Deli Meat

There are a lot of different deli meats available. I was curious what the most popular are.
Maximum 3 choices

[Jenise]

Mortadella.

[Jenise]

Btw, I buy more turkey than anything else but I did not choose it among my three options! Healthy choices are one thing, love's another.

Mortadella.

A lot depends on what Bill means by a "deli". The list corresponds well to the delicatessen of my youth: a real Jewish place, no ham and the salami is beef and I don't live in Montreal, but otherwise that's a good list. You could add tongue and brisket.

Jenise's answer only applies if Bill means an Italian deli. In that case, there are many more choices like prosciutto, speck, guanciale, mortadella, capicola, a whole bunch more kinds of salami, etc. Mortadella is a good choice there, though culatello -- a select kind of prosciutto -- is also pretty amazing.

No liverwurst? Olive loaf? Soppressata? Bologna?

J'accuse!

Lol...the list of available meats available in delicatessens by me is seemingly endless. I don't think even my top FIVE are on your list

I'll eat almost any kind of deli meat, but I rarely make sandwiches. Our local market is known for their fabulous sandwiches, so If I really want one, I usually grab a turkey with some sort of cheese. But it not my favorite, I love, love salami, that comes in the long rolls, and in a heavy paper. It is dry, and has a winey overtone to my taste. Local meat place has them hanging in a corner of the shop, and I drool when I see them. But at $30 a roll, I refrain, since I am feeding one now. I should say it was $30 last time I bought it, my guess is that it has increased in price like everything else. Last time I bought it, it was $30 and cost me $30 to mail it to Ohio to our daughter!!

Seltzer's Lebanon bologna.

-Paul W.

I like a nice Genoa salami too - with a hint of heat to it, preferably.

The list wasn't intended to be exhaustive, just to include as many of the most common choices I could call to mind.

We have a great Italian outlet near us (I think Jenise has visited) with a great array of Italian meats as well as others.

Cullatelo is a tad too close to the Italian expression of defiance "Ficcatelo in culo" and besides it is just another prosciutto.

I love some of the small Italian dried sausages - a spicy Abruzzese cut in thin slices with a bit bocconcini while sitting in the sun sipping a well aged Chianti is hard to beat.

Vancouver is pretty cosmopolitan so we have great German delis, for instance - a tad bland compared to Italian but I do enjoy a good weisswurst with a really good sauerkraut (a client of mine made some of the best German meats and sauerkraut around).and even the Indian stores have sausages inspired both by tradition (Portuguese from Goa) and adaptation from other cultures.

Had to limit the list, though - just wanted to survey what people liked most - and it obviously depends on locale - in Hawaii the top meat product is Spam.

[Jenise]

A lot depends on what Bill means by a "deli". The list corresponds well to the delicatessen of my youth: a real Jewish place, no ham and the salami is beef and I don't live in Montreal, but otherwise that's a good list.

Bill's list corresponds to what you'd find in a good upscale supermarket deli in Vancouver, or really almost anywhere on the west coast of North America sans the Montreal Beef which is very similar to pastrami. These delis have no specific ethnic identity; their only purpose is to supply sandwich fodder and as such they generally only sell the products of one national supplier, like Boars Head or Dietz & Wesson.

I would kill for a good Jewish, Italian or German deli, all of which I love. Nothing like that around here, though there is one Old World Deli where the owner, Chris, seeks out all kinds of cool things. Oh, and it's the only place in town to get MORTADELLA!

Bill, must argue with you on one thing, though: culatello is not just another proscuitto anymore than a Ferrari is just another car. Go down to Oyama's and spend your allowance on a few ounces. You'll see!

Bill, must argue with you on one thing, though: culatello is not just another proscuitto anymore than a Ferrari is just another car. Go down to Oyama's and spend your allowance on a few ounces. You'll see!

The lady is right, Bill.

Also, I think a cultural understanding of weisswurst is helpful when eating what is otherwise a very delicate sausage. It is a fresh meat sausage of veal and pork, maybe a few shreds of speck, just barely seasoned with lemon, mace and parsley. As it was neither cured nor brined, the mid-19th-C folks who created it deemed it a good idea to eat it sooner rather than later. Thus, weisswurst is breakfast food.

