Pancetta

A very important ingredient in the preparation of many Italian dishes, pancetta is bacon cured from belly of pork, or panda. Pancetta is usually fried as a base for sauces, the best known of which is Carbonara, a sauce for pasta based on small cubes of fried pancetta — or guanciale as the purist requires — with the addition of raw egg at the end. Fresh pancetta can be used to make minestrone and soups. Pancetta curata, salt-cured, air-dried or even arrotolata, rolled pancetta, is used thinly sliced as part of an antipasto. Today you can also find pancetta affumicata, smoked pancetta, which is used in many northern Italian dishes influenced by the cuisine of neighbouring Austria. Tuscany also produces rigatino pancetta ‘streaky bacon’, a very thin bacon that has the same uses as other pancettas.