Charcuterie is part of the garde manger chef’s repertoire. Originally intended as a way to preserve meat before the advent of refrigeration, they are prepared today for their flavors derived from charcuteria preservation processes. The French word for a person who practices charcuterie is charcutier, generally translated as “pork butcher”.
This has led to the mistaken belief that charcuterie can only involve pork. In the first century AD, the Greek geographer Strabo recorded the import of salted meat from Gaul, and the Romans had laws regulating the proper production of pork joints. In 15th-century France, local guilds regulated food production in each city. Forcemeat is a mixture of ground, lean meat emulsified with fat.
The emulsification can be accomplished by grinding, sieving, or puréeing the ingredients. The emulsification may either be smooth or coarse in texture, depending on the desired consistency of the final product. Forcemeats are used in the production of numerous items found in charcuterie. In US usage, there are four basic styles of forcemeat. Straight forcemeats are produced by progressively grinding equal parts pork and pork fat with a third dominant meat which can be pork or another meat. The proteins are cubed and then seasoned, cured, rested, ground and then placed into desired vessel. The word sausage is derived through French from the Latin sal, ‘salt’, as the sausage-making technique involves placing ground or chopped meat along with salt into a tube.
The tubes can vary, but the more common animal-derived tubes include sheep, hog, or cattle intestinal linings. Emulsified sausages are cooked sausages with a very fine texture, using the combination of pork, beef, or poultry with fat, salt, cure, flavorings, and water. These ingredients are emulsified at high speed in a food processor or blender. During this process, the salt dissolves the muscle proteins, which helps to suspend the fat molecules. Pâté and terrines are often cooked in a pastry crust or an earthenware container. Both the earthenware container and the dish itself are called a terrine.
The mixture is placed into a lined mold, covered, and cooked in a water bath to control the temperature, which will keep the forcemeat from separating, as the water bath slows the heating process of the terrine. Galantine is a chilled poultry product created after the French Revolution by the chef to the Marquis de Brancas. The term galant connotes urbane sophistication. The galantine is prepared by skinning and boning a chicken or other poultry.
The skin is laid flat, with the pounded breast laid on top. A forcemeat is then placed on top of the pounded breast. The galantine is then rolled with the ends of the breast meeting one another. The galantine is then wrapped in cheesecloth and poached in poultry stock until the proper internal temperature is reached. Roulade is similar to a galantine.
The two major differences are instead of rolling the poultry evenly for the ends of the breasts to meet, the bird is rolled into a pinwheel shape, and the roulade is cooled by chilling it after it has been removed from the poaching liquid. Salt serves four main purposes in the preservation of food in the charcuterie kitchen. The first is inducing osmosis: This process involves the movement of water outside of the membranes of the cells, which in turn reabsorb the salted water back into the cell. This process assists in the destruction of harmful pathogens. Before the discovery of nitrates and nitrites by German chemists around 1900, curing was done with unrefined salt and saltpeter. Nitrite has multiple purposes in the curing process. One purpose is flavor, the nitrites giving a sharp, piquant flavor to the meat.
Second, the nitrites react with substances in the meat to produce nitric oxide. Nitric oxide prevents iron from breaking down the fat in the meat, thus halting rancidity. The binding also creates the characteristic reddish color found in most cured meat. Eating cured and processed meat products has been linked to a small increase in gastric cancer, as well as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and colorectal cancer.
Two main types of curing salt mixture are used by the charcutier. Also colored pink to differentiate it from table salt, it contains 6. This mixture is used for dry sausages that require a longer drying period which requires the presence of nitrate. Sweeteners and other flavoring agents are necessary in the production of many cured products due to the harsh flavors of the salt. Numerous spices and herbs are used in the curing process to assist with the flavor of the final product.