Salami

Salami is a type of cured sausage consisting of fermented and air-dried meat, typically beef or pork. Historically, salami was popular among southern and central European peasants because it stores at room temperature for up to 40 days once cut, supplementing a potentially meager or inconsistent supply of fresh meat. Countries and regions across Europe make their own traditional varieties of salami.

The word salami in English comes from the plural form of the Italian . It is a singular or plural word in English for cured meats of a European (particularly Italian) style. In Romanian, Bulgarian, and Turkish, the word is salam; in Hungarian, it is szalámi; while French, German, and Dutch, have the same word as English. The name may be derived from the Latin words "salsiccia" and "salumen".

The word originates from the word sale (salt) with a termination (ame) that in Italian indicates a collective noun. Thus, it originally meant "all kinds of salted (meats)". The Italian tradition of cured meats includes several styles, and the word salame soon specifically meant only the most popular kind—a salted and spiced meat, ground and extruded into an elongated, thin casing (usually cleaned animal intestine), then left to undergo natural fermentation for days, months, or even years.

The concept of fermentation—allowing beneficial or benign organisms to grow in food to prevent destructive or toxic ones from growing—especially with meat, has been around for hundreds of years. This is evident in the presence of various types of sausages found globally. As well, environmental conditions dictate what food processes are used, as seen in the Mediterranean and southern Europe where "meat products are dried to lower water activity (Aw) values, taking advantage of the long dry and sunny days, while in northern Europe, fermented sausages require smoking for further preservation."

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