing protein for your charcuterie directly from a farmer is that you can get all sorts of information on how the animals were raised, including the following: You can find out where the animals were raised, whether the critters lived inside or outside, if they had space to move and root around or were confined, and so on.