Olympia ProvisionsLocation: Portland, OROlympia Provisions, Oregon’s first USDA-approved salum
Olympia ProvisionsLocation: Portland, OROlympia Provisions, Oregon’s first USDA-approved salumeria is making sausage the old way.Famous in the region for their Sweetheart ham and traditionally made charcuterie, Olympia Provisions is the darling of Portland’s local, artisanal food scene. Chopt Co-Founder Tony Shure and Creative Director Julia Sherman, took a tour of their factory and their adjacent restaurant, to really get a grasp on why all sausage Is not created equal. Elias Cairo grew up making charcuterie by hand with his Greek-American father. Hooked on the traditional methods, he went to Europe to apprentice with the masters, and returned to Portland to bring his passion home. The first thing he would need was the equipment. As if the universe was answering his calling, an older German sausage maker offered up his set-up for no money down as long as they safeguarded the old-style techniques. After all, this is a dying craft, and if Elias could make it cool again, he would have a whole world of old-world salumi heads on his side. Entering the Olympia Provisions facility, we put on our hairnets, masks, rubber boots and lab coats. Enter what can only be described as a meat sauna, and you will find hundreds of salami hanging in a room just warm enough to encourage the cultures to form. Sausage is fermented, and the name of the game is encouraging those delicious bacteria to grow instead of the bad bacteria, so this place was clean as a whistle. The smell was completely unique – warm and yeasty, something like freshly baked bread. The salami is never cooked, just cured, using a long slow fermentation to make sure the flavor is just right. Ok, so here’s a revelation for you. You know that white powder that coats a sausage? In most domestically made examples that’s just milk powder, masquerading as mold! The mold is the good stuff, and an Olympia sausage will always have the real McCoy. Pick up their truly stunning cookbook, styled by Elias himself, and get the sausage party started yourself. -- source link
#sausage#charcuterie#portland#pacific northwest#chopttravels