GUIDE TO SUPPLIERS The Charcuterie Board www.thecharcuterieboard.com
Matt Bedell and Owen Davidson Knight are The Charcuterie Board, a company that supplies artisan products to the wholesale trade. It currently represents Gloucestershire’s Native Breeds and Sussex-based Moons Green, primarily in London, and helps to tackle the problems that can hold smaller producers back, such as distribution and consumer tastings. The Charcuterie Board’s product offer includes fermented, air-dried saucissons and muscle meats; cooked and chilled meats such as ham, pastrami, and turkey breast; and a range of street food and American BBQ products including frankfurters, pulled pork butt and hotsmoked bacon.
The Snack Ham Company www.snackham.com
West Sussex’s Snack Ham Co has devised an on-the-go product that it says is a healthy alternative to jerky or biltong. Supplied on clip strips of 10 units, each 30g bag of air-dried ham contains 70 calories and less than 2% fat. The ambient Snack Ham, together with sister product Snack Sticks chorizo, is available from Hider Foods.
The Real Boar Co www.therealboard.co.uk
The Cotswold Curer www.thecotswoldcurer.co.uk
The Cotswold Curer is situated in the heart of the Cotswolds and produces a range of salami, chorizo and pancetta with pork sourced from a local farm that specialises in free-range Gloucester Old Spots.
The Weald Smokery www.wealdsmokery.co.uk
The Weald Smokery at Flimwell, East Sussex, is an artisan smokehouse using traditional methods to produce its range of smoked fish and meat, which includes smoked duck and smoked chicken breasts. Both are hot smoked and can be used in a variety of dishes. It also cold smokes venison, which is thinly sliced like Parma ham, and produces its own pastrami, salt beef and Sussex ham. While it has its own retail premises – recently refurbished to include a brasserie – the smoker also supplies other independent retailers, restaurants and caterers.
A supplement to Fine Food Digest
The Real Boar Co rears wild boar in woodland on the edge of the Cotswolds. Wild boar meat is slow grown – it takes four times longer than pork to produce – and the resulting ambient charcuterie is low in saturated fat and high in protein. The company’s range features a number of wild boar salamis and chorizos, such as wild boar & slow gin and a game salami with wild boar, venison, pheasant and port. The most recent addition to the line-up is duck & plum salami. The Real Boar Co also produces mixed packs of Real Boar Cigars and Boar Bites, available boxed or loose.
Did you know..? Despite the global popularity of Prosciutto di Parma PDO, Italy is not the biggest producer of air-dried ham. That honour belongs to Spain, whose equivalent airdried speciality is Jamon Serrano, also known as Mountain Ham. Suprisingly, while Serrano has TSG (Traditional Speciality Guaranteed) status under EU law, it has no legal geographical protection, so there’s nothing to stop producers in other countries making ‘Serrano ham’. Spanish producers are campaigning to get the more meaty designation of Protected Geographical Indication. Guide to British & Continental Charcuterie 2015-16
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