10 Tips For Cooking With Pancetta

You'll find astonishingly good pork options, cured included, all around the world, from the famous hams of China and Spain to that really great bacon in the little local butcher shop.

Still, you can make a case for Italy as the world capital of outstanding pork. Dry-cured pork like prosciutto and other kinds of salumi are staples on charcuterie boards everywhere, but oddly, pancetta doesn't get the same kind of love. It's the Italian version of bacon, made from pork bellies just like the bacon you're used to, but it's cured for longer and usually (but not always) rolled up in a tight cylinder.

As a trained chef who has experimented with making bacon and pancetta, I've done my share of cooking with it. If you're new to this particular delicacy and want to do it justice, here are 10 tips to help get you started.

Pancetta and American-style bacon start off the same: as a pork belly, though bacon can sometimes come from other parts of the pig. Ordinary bacon gets a simple cure with salt and sugar, and then it's hot- or cold-smoked (or both) for flavor. That gives bacon a big, bold flavor that stands up to most other ingredients.

That's not the case with pancetta. It's dry-cured for several weeks (much longer than the few days of brining most American bacon gets), which brings out complex and funky notes from the pork itself. The cure used for pancetta also includes plenty of fresh black pepper and varying combinations of herbs and spices. This means pancetta has a lot going on, flavor-wise, but those flavors are more subtle and delicate than the big, in-your-face wallop of smoke you get with bacon.

So the bottom line is to enjoy the richness and flavor that pancetta brings to a dish but leave room for those flavors to come through. Keep the other seasonings in the dish low-key so the pancetta can make itself felt.

It's easy to describe pancetta as "Italian bacon," but it's only been a little more than 150 years since Italy became united as a single country. So naming something as "Italian" food is a bit misleading because it's intensely regional. Every province, every major city, and even relatively small villages have their own unique dishes or their own versions of foods that are popular in other regions.

That's true of pancetta as well. The two "flagship" varieties, so to speak, are pancetta di Calabria and pancetta Piacentina, both of which have protected origin (DOP) status under EU law, like Parmigiano Reggiano. Calabrian pancetta is notable for its use of chilies and is made in flat slabs (stesa), while the Piacenzan variety — some come from the province of Emilia Romagna like Parmesan — is rolled (arrotalata) and tastes herbal, with an almost buttery richness.

While those are the two best-known varieties, you'll find other versions of pancetta from other Italian regions. If you have Italian groceries in your area, they might carry regional versions of pancetta. Buy different types and see which ones suit your recipes (and your personal taste) the best. As with comparing cheeses, there are no wrong answers, and the journey itself is a lot of fun.

There aren't a whole lot of soups that begin with just plain water. Usually, recipes will start with an ingredient that serves as the base of flavor for the broth and build from there.

In Italian soups, like the hearty eats like a meal pasta e fagioli, the base ingredient is often pancetta. It's diced into small cubes or cut into thin slices, rendered, and removed from the pot so the fat can be used to cook the onions, garlic, or other aromatic ingredients. Later, the crisped pancetta will be added back as a garnish. The pancetta's flavors pass into the broth as well as the soup's vegetables or starch ingredients, and its fattiness gives the broth a satisfyingly unctuous richness.

This isn't unique to Italian soups by any means. The most traditional chowder recipes begin with salt pork, Portugal's much-loved soup, caldo verde, uses chouriço sausage as a base, and even some ramen broth gets its richness from pork. So feel free to play around with pancetta in your own soups and stews. Pork has a definite affinity for peas, beans, and lentils, so those are good ingredients to work with, but roll with whatever you've got.

We generally don't have to think about how to use regular supermarket bacon because it's so familiar. Some kinds are smokier or fattier than others, but you generally know what you're getting.

With pancetta, you'll need to make a mental adjustment because its flavor profile isn't the same as the bacon you know. First, and most importantly, it's a lot saltier. You'll need to account for that in any dish you make, so start with less salt than you'd ordinarily use and then taste your dish as you go, fine-tuning the flavor with seasoning as needed. That way, you won't wind up with a disappointingly oversalted dish.

The best way to go about it is to cook a small piece of your pancetta in a pan or the microwave and taste it. Note the level of saltiness, but keep chewing and pay attention to the other notes that come through after your mouth acclimates to the salt. Those delicate pork and herb notes can bring a lot to your dish, so look for seasonings that complement or reinforce them rather than drowning them out.

Most varieties of pancetta are unsmoked, but smoked pancetta (pancetta affumicata) does exist, and it's used in a few Italian regions' local dishes like hearty penne boscaiola. If you're used to bacon but new to pancetta, it may feel like pancetta affumicata is a good middle ground, just familiar enough that you can experiment with confidence.

