Mortadella is the great pale-pink cooked sausage of Bologna: a silky, finely emulsified pork paste studded with clean white cubes of fat and, often, whole pistachios, cooked in one huge log and sliced paper-thin. The diagnostic detail is the cubes. The meat is chopped until it is one smooth, springy body, and the fat is then added a second time in a form the eye can see — neck fat, cut into dice, scalded, rinsed and folded in at the end so it is never chopped. Bologna’s law requires those cubes to make up at least 15% of the slice.
It exists because it is the best answer anyone found to turning the whole pig, trimmings included, into something luxurious; Bologna was regulating it by 1661, and it has been a protected name (Mortadella Bologna IGP) since 1998. American bologna is its cut-price descendant.
This is a home method with a food processor and a sous-vide bath, held to the Bologna rules where a home kitchen can follow them: no phosphates, no smoke, core cooked to 70 °C and chilled fast. I have not made this one yet; it is built from the Mortadella Bologna IGP specification and Marianski’s formula, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1,590 g (3 lb 8 oz) lean pork shoulder, sinew and gristle removed — 70%
- 455 g (1 lb) pork jowl or fat trimmings, for the emulsion — 20%
- 225 g (8 oz) firm pork back fat or neck fat, for the cubes — 10%
CURE AND SALT (% of meat weight)
- 45 g fine salt (2.0%)
- 5.1 g Cure #1 (2.25 g/kg = 140 ppm nitrite, the Bologna maximum; 2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm is the USDA ceiling)
- 1 g sodium ascorbate or erythorbate (0.05%) — optional, speeds and holds colour
- 9 g sugar (0.4%; the Bologna rule is 0.5% maximum)
SPICE (% of meat weight)
- 5 g ground white pepper (0.2%)
- 7 g whole black peppercorns (0.3%)
- 1 g ground mace (0.05%)
- 1 g ground coriander (0.05%)
- 2 g ground anise seed (0.1%) — optional
- 1 g garlic powder (0.05%)
LIQUID AND GARNISH
- 340 g crushed ice or ice water (15%)
- 70 g shelled unsalted pistachios, skinned (3%) — optional; the law allows, not requires
CASING
- 1 fibrous or beef-bung casing, 90–110 mm, about 40 cm, soaked per maker
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: the ice and the cold are the technique. A meat emulsion is a protein glue holding fat in suspension, and it breaks above about 12–15 °C. The American descendant is Old-Fashioned Bologna; compare them side by side.
- Make the cubes first: cut the back fat into 6–8 mm dice. Drop them into water just off the boil for 1–2 minutes, drain, rinse in warm water until the water runs clear, spread on a towel and chill hard. Scalding firms the surface and rinses off loose fat, so the cubes stay white and separate instead of greasing the slice.
- Cure the lean: grind the lean and the jowl through 4.5 mm, mix with salt, Cure #1, sugar and ascorbate, and hold overnight at 0–2 °C. The salt pulls the binding proteins out of the muscle; overnight is when it does it.
- Grind again, partly frozen: through 3 mm, and get the meat to −1 °C, stiff but not solid.
- Emulsify in batches: a food processor holds about 700 g at a time. Run the meat with a third of the ice until it is a smooth, sticky paste, then add the ground spices (not the peppercorns) and run until glossy. Probe it: stop at 10–12 °C, never higher. Above that the fat smears out of the protein net and the finished log weeps grease and crumbles. Chill each batch on ice as you go.
- Fold, do not chop: in a cold bowl, fold the scalded fat cubes, whole peppercorns and pistachios into the paste by hand or on the mixer’s slowest speed. Chopping them would turn mortadella into bologna.
- Stuff hard: into the wide casing with a stuffer, pushing out every pocket — air holes show as craters in the slice. Tie tight, prick visible bubbles, hang 30 minutes to settle.
- Cook in water: sous-vide at 76 °C (169 °F) until the centre reads 70 °C (158 °F); for a 100 mm log allow 4–5 hours and trust the probe, not the clock. A low bath cooks the outside without shrinking it away from the centre; boiling water squeezes fat out.
- Chill fast: straight into ice water until the core is below 10 °C, then refrigerate overnight before slicing. The Bologna rule demands this rapid chill because the warm zone between 50 and 10 °C is where spore-formers grow.
- Decision point: slice the heel. Smooth, springy, pink with white cubes = right. Greasy pockets or crumbly texture = the emulsion got too warm; it is still safe, but next time stop at 10 °C.
- Sibling: Smoked Bologna is what this became in America, and Ham Salad (Ground Bologna Sandwich Spread) is where the heels go.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: the Mortadella Bologna IGP specification (Reg. EC 1549/98) for the rules — pork muscle, cubed neck fat scalded then washed and dried, salt, whole and ground pepper, optional pistachio, sugar no more than 0.5%, nitrite no more than 140 ppm, no smoke flavourings, no polyphosphates, no colourings, cooked to a core of at least 70 °C and chilled below 10 °C; at least 15% visible fat cubes; finished salt no more than 2.8%. Marianski’s home formula supplies the proportions (70% pork, 20% jowl/belly, 10% back-fat cubes, 1.8% salt, white pepper, peppercorns, coriander, garlic, anise, mace, caraway, 3.5% pistachio, wine and water). Deviations: (1) nitrite at 140 ppm to match the Bologna cap rather than his 156; (2) ice instead of wine and water, for temperature control; (3) caraway dropped, anise optional; (4) core 70 °C (the IGP figure) rather than his 68 °C; (5) sous-vide bath instead of an oven. Untested.
Where mortadella came from. Bologna, where a Roman-era stele in the Museo Civico Archeologico shows pigs and a mortar. In 1661 Cardinal Girolamo Farnese, papal legate, issued a proclamation fixing how mortadella was to be made — one of the earliest written food standards for a sausage. The modern descendant is the 1998 IGP. The factory process cooks in dry-air ovens for many hours; home cooks use water.
The name. Two candidates: Latin mortarium (the mortar the meat was pounded in) and myrtatum (myrtle-seasoned). The myrtle one has a real anchor: Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.110, writes “Murtatum a murta, quod ea additur large fartis” — a stuffed meat named for myrtle because myrtle was added generously. Which root became “mortadella” is not settled.
Bologna and baloney. American bologna kept the city’s name and dropped the rules: beef in the mix, no visible fat cubes, no pistachio, often smoked. It is a descendant, not a translation.
Variations. Pistachio is optional by law and many Bologna makers leave it out. Mortadella di Prato (Tuscany) adds alchermes liqueur and is a separate protected name. Some home cooks add a splash of white wine; it is allowed as a flavouring, not required.
Sourcing and gear. Fibrous casings 90–110 mm. A food processor with a strong motor; work in small batches and chill between them. An instant-read probe and a leave-in probe for the bath. Neck (gola) fat is the Bologna cut; firm back fat works.
Still open. No published home method reproduces the dry-air oven cook; whether a water cook changes texture measurably is not documented. Phosphate-free home emulsions are less forgiving than commercial ones; how much less, in yield terms, is not published.
Read more on the site. Italy · Bowl Choppers & Emulsion