Tasso ham is a smoked, spiced, and cured meat, a specialty of south
Louisiana cuisine
Louisiana Creole cuisine (, , ) is a style of cooking originating in Louisiana, United States, which blends West African, French, Spanish, and Native American influences, as well as influences from the general cuisine of the Southern United ...
. In this case "
ham
Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in '' Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term '' ...
" is a misnomer since tasso is not made from the hind leg of a hog, but rather the
hog's shoulder. This cut is typically fatty, and because the muscle is constantly used by the animal, has a great deal of flavor. The shoulder (also called the butt), which will weigh 7 to 8 pounds, is sliced across the grain into pieces about 3 in (7.5 cm) thick. These are dredged in a salt cure, which usually includes
sodium nitrite
Sodium nitrite is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a white to slightly yellowish crystalline powder that is very soluble in water and is hygroscopic. From an industrial perspective, it is the most important nitrite sa ...
and sugar. The meat is left to cure briefly, only three or four hours, then rinsed, rubbed with a spice mixture containing
cayenne pepper
The cayenne pepper is a type of ''Capsicum annuum''. It is usually a hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes. Cayenne peppers are a group of tapering, 10 to 25 cm long, generally skinny, mostly red-colored peppers, often with a curved ti ...
and
garlic
Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plants in the genus '' Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chives, Welsh onion, and Chinese onion. Garlic is native to central and south Asia, str ...
, and
hot-smoked until cooked through.
Though tasso may be eaten on its own, it is more often used as part of a flavor base for stews or braised vegetables. It is used in dishes ranging from pasta to
crab cake
A crab cake is a variety of fishcake popular in the United States. It is composed of crab meat and various other ingredients, such as bread crumbs, mayonnaise, mustard (condiment), mustard (typically prepared mustard, but sometimes mustard powde ...
s to soup and gravy. Appropriate to its roots, tasso is most often found in recipes of
Creole or
Cajun
The Cajuns (; French: ''les Cadjins'' or ''les Cadiens'' ), also known as Louisiana ''Acadians'' (French: ''les Acadiens''), are a Louisiana French ethnicity mainly found in the US state of Louisiana and surrounding Gulf Coast states.
Whi ...
origin, such as
jambalaya.
See also
*
List of smoked foods
This is a list of smoked foods. Smoking (cooking), Smoking is the process of seasoning, flavoring, cooking, or food preservation, preserving food by exposing it to smoke from burning or smoldering material, most often wood. Foods have been smoke ...
*
References
Pork
Cajun cuisine
Smoked meat
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