Meat Expert Guesses Cheap vs Expensive Deli Meats | Price Points | Epicurious

I am Eli Cairo and you can say I'm a meat expert awesome salami definitely my favorite I'm a salami producer what do I look for when I'm looking for a quality salami first and foremost does I go for mold a is in a natural casing which does add flavor and it has a very very beautiful mold on the outside of it it looks like a very natural product you can tell that it's natural also by the fact that the rounds have the casing on it and they're very very tender that will add an amazing flavor this one on the left here you can tell that this is probably collagen casing and then this is yeah definitely a fake mold that doesn't do anything to add the flavor whatsoever another quality you want to look for as it was when you cut into it you like to see really really a clear definition between the white fat and the red meat the fat should look really bright and white if you're starting to get a little bit of yellows and not as bright and crisp it could be a sign that oxygen got inside of that and made the fat a little bit rancid now we're gonna do the best part which is tasting it we'll start here and you'll pick up the flavor of the mold right away and the mold bloom is very pungent and a real when you bite into it it melts nicely on your tongue it actually dissolves there's no greasy residue I'm not getting any weird chunks in there this one give it a good smell also it looks pretty good you know it's definitely cured pretty hard another quality test when you're shopping for a salami is you should give it a nice squeeze if the salami has a little bit of give that is the ideal perfect salami it's not too hard if you start slicing into the salami zand they're completely rock-hard to me they're just a little bit too old a little bit past their prime it'll be a little harder and chew it won't be the most enjoyable mouthfeel the first thing you taste is a lactic Tang on a more fast mass-produced salami you can add just a lactic acid bacteria directly into it bring your salami to any temperature drop the pH making it self stable real quick however you've never allowed your salami to develop an amazing flavor it literally will taste like pork and acid and kind of Tang gosh darn it that thing is sticky I would assume that this is a more expensive salami however you know the perception at market there is only so much people where pay for a salami so the prices on these may be very close let's check it out oh good 35 bucks - 20 bucks this is a much more that makes me really happy because this is a very high-quality salami there's definitely a time and place for both of these a is great when you're trying to enjoy something very quality natural casings live mold great particle ization this one throw it on a pizza you know like a salami that has a live active mold on the outside won't really translate - just throwing it on a pizza and throwing it in I mean you can it's decadent I get to do it but I make it for a living so that's different ABB's one of the most loved deli meats ever both of these look like from first glance that there is real smoke on them to some extent as opposed to liquid smoke if you use a liquid smoke you could turn it instantly brown and have it taste like real smoke obviously this one is pretty pretty awesome it's definitely a classic Americana ham it is from what I'm guessing yeah its spiral cut which is a sign of mass production it also has an amazing crust of sugar and crunchiness going on on top this is a classic American ham the problem when I look at a ham that has been spiral cut ready to go you're probably using some kind of phosphate the phosphate helps the moisture stay inside of it that is definitely a way to speed up the process of cooking it then they're gonna smoke their whole ham a ham when you cook it without phosphates it's gonna shrink down it's gonna look more like a natural piece of meat this one's almost too full and too plump if you're looking at it and you get kind of a sidelight and you almost have a rainbow effect on there that could mean that there's also too much phosphate in there this is a beautiful a little small have the color is very very natural when you start to see these fatty areas that have difference between darker brown and light brown that's a good sign that this was smoked over real real wood and we'll be able to taste that I'm gonna start with a give it a nice smell smells like ham it just kind of smells like char so that makes me think that it is a liquid smoke mmm nice and tender ridiculously sweet in a weird way mmm definitely not a whole lot going on in that one let's try this cat mmm yeah just right away you taste real smoke as the definitely Applewood we kind of say it's like using butter it gives it this like wonderful rich flavor to it the Hickory gives it its beautiful color I would assume that there's some Hickory on there I'd say this has actual onion in it shallot fresh garlic possibly some brown sugar the woods smoked and the flavor that is put into that ham mmm I'm gonna say just roughly that I think this is the more quality ham yes we'll see how I did on this one [Music] honestly the prices aren't as drastic as I would have thought this is a great great ham you can tell it's made with real ingredients full flavor and this ham is a you know a beautiful family-style ham that has process on the outside the reason I assume that this one is a little bit more expensive again it doesn't have the phosphate to add to the volume they're losing a lot of weight of the ham in the cooking process it's definitely cooked with real smoke which takes a very long time I would have assumed that this one would have been a little bit more expensive with all the ingredients that you could taste that are going into it but doesn't show what I know ah yes I know what these are you got Bologna and mortadella they're both fully emulsified meats kind of what we call and layman's term is a cold cut an emulsified meat or an emulsification is when you take lean meat and you form a myosin bind and you fold in the fat and the lean meat kind of encompasses the fat making a bind or an emulsion visually you quickly see that this has a true full emulsification it has zero air bubbles possibly a sign that it has fillers in it or is just mass produced the filters that are commonly used are also called work or work crutches it's essentially to speed up the process a is a little bit more rougher but has a really good emulsification a much more natural color to it there's also little chunks of pistachios and black pepper and a little pieces of lard for added flavor and crunch and texture color wise both of the colors of those come from nitrate or nitrite it produces nitric oxide which protects the color it also gives you that natural cured flavor and the most important thing is that they attacked botulism pretty dangerous pathogen judging by appearance a it definitely looks more hand made from a smaller butcher shop a little bit more