Sausage Review: Creminelli Fine Meats

About two weeks ago I found myself killing time in a Wegeman’s supermarket near Philadelphia when I stumbled across some really interesting logs of salami that appeared to be carefully aged, unique and hand made.

Now, call me a sausage snob, but I don’t often buy my sausage at a supermarket. Whenever possible I like to shop local market stalls, online specialty retailers and underground operations that I know are making the good stuff from scratch in small batches. The more I looked around; however, the more this sausage looked like the real thing so I picked up a small stick of Wild Boar Salami for a holiday gathering I was planning in two weeks. If you want to browse a wide variety of Creminelli for sale, try this link!

When I returned home I decided to do a little research on the company who had apparently positioned themselves as “the big salami” with a large retailer like Wegeman’s and yet still managed to maintain that old world look and feel of a small producer. A quick look on the internet and I came to find that the producer, Creminelli Fine Meats, has been making sausage as far back as the 1600’s in Italy; however, they’ve only been in the states since 2007. Bravo to them for reaching such wide distribution in such a short amount of time here in the U.S. ! For a full listing of their distinctively Italian sausages please check out their website.

Since I’m incapable of waiting for anything, I found myself cutting off a small piece of the salami a full two weeks before the holiday party. As is usually the case, I did a visual check, a sniff test and then popped it in my mouth.

At first glance I found it odd that the cross section of meat appeared to have a crystalline glean to it…almost like I had sprinkled a pinch of sea salt on the surface. As I put it on my tongue it became apparent that my visual inspection was not an illusion because I immediately noticed the strong taste of salt. I tried another piece and got the same salty result. Finally I cut a piece from the opposite end to see if it was just an anomaly on one end of the stick but there was no change in flavor. I thought it was really odd so I emailed the company.

A couple hours after my email, I got a note from a representative from the company. He was very apologetic and explained to me that sometimes in the mixing process, there can be pockets of salt that don’t get blended the whole way. It doesn’t happen often but it totally made sense to me.

I didn’t ask…but he offered to send me a replacement for the product with a rush so that it would arrive on Friday, Christmas eve, the date of my party.

So Friday rolled around and as I returned home from my last minute dash for Christmas presents I found a box on my front porch. I have to admit I was truly like a kid on Christams morning. I ripped open the package and found a nice hardwood box inside with 2 sticks of the neatly wrapped salamis.

I still had some of the old salami so I cut a slice from each of the three salamis to compare them. I tried the new salamis first followed by the one I had purchased previously. Just as I had suspected, the two new salamis were perfectly balanced and slightly gamey…just how I imagined they would be. And the salami I had purchased previously had a significantly higher salt content. For a more sexy description of this salami, check out the product description here.

So for those of you who make or sell sausage, the biggest take-away here is that you’re going to have some imperfections in your product from time-to-time. When it happens, the best thing you can do is acknowledge it, find out how you can improve it and then take care of your customer.

For those of you who just eat sausage, the moral of this story is that Creminelli does have a good product and if by chance you get a rare bad batch, there’s a good team behind the scenes ready to take care of you.

This is not a paid sponsorship nor do I have a relationship with anyone from the companies mentioned in this blog post…