Capocollo

Capocollo is a whole-muscle cured meat, not a ground sausage. The neck muscle, running from the base of the skull to the fourth or fifth rib, is salted, seasoned, stuffed into natural casing and hung to age.

The cut works because it is naturally marbled: the fat sits inside the muscle in fine seams rather than around it, which is what lets it age for months and stay soft, and what gives the slice its red and white mosaic.

Finished weights run from a kilo and a half to three kilos, and ageing from two to six months depending on region and size. The shape is a slightly flattened cylinder, hand-tied with string in even turns.

One clarification worth having: capocollo, coppa, lonzino and lonza are not perfect synonyms. Capocollo and coppa are the same cut worked differently; lonzino and lonza in much of central Italy mean the loin, which is a leaner, different muscle. Italian butchery vocabulary is a stack of dialects, not a single system.

Rich and sweet, with a texture between prosciutto and lardo: the fat seams melt on contact and carry the flavour, so it coats the palate more than a lean ham does.

What you taste after that depends entirely on where it was made. Martina Franca capocollo has a faint sweet smoke and a fig-and-cooked-wine roundness. Calabrian capocollo carries real chilli heat and a redder, sharper edge. Piacenza coppa tastes of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg and is the mildest and butteriest of the three.

Underneath all of them is the same base note: pork, salt and time, with none of the tang of a fermented salami.

American deli capicola, hot or sweet, is usually a much younger, wetter, paprika-seasoned product and tastes noticeably different: softer, saltier, less complex.

Slice it thin but not transparent: one to two millimetres. Thinner than that and the marbling that makes the cut worth buying stops registering.

Serve at room temperature. In Puglia the standard partner is burrata: the smoke of the capocollo against fresh cream is one of the best pairings in southern Italian cooking. Focaccia barese, pickled lampascioni and broad beans do the same job.

In Calabria it goes on a board with soppressata, 'nduja and pecorino crotonese, with durum wheat bread.

It cooks better than most raw-cured meats because the internal fat protects it. Two thick slices seared in a dry pan work with peas or beans; diced, it goes into a sauce or a frittata; laid over a chicken breast it bastes the meat as it roasts.

In the US it is above all a sandwich meat, the capicola of the Italian sub alongside mortadella and provolone, and it is very good at that job.

A whole piece hangs in a cool, dark, ventilated room between 12 and 16 °C, where it goes on curing for months, losing water and firming as it goes. Once you cut into it, press cling film against the cut face or cover it with a cloth, and reckon on three or four weeks. A fridge slows everything down but dries the meat out: wrap it in greaseproof paper and use the least cold shelf. White bloom on the outside comes with this kind of curing and is wiped away with a cloth dampened in white wine or vinegar before slicing.

Green or black growth, or a sour smell, are changes that curing does not bring on its own, and at that point the date on the pack and the butcher who sold it are the reference. Sliced to order, it is meant for that day or the next. Vacuum packs hold a few weeks chilled and want opening half an hour before serving so the meat breathes and the aroma returns. It does not freeze well: the internal fat crystallises and the slice loses its structure.

The slice is the test. It should show an irregular mosaic of red lean threaded with thin white veins right across the section. A piece with fat only around the rim and a uniform lean centre is loin sold under the wrong name. The fat should be white and firm: yellow points to oxidation or the wrong feed, soft and greasy to the touch points to curing cut short. The casing should sit tight against the meat, and air pockets under it are the commonest fault of all.

In American delis the word to watch is capicola, often heard as gabagool. That is usually a brined and sometimes cooked deli meat sliced to order, milder and wetter than a dry cured Italian capocollo. Coppa is simply the northern Italian name for the same cut. On the protected versions look for the consortium mark and the European symbol: Coppa Piacentina DOP, Capocollo di Calabria DOP. Capocollo di Martina Franca has no DOP and runs through a Slow Food Presidium list instead. The nose tells the region: light sweet smoke and cooked wine in Puglia, chilli in Calabria, sweet spice around Piacenza.

In the US, capocollo is easy to find and easy to get wrong. Every Italian deli sells capicola, but most of it is domestic, young and paprika-seasoned; imported Italian capocollo and Coppa Piacentina DOP come through Eataly, Gustiamo, Di Bruno Bros and Formaggio Kitchen. Expect roughly 12 to 22 dollars per pound for deli capicola and 22 to 40 for imported DOP coppa.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online specialists carry coppa and capocollo at roughly 30 to 50 pounds per kilo, sliced.

Check the slice before anything else: fine white seams running through the whole section, not a lean core with a fat rim. A lean core means loin sold as neck.

Look for the consortium marks where they exist: Coppa Piacentina DOP and Capocollo di Calabria DOP both have them. Martina Franca does not have a PDO; it is a Slow Food Presidium, so the guarantee is the producer's name.

Buy a whole piece if you have somewhere cool to hang it. It costs a third less per kilo than sliced and improves for months.

Martina Franca, in the province of Taranto, is where to go: the butchers of the old town cure and slice their own, and the fornelli pronti, butcher shops with a grill in the back, serve it alongside bombette. The rest of the Valle d'Itria, Locorotondo, Cisternino and Alberobello, does the same.

In Calabria, the villages of the Sila and the Crotonese hold their pork festivals between December and February, when the slaughter season and the curing calendar begin.

Around Piacenza, in the Arda and Tidone valleys, you can taste coppa, pancetta and salame piacentino, three PDO cured meats from one province, with fried dough and a glass of frothy Gutturnio.

In Bari, the market stalls and the delis of the old centre keep Apulian capocollo year-round, usually within arm's reach of a burrata from Andria, which is exactly how it should be eaten.