Forcemeat is a uniform mixture of lean meat with fat made by grinding or sieving the ingredients. The result may either be smooth or coarse. Forcemeats are used in the production of numerous items found in charcuterie, including quenelles, sausages, pâtés, terrines, roulades, and galantines. Forcemeats are usually produced from raw meat, except in the case of a gratin. Meats commonly used include pork, fish, seafood, game meats, poultry, game birds, veal, and pork livers. Pork fatback is preferred as a fat, as it has a somewhat neutral flavor.
A sausage is a type of meat product usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs may be included as fillers or extenders.
Salami is a cured sausage consisting of fermented and air-dried meat, typically pork. Historically, salami was popular among Southern, Eastern, and Central European peasants because it can be stored at room temperature for up to 45 days once cut, supplementing a potentially meager or inconsistent supply of fresh meat. Countries and regions across Europe make their own traditional varieties of salami.
Meze or mezza is a selection of small dishes served as appetizers in the Levant, Turkey, Greece, Iraq, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Iran. It is similar to Spanish tapas and Italian antipasti. A mezze may be served as a part of a multi-course meal or form a meal in itself. Mezze are often served with alcoholic beverages such as arak.
Meatloaf is a dish of ground meat that has been combined with other ingredients and formed into the shape of a loaf, then baked or smoked. The final shape is either hand-formed on a baking tray, or pan-formed by cooking it in a loaf pan. It is usually made with ground beef, although ground lamb, pork, veal, venison, poultry, and seafood are also used, sometimes in combination. Vegetarian adaptations of meatloaf may use imitation meat or pulses.
A lardon, also spelled lardoon, is a small strip or cube of fatty bacon, or pork fat, used in a wide variety of cuisines to flavor savory food and salads. In French cuisine, lardons are also used for larding, by threading them with a needle into meats that are to be braised or roasted. Lardons are not normally smoked, and they are made from pork that has been cured with salt.
Charcuterie is a French term for a branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, ballotines, pâtés, and confit, primarily from pork.
Slovenian cuisine is influenced by the diversity of Slovenia's landscape, climate, history and neighbouring cultures. In 2016, the leading Slovenian ethnologists divided the country into 24 gastronomic regions. The first Slovene-language cookbook was published by Valentin Vodnik in 1798.
Curing salt is used in meat processing to generate a pinkish shade and to extend shelf life. It is both a color agent and a means to facilitate food preservation as it prevents or slows spoilage by bacteria or fungus. Curing salts are generally a mixture of sodium chloride and sodium nitrite, and are used for pickling meats as part of the process to make sausage or cured meat such as ham, bacon, pastrami, corned beef, etc. Though it has been suggested that the reason for using nitrite-containing curing salt is to prevent botulism, a 2018 study by the British Meat Producers Association determined that legally permitted levels of nitrite have no effect on the growth of the Clostridium botulinum bacteria that causes botulism, in line with the UK’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food opinion that nitrites are not required to prevent C. botulinum growth and extend shelf life..
Curing is any of various food preservation and flavoring processes of foods such as meat, fish and vegetables, by the addition of salt, with the aim of drawing moisture out of the food by the process of osmosis. Because curing increases the solute concentration in the food and hence decreases its water potential, the food becomes inhospitable for the microbe growth that causes food spoilage. Curing can be traced back to antiquity, and was the primary method of preserving meat and fish until the late 19th century. Dehydration was the earliest form of food curing. Many curing processes also involve smoking, spicing, cooking, or the addition of combinations of sugar, nitrate, and nitrite.
Pork is the culinary name for the meat of the domestic pig. It is the most commonly consumed meat worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BCE.
Turkey ham is a ready-to-eat, processed meat made from cooked or cured turkey meat, water and other ingredients such as binders. Turkey ham products contain no pork products. Several companies in the United States produce turkey ham and market it under various brand names. It was invented circa 1975 by Jennie-O who first introduced it to consumers that year. Around January 1980, the American Meat Institute tried to ban use of the term "turkey ham" for products that are composed solely of turkey and contain no pork. Turkey ham may also be used as a substitute for bacon where religious restrictions forbid the consumption of pork.
Nem chua is a fermented pork dish from Vietnamese cuisine. It is mainly composed of a mixture of lean pork and thin strips of cooked rind, garnished with garlic and chilli. It can take the form of bite-size pieces wrapped individually in aluminum foil and paper, or a kind of cervelat in sealed plastic. It has a sweet-sour taste characteristic of lactic fermentations, a beautiful pink color and a firm and elastic texture.
Naem is a pork sausage in Laos and Thai. It is a fermented food that has a sour flavor. It has a short shelf life, and is often eaten in raw form after the fermentation process has occurred. It is a popular Southeast Asian food, and different regions of Southeast Asia have various preferred flavors, including variations of sour and spicy. Naem is used as an ingredient in various dishes and is also served as a side dish.
Ham sausage is a sausage prepared using ham and other ingredients, the latter varying by location. It is a part of the cuisines of China, Germany, Poland and the United States. Ham sausage is a mass-produced food product.
