Art, Science, Salt
The long road to a sausage begins with farmer Jerry Peele's careful agrarian nurturing. At Herondale, he raises beef, pork, chickens, and lamb using alternative organic husbandry practices à la Joel Salatin. (You can, if you like, buy a DVD copy of Food, Inc. at his farm store.) Jerry strolls up the farm's drive past his herd of Murray Greys and British Whites, cattle breeds he specifically selected for being well suited to a grass-based diet. In winter, the animals wander freely between the barn and field, munching on a mix of hay and silage; in summer, they rotate from pasture to pasture, feasting on a cornucopia of grasses. The pigs in turn spend the bulk of their days lounging and foraging in the farm's shady wood lots. Jerry believes that there is a positive correlation between animals' quality of life and the quality of the meat they will yield.
Once harvested, the meat passes from father to son, and Peele begins his stage of the process. As low-tech as meat curing may seem, it in fact requires immense skill and culinary aptitude. Curing was invented as a means of preserving food without refrigeration, so the science must be exact to yield safe results. "The basis for everything is salt," says Peele. "It draws all the liquid out while enhancing the meat's flavor, and this allows the sausages to hang in the right environment for long periods of time." But even a dry food can still be a welcome habitat for bacteria, so Peele inoculates his sausages with a lactic acid culture, which initiates a fermentation process, lowers the meat's pH, and renders it inhospitable to harmful microbes. The sausages then spend approximately four weeks in the curing chamber at 50 degrees and 70 percent humidity. During this period, Peele must carefully monitor the salamis' pH and water activity. If everything goes smoothly, in a month he will have a finished product ready for market. Four weeks might sound like a long time to invest in a sausage, but Peele waits even longer for thicker cuts, like prosciutto. "Prosciutto," explains Peele, "is a whole leg of a pig, so it's going to take a year or a year and a half in the curing chamber. I'm excited because I actually have a prosciutto in my curing chamber that I started in December of 2012, and it's just about ready!"
Once Upon a Fridge
How exactly Peele wound up devoting his time to artisanal meats begs explanation, especially since he spent the bulk of his professional career in the film and photo industry. For six years, he worked as a digital imager at a photography studio in the city and would spend his free time embarking culinary adventures in his home kitchen. Peele eventually decided to attend the French Culinary Institute to study pastry, and it was around this time that he began posting cooking videos of himself on YouTube and his food blog, Jack Is Cooking. Peele's life as a pastry chef lasted only briefly, however, and he was once again a photographer by the time he picked up his first book on charcuterie.
"Because we had the meat farm," Peele explains, "I started getting really into ham, prosciutto, and salami, and I wanted to know how to do it. After I'd been reading about curing for a little while, I built a little curing chamber out of an old fridge." After supplementing his reading with a few charcuterie courses at the French Culinary, Peele soon began wowing friends and family with his fridge-cured creations. When he and his wife moved up to Columbia County last year, Peele decided to take a stab at turning curing into a business and has been building momentum ever since.
Right now, Jacüterie's meats are only available at Herondale's farm store, at the Millerton Farmers' Market, and through the farm's Salami Club, which deposits sausage at drop-off points as far south as New York City, but Jacüterie's first season has enjoyed such regional acclaim that Peele has begun the process of applying for a USDA license that will allow him to sell his products anywhere in the country. Peele's backroom tinkering has blossomed into the talk of the town virtually overnight, so let's wait and see what Jack cooks up next.