quality yeah both of them are pretty good looking them a is definitely beautiful got a good vine it's not too rubber you can see the meat there it actually smells like ingredient you know you can get a little bit of cinnamon you instantly smell real garlic give it a taste mmm you want the texture to be kind of natural you don't want anything when you bite into it's rubbery or too light you want it to resemble meat you also as you're tasting it you don't want any of that lactic Tang nothing that's fake and then the freshness of the spices makes it way more than just that OneNote baloney or whatever that is good actually okay this one you could probably pull pretty hard on that that's probably a filler that's making that bind not a whole lot going on there it almost does smell a little bit of tangy mm-hmm not gonna eat all that clearly a is the more expensive of the product at least it should be it's full of flavor but you never know so let's take a look [Music] nailed it quick comparison a is much more a delicious product this one has nuances you could put this on a charcuterie board also have it on a sandwich you could heat it but it has just amazing texture real spices no fake lactic acid over here you're just getting a solid American baloney nothing too flavorful nothing too crazy nice way to deal with the hangover got hot dogs who doesn't love hot dogs the most American of all sausages and you could possibly buy it at deli the biggest thing that you're gonna find if one is of a high quality or a low quality you look for casings these ones you can see have a natural curve to it they have a little bit of knobs on the side that looks like their actual casings between it these ones I'm gonna go ahead and say our casing lists they don't even have a casing on them at some point they did and then once you smoke them or cook them or put them in liquid smoke at the end of it you strip off the outside of the casing so it's just kind of like a casing list sausage that looks smokes not saying it's a bad sausage it's just not as great as this one the reason why a true lamb casing is so delicious they're gonna plump up and be wonderful you're able to eat the casing when you buy it into it's going to give you that like classic snap why I love the snap so much is that it actually gives it a texture to it once you taste it that's the that's the thing that's the trick both of these have amazing color you know they're almost too even on both of them I'm not sure we'll have to taste them to see if we can taste fake smoke used or liquid smoke used on these I'm gonna start with the casing list one over here to see if I'm right you know that's I was actually quite delicious flavor-wise it's kind of awesome you know this is what you expect from a beef Frank garlic smoked fat you don't want it to be too greasy when you heat it up the grease should be nicely in there this one over here let's see if we got the snap oh yeah I'm talking about very similar in flavor honestly they're they're very very close the only thing that makes this one a better sausage the casing is real you get every time you chew it you get a little bit more snap it makes it just a little bit more of a special sausage than you know just the casing this one um both of them I'm not judging from both of these that I don't think either of these are made with real smoke I think these are both liquid smoke ones really close actually the fact that they did use natural casings and it's a little bit more I'm going to go ahead and assume that this is the more expensive of this one should be closed oh yeah I did I crushed in there right it's way more expensive a lamb casing is the most expensive ingredient on an entire frankfurter they're very very hard to process they're tricky to work with slow process everything about it but yeah the casing and that snap is of it almost worth double the price or is worth double the price well this one seems obvious prosciutto x' jamon dry cured hams looks really really obvious to me I'd go as far as to say if I guess this one wrong I will quit being a meat expert and getting the candy or something right off the bat you're looking for a really even dark rich beautiful color with lots of wonderful marbling inside of it I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is a hamona B Rakow that would be a spanish-style ham because there is the darkness and the size of it and the density of color this one on the right doesn't have very much marbling in it and you look at this very pale it almost still looks a little bit raw what happens when you're dry curing hams is you're pulling the moisture from inside of the meat out very similar to salami producing and in doing that the proteins are getting more and more concentrated and so all the red and beautiful meats are getting more connected here you still have a lot of moisture suspended in it and so it's keeping the meat separated this pig was grain fed its whole life possibly even given some kind of animal steroids to make it grow faster still possibly a great product I'll have to taste it I'll start out with the lesser cured one mm-hmm first thing that I notice is the mouthfeel it's still relatively rather chewy there's not a lot of flavor nuances in there it's kind of like a one-trick pony this is fine for Sciuto I would say that it's just young let's give this one a bite smell that of course again I mean it really smells like almonds and black truffles it's kind of just amazing I mean this is heaven it has flavors of almonds its crust it's beautifully bitter with all the fat that's in the muscles all these wonderful marbling it stays wonderfully moist I'm gonna assume that this is I'm only Avira cote de bellota possibly black label that is the highest label that you could possibly get well it's pretty obvious right now which one I think is the more expensive one if I'm wrong on this I'll probably quit making meat see that's about right how would you justify the price of this the amount of detail that is spent by the farmer raising these pigs this pig probably was born in a deep barn out in the middle of a field spent its entire life rooting around following its brothers and sisters around rustling through the forest and then fattened on acorns for the last part of his life one of the most amazing parts about this is that it has a dop denomination of protection for a product they're also predicting the producer making sure that there's nobody else out there that's from another part of Europe or America trying to pretend that this is that ham this prosciutto are cured ham I'm assuming was probably raised in confinement over gestation crates probably didn't get a whole lot of activity his entire life it's kind of a sad Pig to be honest with you there is a lot of information here I hope some of that's valuable you can use some of this when you're purchasing fancy dinner snacks or wonderful bologna sandwiches thanks for watching hope you enjoyed [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 8,404,887

