Charcuterie - Introduction
Channel: CHITKARA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH & INNOVATION NETWORK
Date: 20/07/2020

The French term charcutier means one who prepares and sells pork products. The art of the charcutier is called charcuterie (shar koo tree). We use this term more generally to refer to the production of sausages, pâtés, and smoked ham and other cured and smoked products.
Charcuterie has derived from French term “Chair cuite”(chair is 'flesh' and cuit is  'cooked'). So its literal meaning is cooked meat.

CURING AND SMOKING
Curing and smoking have been important methods for preserving foods, especially protein foods, since prehistoric times. Before the days of modern preservation techniques such as canning, freezing, and refrigeration, curing and smoking, as well as drying, enabled people to store food in times of abundance for use in times of scarcity. Today we use these techniques for their contribution to ﬂavor perhaps even more than for their preservative qualities. We smoke foods because we like the taste, not because we must in order to preserve them. Nevertheless, it is important to understand how curing works to preserve foods so we can avoid spoilage and food-borne disease that can result from improper curing or improper handling of cured foods.