By Helen Olsson By Helen Olsson | June 26, 2024 | Food & Drink, People,
WHILE WORKING AS EXECUTIVE CHEF at a catering company where business was slow in winter, Bill Miner began dabbling in cured meats. He started with deli ham and Italian sausage and eventually graduated to dry-cured charcuterie. “There was some trial and error,” he says. “I made some bad salumi along the way.” But artisanal charcuterie soon became a passion, and he meticulously mastered the trade using old-world techniques. In 2015, he opened Il Porcellino (ilporcellinodenver.com) in Denver to rave reviews. His whole animal butcher shop and retail salumeria was the first of its kind in Colorado.
Bill Miner, president and founder of Il Porcellino, is putting handcrafted and artisanal charcuterie and salumi on the Colorado map. PHOTO BY THE HIP PHOTO
In 2017, Wendy Mitchell, the owner of Aspen’s Meat & Cheese, asked Miner if he’d like to lease 600 square feet of USDA-licensed production facility in Basalt, a sliver of her space. “She made me a sweetheart deal to move in,” says Miner, who was ready to take his salumi national. Il Porcellino, Italian for “the piglet,” has since expanded to fill the entire 10,000-square-foot building, cranking out around 5,000 pounds of salumi weekly.
While Il Porcellino is quickly growing into a national brand, Miner remains dedicated to a small-batch, handcrafted approach. PHOTO COURTESY OF IL PORCELLINO
Situated 6,600 feet above sea level, Basalt’s climate is similar to the mountains of Italy and Spain, where the world’s best cured meats are made. “The mountain air does something special to our product,” Miner explained during a salumi tasting at Taste of Vail last spring. He sources pork from family farms that raise heritage breed pigs and are part of the Global Animal Partnership. “It’s incredibly important to us to work with farmers who are raising animals humanely and without antibiotics or growth hormones.” The company uses celery powder and sea salt to cure the meat naturally and adds flavors like juniper, coriander and fennel seed. “Making salumi is similar to winemaking,” he says. “There’s a fermentation process that lasts two to three days, and that gives salumi its tangy flavor.” The meat is then dried, or cured, anywhere from one month to two years.
SALUMI PHOTO COURTESY OF IL PORCELLINO
Last spring, Miner closed his deli on Tennyson in Denver and sold the space to Boulder chef Hosea Rosenberg, who has since transformed it into a second Blackbelly Market, where he sells his housemade cured meats.
BLACKBELLY MARKET’S AWARD-WINNING BUTCHER IS COMMITTED TO HONORING THE WHOLE ANIMAL.
LAST YEAR, AT COLORADO’S FIRST MICHELIN GUIDE AWARD CEREMONY, Blackbelly Market’s head butcher, Kelly Kawachi, was doling out small tastes of the restaurant’s wagyu beef tartare and salami when her name was called. She’d received the Michelin Young Chef/Culinary Professional Award. “It was surreal,” she says. That night, Blackbelly (blackbelly.com) earned a Michelin Green Star for sustainability and a Recommended Restaurant designation. We checked in with Kawachi to ask about her penchant for whole-animal butchery.
Michelin award-winning chef Kelly Kawachi
How did you get into butchery?
I was working at Alan Wong’s restaurant in Hawai’i, and I would get home late. My dad would stay up, and we’d munch on salumi, cheese and crackers. It made me interested in salumi making, but I felt like I needed to learn how to butcher the whole animal first. At Alan Wong’s, we broke down a rib section of a lamb, and I thought it was pretty cool. I guess I got a taste for it.
What’s important to you about your work?
It’s important to honor the animal, to make sure you have a plan for utilizing all of it. When we get a lamb, we’re not just taking out the racks. We’re putting out shoulder roasts, using the bones to make stock and melting down the trim fat to make lard.
Charcuterie at Blackbelly. BLACKBELLY PHOTO BY JONI SCHRANTZ
Is butchery a profession dominated by men?
In general, yes, women butchers are hard to find. But I’m not the first. There’s the Western Daughters Butcher Shoppe in Denver, for one. On Instagram, I follow a girl butchers group. So, I wouldn’t say it’s rare, but yes, it’s uncommon.
Cow legs are heavy. How strong do you have to be?
As a female butcher, you have to make sure you have arm strength. But I don’t want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know? There’s the physical effort, but butchery also takes mental drive. –HO
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