Rating: 4.8152022 out of 5

Keywords: cheap, expensive, meat, taste test, cheap vs expensive, cheap vs expensive food, meats, deli meats, cheap deli meat, cheap meat, expensive deli meat, expensive meat, best deli meat, mortadella, eli cairo, meat expert, deli meat expert, price points, cheap meat vs expensive meat, deli meat challenge, how deli meat is made, making deli meat, deli meat how it's made, italian deli meats, how its made deli meats, epicurious, cooking, recipes

Id: LnA7Au-DLUM

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Steveskittles]

This guy was very genuine. I hate foodies that act like they can't even stomach average produce. This guy thought everything was good but with the obvious allure of the superior meats.

[u/flagstomp]

"Give it a nice smell... smells like ham"

Lol. That would be my response too.

[u/HardKnockRiffe]

I did not expect to watch that entire video, but I found it incredibly fascinating. It's always fun watching people talk about things they're passionate about.

[u/[deleted]]

Hey mattress hipster, take note, this is how you do it.

The guy explains the difference between higher quality and lower quality, he explains what that means for the end product, and he even mentions when you'd want to use the cheaper version because he's not a total snob.

[u/PumpInMyDump]

I recognize this guy! He was in an episode of It's Alive! where they make sausage. It's a good watch.

[u/SkateTime]

This was a cool video, I just wish they could've confirmed or denied if a meat did use liquid smoke since he mentioned it so often. Might've been cool to see.

[u/SullyDuggs]

I don't know if I can ever justify paying $193 for a pound of meat but damn I'm curious.

[u/Canadian-Living]

This was very informative about meats that are above my pay grade.

[u/ETHNJCB]

There’s also a cheese expert one that in my opinion is more impressive. There are less visual cues and makes for anther very interesting video.