SaltPig Curing

We talk to founder Ben Dulley

Who founded SaltPig Curing Company? When was it formed and where are you based ?

SaltPig Curing was founded by myself, Ben Dulley in 2016, although we really started properly a couple of years after that. And we're based in Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds.

It's incredible how many of our suppliers here at The Charcuterie Box Company have been founded in the last 10 years. It's a very young industry here in the UK isn't it ?

Yes that's right! There were some fantastic pioneers before that time although the scene has really exploded since then. A real increase in producers entering the market can be seen in the last 5 years in fact.

What inspired you to start the business? 

It was a combination of things. The main one being family life. I've got two young children and I was working as a chef in a very busy kitchen. I knew this meant that once my eldest went to school I was very unlikely to see her for more than an hour here or there during the week and only occasional weekends as time off is rare in a busy kitchen, and I wasn't prepared to do that really. It's a reality of hospitality and busy restaurants that the demands of the job can put a real strain on family life and so as much as I loved the kitchen and still do I needed to find something else that revolved around my passion for food.

In the last restaurant I was working at in the Cotswold (The Kingham Plough) I was really keen on whole animal butchery. This allowed me to be completely confident in knowing what we were putting on the plate. We weren't  just buying stuff in. Butchering whole animals means you need to be creative in thinking of ways to use the bits of the animal which are left over. The premium cuts would end up on the a la carte menu but we also had a bar menu where we could be more creative with the bits left over. And ultimately this course led me down the charcuterie path. We were making venison salami with the trim from the deer that came in through the back door of the restaurant and this all sparked a growing  interest really. So I had this family life situation that was pulling me out of the kitchen and I had an increasing passion for charcuterie and these went together and drove the idea to start the business.

It's fantastic to hear the journey from chef, whole animal butcher and creator of charcuterie but how did you learn the craft?

Basically from reading books. There's actually only a fairly small amount of literature available in English on the subject. So reading and learning from my mistakes was how I went about it. In the restaurant I tried to learn how the whole process worked.  I have quite a mechanical logic and need to understand processes in order to really grasp a subject. The restaurant therefore became my testing ground.

I remember at one point I had all sorts of humidifiers and dehumidifiers in the beer cellar downstairs and I hung a muslin cloth up to baffle the air flow coming from the cellar cooling system and so I created a little chamber down there. I was using one of the guest bathrooms as a fermentation room so I could utilise the steamy atmosphere. I remember getting a slap on the wrist for that as it was difficult to get the smell of salami out of the curtains! So I was learning and I thought I was starting to get the hang of it. Until I started the business and discovered just how many more mistakes there were to make! And I'm still learning of course and I'm sure anyone in this business continues to learn for their entire career really. 

What are the guiding principles and production ethos at SaltPig Curing?

They are the same principles as with my cooking in the restaurant and it's all about whole animal butchery, which is about producing the highest quality products and that starts with really good pigs. The Europeans are masters of course and have been doing it for centuries but I genuinely believe that we have a better starting product with the quality of the animals here in the UK and this is where we can beat them at their own game. So it's about the best animal welfare, the best animals and breaking those animals down ourselves so we've got the best connection with the products that we make. We use mature, local and free range rare breed pigs. There’s not many businesses like ours that practice whole animal butchery and so I like to think that's one of our strengths and that comes from having a background as a chef. Of course we are a commercial operation but we have toiled for years to make the best product we can at the expense of our own income on a lot of occasions, but it's important to me that we don't compromise on the quality just to make a quick buck so hopefully it will all pay off one day!

I can see how your passion as a chef and working with the best possible local ingredients has become central to your principles at SaltPig Curing. It all follows through naturally doesn't it?

And it's not just about the pigs of course. We have a local chilli grower that grows chillies to our specification and one of the products includes a beer from a local brewery that suits us perfectly (sobrasada). So yes it's all about the provenance really. 