I'm starting to get the impression that Jenise has a slight preference for Mortadella. But maybe that's just because I'm attuned to subtle nuance, being in the media and all....

Tom, if that's true, then why doesn't she just come right out and say so?

(...but don't even think about reading this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/mortadella )

Well, some people are very guarded when it comes to naming their vices. I mean, who wants to risk social opprobrium over a pork product? Here in Jersey we know the pitfalls of that all too well, as arguments over the correctness of "Taylor Ham" vs. "Taylor Pork Roll" has led to even the dissolution of families. I don't blame Jenise at all for being circumspect about her embarrassing affliction.

(FWIW, I love good quality Mortadella also. But I'm 3/4 Italian. Not sure what her excuse is.)

[Jenise]

MORTADELLA! MORTADELLA!
MORTADELLA! MORTADELLA!
MORTADELLA! MORTADELLA!
MORTADELLA! MORTADELLA!

Come come, Jenise. We're all friends here. What is it you're trying to say?

Jenise, does the Mortadella you love have pistachios? I've only heard about it but never seen it here. I like Mortadella as well but never buy it. A good friend of mine had some heart issues a few years ago and he was told by his doctor never to eat deli meats again. I assumed it must be the salt and fat.

Mortadella is essentially a fine chopped bologna, with chunks of pork fat added.

A traditional high-quality mortadella contains around 35% pork trimmings (shoulder) (90% CL grade), pork trimmings (85% CL grade), 15% pork belly, 10% tripe and 20% visible cubes (around 1 cm × 1 cm) of pork neck fat. If no tripe is available, then 35% belly meat is used.

So we are basically talking Italian Spam, impressive perhaps because of the diameter?

Good page on it here https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/ag ... mortadella

Jenise remind me to haul out a nice little Abruzzo sausage I like when you are next here.

And I am a multicult sausage fan - Lap Cheong for breakfast (aka Cantonese chorizo).

Jenise can have my share of the Mortadella. It's a deli meat I won't eat out of choice.

-Paul W.

If you like pistachios in your mortadella , Olympia provisons is very good. But my fave mortadella is Red Table Meats.

As noted, by deli do you mean classic kosher, Italian, or perhaps a French epicerie? So many choices.

[Jenise]

Jenise, does the Mortadella you love have pistachios? I've only heard about it but never seen it here. I like Mortadella as well but never buy it. A good friend of mine had some heart issues a few years ago and he was told by his doctor never to eat deli meats again. I assumed it must be the salt and fat.

Yes, the best Mortadellas (especially Italian imports) will always have pistachios.

I agree with Dale about Olympic provisions.

And yes, it's a relative of bologna, but bologna's rough and crude. Won't touch it. Mortadella is very elegant with a silky texture and a subtle but noticable garlic flavor. Also, I believe, nutmeg.

If you like pistachios in your mortadella , Olympia provisons is very good. But my fave mortadella is Red Table Meats.

I think I prefer Olympia's to Red Table's. But I can only barely get Olympia here and I can more easily get Red Table. I like some of their saucissons a lot, even more than my usual choices (e.g., Brooklyn Cured's Lamb and Za'atar).

For mortadella, however, I go to Los Paisanos, an Italian/Latinx butcher that has been in the neighborhood since 1960. They bring in the real thing, pistachios and peppercorns. It tastes better, somehow, when the boss does the slicing but, anyway, I can only barely keep my hands off it.

An Italian deli near my office makes a beef mortadella. I appreciate the innovation but meh. (They've been in that neighborhood since 1925 so they do other things right.)

I like the Red Table Gentle Giant and Vecchio a lot. I buy the mortadella in big chunks, mostly I use for for canapes (from Polpo cookbook, olive skewers with cubes of mortadella wrapped with cheese, or mortadella with wlnuts and gorgonzola or a pizzette with pickled radicchio and gorgonzola.
We have Battaglia's (branch of Arthur Ave), but I don't love their Italian mortadella (though the soppresatas are great)