Pepperoni is a popular American-style pizza topping made from pork and beef, with added spices and paprika for color and heat. It originated from Italian immigrants’ tradition of drying and conserving meat. The sausage is made by filling natural casings with the meat mixture and hanging them to dry for 6-8 weeks. Pepperoni can also be used in sandwiches and snacks.
One of the most popular toppings on American-style pizza is a spicy Italian dried sausage called peperoni. It is sold in solid sticks at many ethnic meat shops and delicatessens, or pre-cut in vacuum-packed packages at most grocery stores. Pepperoni intended for pizza toppings may be about one inch in diameter, while that intended for use in Italian submarine sandwiches is twice as thick. Some pizzerias use a larger slice size to reduce the chances of it burning while in an extremely hot pizza oven.
Italian immigrants brought with them a tradition of caring for meat and packing it in natural casings for drying and conservation. These dried and fermented sausages could be stored at room temperature for months, which would prove very useful during extended winters with little or no access to fresh meat. The dry sausage known as peperoni was not a native Italian recipe, although there are several native cured meats and sausages that use similar ingredients.
The name is an Italian-American variation on the original Italian word for hot peppers, pepperoni. The primary meat used in peppers is pork, followed closely by beef. These two meats are ground together and left to dry in the refrigerator for a day before processing. Additional spices are added to the meat, including black pepper, sugar, aniseed, salt, cayenne pepper, and paprika. Many people may assume the red color and peppery bite of the peppers comes from the cayenne pepper, but it’s actually the paprika that’s primarily responsible for the color and heat in most sausages.
Once the spices and meat have been combined, the mixture is placed in a casing. A length of natural pig intestine casing or edible collagen casing is placed on an extruder and the mixture is forced into the casing. At certain intervals, the filled wrapper is twisted and tied with string. The finished chain is then hung out to dry for at least 6-8 weeks until the peppers are fully cured. The individual links are then separated and sold to customers or cut on a commercial slicing machine and packaged for use in restaurants.
Pepperoni slices can be used to create a quick snack known as pepperoni chips. They can also be added to sandwiches as a spicy salami, especially in combination with other Italian cured meats such as Genoa ham, salami and capicola. Pepperoni also goes well with mozzarella and provolone cheese, which is why it’s such a popular topping on pizza. A combination of this sausage with Italian pork sausage and sliced mushrooms is considered a classic among pizza aficionados.
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