Soppressa Vicentina

Soppressa Vicentina is a big salami, from one kilo up to eight, made from heavy pigs born, raised and slaughtered in the province of Vicenza in north-eastern Italy. The mince is ground coarse, stuffed into a wide natural casing and tied by hand with string in a cage of vertical and circular loops. The protected name is spelled sopressa, with one p, which is how the Veneto dialect says it; standard Italian doubles both consonants, and both spellings appear on labels.

What sets it apart is not a spice or a length of ageing but the meat itself. Most salami is made from trimmings. Soppressa is made from whole primal cuts (leg, shoulder, loin, coppa) with belly and jowl supplying the fat. Using the leg means giving up a prosciutto, which is an economic decision before it is a culinary one, and it explains both the price and the texture: soft and sweet rather than dry and stringy.

Fat makes up roughly a third of the mix and is never emulsified. The wide grinding plate leaves clean white cubes visible in the red, and during ageing that fat softens until it is almost creamy. This is the technical reason the slices are cut thick: cut it paper-thin and it falls apart in your hand.

European DOP protection came in 2003 and wrote down what Vicentine families had done at home every January. The consortium counts a few dozen producers, nearly all of them small.

Sweet, soft and gently spiced, much closer to a fresh, fatty salami than to the hard, salt-forward stuff most people picture. The first thing you notice is texture: the coarse grind and the soft fat make it yield rather than snap, and it melts against the roof of the mouth.

The seasoning is unusual for a salami. Cinnamon and clove sit far in the background, giving a faint warmth that most tasters cannot identify but do notice. Black pepper is present in both ground and cracked form, so you get an occasional sharp hit. Garlic may or may not be there, depending on the producer and the valley.

Age changes it considerably. A two-month soppressa is pink, moist and mild. A twelve-month piece from an eight-kilo casing turns brick red, concentrates into something nutty and almost sweet, and develops the faint mushroom note that comes from the white mould on the outside. Neither version is smoky: nothing in this product ever meets fire.

Cut it by hand, on the diagonal, four to six millimetres thick. That will look too thick if you are used to prosciutto; it is not. The coarse grain and soft fat need body to hold together, and thin slices simply disintegrate. Discard the first slice along with the casing.

The classic serving is on grilled polenta. Cut slabs of firm polenta, char them on a grill or in a dry pan, and lay the cold soppressa on top so the heat softens the fat into the cornmeal. In the foothills of Vicenza this is not a recipe, it is what dinner looks like.

It also cooks well, which few people outside the Veneto know. Dice it into a pasta sauce for thick bigoli, stir it into a risotto with fresh peas, or warm slices in a pan with a splash of vinegar and serve them over radicchio. During the grape harvest, valley kitchens cook it with fragola grapes until they collapse into a sweet-sour sauce.

On a board, keep the company quiet. Soppressa is sweet and delicately spiced, and it disappears next to chilli sausage or smoked meats. Young cheese, pickled vegetables and bread are all it wants.

A whole soprèssa is wide, and width is what governs it: the middle dries far more slowly than the surface, which is why the cure runs for months and why the finished salame stays soft. Hung in a cool larder at 10 to 15 C with some humidity it goes on losing water for weeks, the casing shrinking and creasing against the meat and the flavour concentrating. A chalky white bloom develops on natural casing in those conditions and is brushed back with a dry cloth; anything you want a judgement on belongs to the producer or the shop.

Cut, the exposed face is broad and dries quickly, so cover it with the flap of casing or a sheet of paper, keep the piece at 4 to 12 C and reckon on two to four weeks. Over that time the large pieces of fat shift from white to ivory as they oxidise and the aroma turns nuttier and less garlicky. Vacuum packs carry the maker's date, and once opened the thick slices darken at the rim within a couple of hours. Freezing coarsens the fat and is not how it is kept.

Size gives it away before anything else. The Vicenza soprèssa is a short fat cylinder, eight to fifteen centimetres across, held in a cage of string running lengthwise and wound around, in a natural casing that wrinkles as it dries. Cut, the face is broad and coarsely marbled, soft pink lean with large irregular pieces of white fat, and the slices are cut thick because the texture is yielding rather than firm. The seasoning is mild and aromatic, garlic and pepper with warm spice behind it, and there is no chilli anywhere in it. Look for the Soprèssa Vicentina DOP mark.

The name is the trap. In American delis soppressata almost always means the southern kind from Calabria or Basilicata: narrow, pressed flat, deep red and hot with chilli. Tuscan soprassata is not a salame at all but a head cheese, gelatinous and studded with lemon zest. Anything sold simply as sopressata in a supermarket is likely domestic. The DOP version is uncommon outside Italy, sold by the piece, and priced well above the sliced deli product.

In Italy, buy from producers in the province of Vicenza or from delicatessens in Vicenza, Bassano del Grappa and Marostica. Look for the full name Sopressa Vicentina DOP and the consortium reference, because the word sopressa alone guarantees nothing, since the whole Veneto uses it.

Outside Italy it is genuinely scarce, far less exported than Milano or Felino salami. US importers list it occasionally at 22 to 34 dollars per pound; UK Italian delicatessens ask 32 to 48 pounds per kilo. Buying a whole piece from a Vicentine producer, shipped within Italy or the EU, costs far less.

Buy whole rather than sliced: soppressa oxidises fast once cut, and pre-sliced packs are cut too thin for the product to make sense. A one-and-a-half kilo piece, kept properly, lasts months.

The foothill towns between Schio, Thiene, Marostica and Bassano del Grappa, where soppressa with grilled polenta is the default plate in any osteria. Marostica has its giant chessboard square, Bassano its Palladian wooden bridge over the Brenta, so the eating fits easily around the sightseeing.

In the Berici hills to the south (Barbarano, Nanto, Lonigo, Costozza di Longare) the local version usually comes without garlic. Costozza is worth the detour for the covoli, natural caves linked to Renaissance villas by masonry air ducts, used for centuries to cool rooms and to age cured meat and cheese.

North, in the Valdastico, the Val Leogra and up onto the Asiago plateau, soppressa is served alongside mountain cheeses made in summer dairies. Village festivals between late winter and spring put it at the centre, and many farm producers sell directly from the door.