pepperoni

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2010)

A pepperoni pizza.

Pepperoni is a spicy Italian-American variety of salami (a dry sausage) usually made from cured pork and beef,^[1][2] but poultry may be added, if labeled correctly, for less expensive versions.^[3] Pepperoni is characteristically soft, slightly smoky, and bright red in color. ^[4] It is a descendant of the spicy salamis of southern Italy, such as salsiccia Napoletana piccante, a spicy dry sausage from Naples or the soppressata from Calabria, but unlike these sausages it is smoked and has a finer grain. Sodium nitrite, used as a curing agent, is what gives pepperoni the pink part of its distinct orange-pink color,^[1] while paprika or other capsicum provides the orange part. Thinly sliced pepperoni is a popular pizza topping in American-style pizzerias. Also, it is sometimes used to make sub sandwiches.

The term pepperoni is a corruption of peperoni, the plural of peperone, the Italian word for pepper (the fruit, not the spice). The first reference using pepperoni to refer to a sausage dates to 1919.^[4] Throughout continental Europe, peperone is a common word for various types of capsicum, including bell peppers and a small, spicy and often pickled pepper known as peperoncino or peperone piccante in Italy and peperoncini or banana peppers in the U.S. Unlike in Europe, the English word pepperoni is used as a singular uncountable noun.

To order a very similar food in Italy, one would request salamino piccante to get a spicy sausage made only of pork and beef. Usually the Italian name for a pepperoni pizza is pizza alla diavola (pizza devil-style, very similar in appearance to the pepperoni pizza). Asking for a pizza with "salamino piccante calabro" or "spianata calabra" (hot salami typical of Calabria, generally made in large cylinders of meat, slightly flattened in the case "spianata") one could get a pizza covered with large slices of salami instead of the slices of hot sausage. The original salami from Calabria can be much spicier than American pepperoni or other types of Italian spicy sausages.

Halal or kosher pepperoni may be made from beef or poultry.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pepperoni

v d e Sausage Salami (Italy) Ciauscolo Fuet Genoa salami 'Nduja Pepperoni Sopressa Sopressata Winter salami Other regions Kulen (Croatia and Serbia) Chinese sausage Chorizo (Iberian Peninsula) Linguiça

v d e Meat Poultry and game Chicken Duck Turkey Goose Pheasant Grouse Quail Partridge Rabbit Venison Livestock Beef and Veal Bison Dog Goat Guinea pig Horse Lamb and mutton Llama Pork Yak Fish and seafood Crab Crayfish Lobster Prawn Shrimp Anchovy Basa Bass Catfish Carp Cod Crappie Dolphin Eel Flounder Grouper Haddock Halibut Herring Kingfish Mackerel Mahi Mahi Marlin Milkfish Orange roughy Perch Pike Pollock Salmon Sardine Sole Swordfish Tilapia Trout Tuna Walleye Whale Cuts and preparation Bacon Barbecued Braised Burgers Chop Corned Cured Fondue Fried Haggis Ham Aged Marinated Offal Pepperoni Pickled Poached Roasted Salami Sausage Salt-cured Smoked Steak Stewed Tartare Tenderized Other Butchery Ethics Preservation Slaughter Red meat White meat

This meat-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v d e