Cured meats

Among the typical Lucanian products, the sausage, both fresh and seasoned, stands out for its excellence, notoriety and history.
The Salsiccia Lucana is considered a noble product, known since the times of the Roman Empire and praised for its excellent workmanship by the scholar and agronomist Marco Terenzio Varrone and the epigrammatist poet Marziale. In particular, Varro will talk about Lucanica, the sausage imported to Rome by Lucanian slaves which was particularly appreciated by soldiers.

This sausage is still prepared according to tradition, with carefully selected and cut pork meat, seasoned with local aromas such as dried pepper powder, fennel seeds and for the spicy variant with chilli pepper.

Preparation of the sausage

Lucanian sausage is also called chain sausage and is produced during the winter when there are ideal conditions for natural drying. In the past, the chain sausage production method was very widespread throughout Basilicata. Today there are still many families who continue to produce the traditional sausage for domestic use, but the companies that produce and market the sausage in chains are now only present in some municipalities in the region.

The sausage is made with an initial phase of cutting and selecting the pork meat, then it is seasoned with pepper powder and fennel seeds, and then minced and stuffed into a specially prepared pork casing.
This is followed by the braiding phase during which the so-called chain is formed, a series of linked pieces, the arrangement of which is functional to a gradual and natural drying process. The mountain climate greatly favors this process as does the room where it is matured traditionally with stone masonry and facing north.

What makes the Lucanian chain sausage excellent is the quality of the pork obtained from animals raised in a semi-wild state and fed with territorial resources, mainly acorns due to the numerous oak groves and agricultural products or rural life such as local cereals.