Ethos

Ingredients

The simplicity of good salumi means one must start with two simple ingredients, meat and salt, these two ingredients form 97% of what we do. We source fresh pork from the Darling Downs region west of Brisbane and we utilize only three cuts for our salumi as we have found that this gives us the desired texture and bite in the final product. When crafting salumi from kangaroo or venison, we source local wild game from the Granite Belt which lies just southwest of Brisbane. The Granite Belt offers the highest altitudes and coolest temperatures in Queensland, thus resulting in game that has a higher fat content and a flavour that is less gamey and more mineral focused. The other key ingredient to great salumi is salt and in our opinion, there is no better in the world than Olson’s sea salt. Not only is this product proudly Australian, but we also love that it is offers us the perfect balance of salinity and mineral characters.

When using herbs and spices, we source the best available on the market and we dry our own chilis from fresh to ensure maximum flavour. For all our our well hung dry aged small goods, we only use natural casings, these casing shrink better during the fermentation process and offer a finer tasting end result. Our cooked items are all overnight smoked with native iron bark wood which offers the perfect blend of consistent sweet and smoky notes.

Methods

We aim to push the boundaries of flavour profiles, not proven old world techniques.

We use three different cuts in all our salumi to offer a better mouth feel and we hand cut the fat to preserve ultimate texture and bite. This is combined with an ancient European bacteria strain or ‘starter culture’ that not only helps us to craft small goods with precision and consistency, but also offers the best flavour. This bacteria also allows us a slower fermentation process which in turn sets up our salmi to have a clean acidity, depth of flavour and balance, we do not heat treat or salumi on order to expedite the process.

We also encourage the growth of white mould or ‘Penicillium’, this ‘white dusty film on the exterior of our salumi is an edible mold similar to what we find on certain cheeses. We inoculate each salami by hand to cultivate this mold, not only does it offer fantastic aromas and flavour profiles, it provides a natural barrier to other bacteria’s that may be harmful to the salami whilst it’s ageing.

The most important step to our salumi being consistently excellent is that we ensure it’s well hung. This means that all our small goods are hung and dry aged for an extended time ranging 3-6 months. This ensures that we have salumi that is well developed, has a great depth of flavour and that there is balance between the meat and the select blend of herbs and spices.

Flavour Profiles

If you ask chef Damon what is his inspiration for Saison’s flavour profiles, the answer will always be ‘it just has to be f&^%#@g delicious, whether we follow the rules or not’.

We have no rhyme or reason for what we do, just love for good food and more developed interesting flavour profiles, though we do love Australian native botanicals because they offer great freshness, savoury characters and a distinct point of difference. We also love chilli heat in salumi as it helps balance out the richness and saltiness of the meats.

Overall, our aim is not to be conventional when it comes to flavour, we want our products to be the best they can be far away form the industries preconceived notions of how salumi should be and taste.

Distribution

We do not endeavor to be on every restaurant list or in every deli in Australia, we strive to only work with the best. The best for us are those who appreciate fine food and the workmanship that goes into truly artisanal product. We hope that our product will be enjoyed across the nation in the same way that it is was made – with cold beer, smiley faces, greasy fingers with good people.