There's something to that. Using pancetta in bacon dishes can elevate them with subtler flavors or make a pancetta-centric dish taste more familiar than if you'd used unsmoked pancetta. The downside is that it may not be as good a fit as you'd think. Bacon has a sweetness that smoked pancetta doesn't, and pancetta has both the extra salt and herbal flavors that aren't there in bacon.

You'll need to think this through, in short. Dishes built around regular pancetta won't necessarily work with the smoked kind, and pancetta's flavor profile won't necessarily be a good fit for bacon dishes. The bottom line is to be selective. I found that smoked pancetta swapped with bacon made an interesting BLT, but to me, it'd be weird with eggs and toast.

In most stores, you'll find pancetta already sliced in vacuum-sealed packages. It's ... okay. Vacuum-sealed pancetta is better than no pancetta at all, but some of the more volatile flavor notes are quickly lost once it's sliced.

The flavors will be better if you have the pancetta sliced fresh to order, and you can specify whether you want it wafer-thin (usually for eating raw) or relatively thick (for dicing and rendering). Ordinarily, I'm a big fan of vacuum-packed meats, which minimize oxidation, but this is one time when it's good news if you see that it's been sliced and packed in-store instead. If they're packing it in-store, that means you can ask them to slice it in-store for you as well!

If you happen to arrive just as they're slicing it to stock their cooler case, go right ahead and buy one of those fresh packages. But you'll also have the option of whether to get it sliced thinly or thickly (for dicing) or even to have them cut you an inch-thick chunk or two that you can slice yourself.

Pancetta originated in Italy, so it's only natural to look for it in Italian markets. If you're a real aficionado, you may even get to the point of identifying specific Italian pancetta-makers (or regional versions) that you prefer over others.

But news flash! There's a lot of quality pork produced in the U.S. and American companies making prosciutto in the traditional style. The domestic product isn't always lower in cost, but often it is, meaning you'll be able to buy more for the same dollar. That definitely counts for something.

So, by all means, hunt down beautiful imported Italian pancetta when you get the chance, but don't sleep on American-made versions, either. Some are mass-market products of only ordinary quality, but there are some really good artisanal producers across the country (and let's face it, not all Italian pancetta is of top-tier quality either). Ask around or search online reviews to learn which domestic producers have the most noteworthy products.

How do you pick your package of bacon when looking through the cooler at the supermarket? Do you aim for a balance of fat to meat, or do you check obsessively for the package with the most lean and the least fat?

That's an important question because pancetta, in general, is fattier than supermarket bacon. It's true that pancetta comes from pork belly, just like American bacon, and pork belly, in general, is the fattiest cut of pork. There's still a big difference, though, because American hogs have been bred to produce lean pork (heirloom breeds are an exception). If you're used to thinking of pork fat as a bad thing to be avoided, you may be put off by how much of it you see in pancetta.

Why does this matter? Because the people who joke that "fat equals flavor" aren't necessarily wrong. Fat-soluble flavor molecules are more common than water-soluble molecules, and working around that requires food manufacturers to engage in some fancy chemistry. At home, it's easier to just embrace the richness and flavor of fatty ingredients like pancetta. Just exercise some moderation if you're worried about its impact.

When you're using pancetta as the base for a soup or a bean dish, there's not much question about how you'll cook it. You put it into the pot you're going to use for the meal, you render it, and then you cook your meal in the same pot.

If you're going to cook the pancetta separately and then incorporate it into a dish, you have other options. For super-crisp slices of pancetta to use as a garnish or a sandwich ingredient, for example, consider using your oven. This is a great method for cooking bacon and works just as well for pancetta. I recommend lining the pan first with foil to contain the fat, then with parchment so the pancetta won't stick. Arrange the rounds of pancetta on a sheet pan and then give it about 10 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Drain the pancetta on a paper towel after it's cooked, and then use it in your recipe. Don't waste the fat, though. Pour it from the pan into a heatproof container, and use it afterward as a flavor booster for other dishes.

Any discussion of how to cook with pancetta needs to address one final detail: You don't actually need to cook it at all. Yup, that's right. You wouldn't want to eat ordinary bacon without cooking it first, but pancetta is different.

Pancetta is dry-cured for several weeks, unlike the quick wet brining of ordinary bacon. That does a lot of things. Pancetta's deeper, more concentrated porky flavors, for example, stem from that dry-curing process. But more importantly, it creates a product that's inhospitable to bacteria and can be eaten uncooked. It's the same way with prosciutto, the best Spanish jamón, and even American country hams (though the homegrown kind are seldom eaten raw, they can be).

In Italy, pancetta is a staple on charcuterie plates, and that's one obvious way to enjoy it. Alternatively, you can also wrap it around fresh or dried fruit, like dates, fresh figs, or melon slices, or drape tissue-thin slices over your pizza when it comes out of the oven. In just a few seconds, the prosciutto will soften and meld into the other toppings, creating a luscious, umami-rich mouthful for you to enjoy.