Do you look for a particular age or particular breed of pig for your products?

Yes, the animal is vital for us to maintain consistency in our product. I would worry about buying pork products from different sources as I wouldn't be able to maintain this, so our pigs are around 130kg deadweight. They are Gloucester old spots which now come from one particular farm and we've got a really good symbiotic relationship with our farmer. He actually shows a lot of Gloucester old spots and wins awards at lots of the agricultural shows. We only take the gilts (females) and we want a big mature animal so he keeps all of the girls from a litter. He can cherry-pick the one he wants for showing and the rest come to us. It works really well for both of us. And so we get real consistency, the same size hams, the same size collars etc and that size and that age makes a massive difference to the quality of a product.

Of course the tradition of charcuterie was born from using what local animals were available and making the whole animal last for the whole year through curing and salting which is why we are keen to use local animals that we have access to and try to make them into the best product that we can. Sometimes it's an easier starting place to find a great Italian or Spanish product and try and emulate it, but that’s tricky if your starting product isn't right (for example because you don't have that level of lardo on the back)  or your animal benefits from being butchered differently. If you can create what's best with your own local pigs then you get a product that has more of a natural identity rather than is just a copy of a Tuscan salami or whatever. We’re trying to create products suited to the animals we use and create end product that has its own identity rather than just copies of European favourites.

How does that butchery process unfold?

We take our animals every two weeks and then we spend a couple of days breaking them down. The trim gets split out into different trays depending on what salamis or other product it might be destined for, so we grade the fat and grade the meat as we go along. And then we use the component parts for what it’s best suited for. For example one salami will have hand diced back fat in it another salami has got the grade 1 trim in it whilst another has got the belly in it you know? And that's really the process of how we operate.

Who do you sell your products to in the main ?

About 65% of the produce goes to restaurants. Around 25% to retail such as delis and farm shops and 10% is online. 

What would you say is the stand out product from SaltPig. What would you recommend as the best starting place to discover your products?

I would have to say it's our garlic and pepper house salami. That product embodies the whole animal butchery ethos more than the others because it is made up from parts of the pig that you can only really harvest if you butcher the animal yourself. So it has a percentage of hand diced back fat (which is your premium lardo fat from the back of the pig above the loin) which we dice nice and fine, then a percentage of utterly lean meat from the leg so absolutely no trace of any sort of sinew, and then it has premium shoulder trim as well which creates the bind in the salami. So apart from it being a damn tasty salami it's also great that it reflects the our whole animal butchery philosophy! 

Which countries cured meat scene appeals to you the most outside the UK? 

It's got to be Italy I think. Apart from the reading and studying that I mentioned earlier I did sent myself off on a course there during the early days of the business, which undoubtedly has had an influence on me. For me the Italians are the masters of it. They have such a long and fantastic tradition and their methods and salumi have been the starting point for a lot of what we do.  And then as said we have taken those things and have run with them to try to make them our own.

Which Italian products do you particularly admire?

A Culatello Ham is definitely fantastic. I also love a Finocchiona or Tuscan Salami.

I must say if I had to name my most favourite charcuterie product however it doesn't come from Italy at all . It’s got to be the Spanish Iberico ham. They are absolutely second to none. Whereas the Italians have got the whole scene nailed down I would say the standout product in the world of charcuterie is the Spanish Iberico hams which are absolutely incredible. 

How do you think the cured meat scene is evolving here in the UK and how does it compare to the continent? 

I think lockdown had a significant effect on the way that consumers started to consider local produce and producers and brought on the education process and discovery of British cured meats leaps and bounds. All the time that we get more sophisticated at producing it here in the UK and the price difference between us and the continental alternatives become smaller it's only going to grow market share even more. I've also observed that the quality of producer is getting better year-on-year and perhaps those producers that aren’t producing or creating the best product are falling away so I think on a whole industry and the producers within it here in the UK is getting much stronger.