Carolyn Fath
The Tuscan-style dry salami has hints of fennel and garlic.
Few people would consider chasing pigs to be among their favorite activities in life. And when you are an award-winning cheesemaker about to hit your busy season, it’s absolutely not the best use of your time.
So two years ago when Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese Company outsourced the day-to-day operation of raising pigs, the result wasn’t just more time to tend to his Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Rush Creek Reserve cheeses, but a whole new product — a whey-fed pork salami made from those pigs Hatch once chased around the farm outside Dodgeville.
It’s called finocchiona, a Tuscan-style dry salami with hints of fennel and garlic. It’s made by Madison’s Underground Meats with meat from pigs that are fed whey from the cheese-making process that creates the Uplands cheeses. This creates a tender pork with a sweeter, creamier taste.
A farmstead operation, Uplands makes cheese from the cows on its farm atop a hill along Highway 23 near Governor Dodge State Park. Pigs have always been a part of the operation, but on a smaller scale. Having pigs around provided a use for the whey — the liquid that is separated from the curds as cheese is made — and Uplands employees got the meat.
“It was like an employee benefit,” Hatch says. “We can’t give you health insurance, but we can give you a pig.”
Madison-area chefs tasted the pork and wanted some, too. The handful of pigs became 20, then 30, then 40, with some also being sold to Iowa’s La Quercia, the nationally regarded maker of prosciutto and other pork products.
Raising enough pigs to meet demand “got to be one chore too many,” Hatch says.
Enter the neighbors, or what passes for neighbors in the country. Up the road from Uplands, near where Highway Z meets Highway ZZ, sits Seven Seeds Farm and its 160 acres. Michael Dolan, a recent college graduate, and his fiancée, Chloe Paul, run the livestock operation of the seventh-generation farm that produces grass-fed beef, pork and chicken. Brasserie V is among their biggest clients.
“It was basically my parents’ hobby farm and when I came back from college I decided I wanted to make a living at it,” says Dolan. Seven Seeds also has a small store that is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The Uplands pigs are a hearty heritage breed that can survive winters outside. Besides the 400 gallons of Uplands whey the pigs consume daily, they eat hazelnuts, local grains and apple pressings from a local cider farm. They are slaughtered at 7 or 8 months, a month or so later than conventional hog processing, so they’re fatter.
“Consumers are driven to think that pork should be lean, that it should be the other white meat,” Dolan says. “I think pork should be fatty and red, like beef.”
Nine hundred pounds of that pork will go to Underground, which will make approximately 2,500 sticks of the salami between now and the end of the year. It’s a four- to six-week process from when the hogs arrive, having been slaughtered and cleaned elsewhere, to when the salami is ready to be sold. Like cheese, the salami develops a rind as it ages and is closely monitored for a month.
“There are so many parallels to cheese making,” says Charlie Denno, Underground’s plant manager. “There are small variables that can make a huge difference in quality control. It’s a lot more high-maintenance than you’d think.”
Hatch worked with Underground staff to find a flavor to complement his Uplands cheeses.
“I love working with the salami because it feels like working with cheese,” says Hatch. “You can bring it home, you can taste it, you can touch it and you can FedEx it. That feels like a more natural fit for us.”
A 2-ounce stick of salami sells for $6-$8, including at Fromagination, Underground Butcher and Metcalfe’s Markets, and also on Uplands’ website. Uplands also created a gift box that includes Potter’s Crackers and preserves from Quince and Apple.
“We wanted it to be a complete party platter with flavors and texture that complement each other,” Hatch said.
The businesses that work together to create the salami complement each other, too, which was Hatch’s main motivation to add the project to the Uplands operations.
“We’re cheese makers and dairy farmers, that’s what we do,” Hatch says. “We wanted to see Michael come back to the farm and we feel really good about that. And I feel really good about not chasing pigs when they get through the fence.”
