Charcuterie
Reinvented

(Delicacies) Mentioning charcuterie in the same breath as celeriac, seaweed, and swordfish? That’s new. For centuries, the equation was simple: no butcher, no deli meats; no livestock farming, no ham. The craft of charcuterie was closely tied to animals like pigs, cattle, or geese—whether the specialties came from France, Germany, Poland, or elsewhere.

Today, air-dried ham has lookalikes made from beets, what looks like white fat is actually kohlrabi, and Jerusalem artichoke and black radish appear as spicy hard sausages on now-trendy charcuterie boards. Boundary-pushing Michelin-starred chefs are experimenting with carrot debreceners that mature into sausage-like textures with the help of mushroom spores, and mimic the flavor profile of the Hungarian original thanks to authentic spices.

Especially in vegan and “leaf-to-root” cuisine, vegetable-based sausages and other charcuterie items have recently seen a meteoric rise. A pioneer in this genre is Swiss chef Esther Kern, who now offers vegan steaks made from beets—called “Randen” in Switzerland—having started with a beet-based version of the famous Bündnerfleisch.

A must-read for anyone experimenting with root- and tuber-based charcuterie is Koji Alchemy: Rediscovering the Magic of Mold-Based Fermentation by Jeremy Umansky and Rich Shih. The book is considered a bible for working with koji spores. These spores—along with factors like temperature and aging time—are essential for giving vegetables the bite and umami-rich flavors typically associated with meat-based sausages and hams.

But vegetables aren’t the only foundation for this new generation of charcuterie—fish is also being used to create unexpected products, from carp white sausages to tuna ’nduja. The undisputed trailblazer in this area is Australian chef Josh Niland, whose approach to applying butchery techniques to fish has truly transformed the industry. His products bear names such as kingfish pastrami and halibut chorizo, and his Fish Butchery is a seafood shop unlike any other—once described by the press as “a hybrid between an Apple Store and a Damien Hirst installation.”

One of Niland’s core techniques is to dry-age fish in the same way as meat, rather than storing it wet on ice. He’s also pioneered new ways of disassembling fish.

A kindred spirit—albeit with slightly different motivations—is Spanish chef Ángel León, head of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Aponiente in Cádiz. His mission is to extract every possible ingredient from the sea, especially those previously overlooked. That includes harvesting rice grains from seagrass and rediscovering fish species that were long ignored due to their complexity in processing or their reputation as low-grade. Initially, these fish didn’t go over well with guests. León’s solution? He began serving the unpopular seafood in refined forms—as guanciale, mortadella, chorizo, or blood sausage—in what he calls marine charcuterie.