February 21, 2025 • 43 mins
Pepperoni is a sausage that's difficult to divorce from its primary partner, American pizza. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren explore the history of this Italian-American invention, plus explain how the sausage is made.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Lorn Vogelbaum, and today we have a classic
episode for you about Pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, was there any particular reason this was on your mind?
To bring back lord? Uh?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Good?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Maybe I felt like it was a vaguely romantic food
item in some way, just because it's like such a
nice comfort food and weirdly enough, as it turns out,
a bunch of brands agree with me, so okay. Specifically
for Valentine's Day this year, Domino's United Kingdom created this
(00:53):
limited edition Pepperoni inspired perfume. O uh huh. It apparently
has a warm, woody bass with notes of pepper and spice.
You cannot purchase it. It is not for sale, but
you can't enter to win a bottle or could up
in like from like February tenth through the seventeenth. The
(01:15):
bottle is pyramid shaped to a vocal slice of pizza.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wow, this is very funny because my first question was
do you think wearing such a perfume would attract zombies?
And then you ended with pyramid shaped bottle and now
I'm thinking about pyramid head and There is a pizza
(01:42):
scene in Silent Hill too, which is where Pyramidhead debuted.
Do you how deep do you think this goes?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I think way less deep than you're going with it,
but I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I don't think it smells particularly fleshy. Possibly a tiny
bit meaty. I'm not sure, but you know, someone, if
anyone out there wins a bottle, let us know.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, yeah, and we're gonna have to later off my
talk more in depth about I've never really thought about
the smell, the zombie smell element.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Of like what what zombies are attracted to?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, yeah, think about this.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, no, absolutely, this is something that I have thought about.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So here we are excellent. I love how it's like
Valentine's Day zombies, zombies. That's very un brand for us.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I will say, sorry, y'all'll usually try to space out,
like our animal protein based episodes, and we just did
abaloni and now here this one is popping up, So
my bad.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I hope.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
While I was picking the topic, I wasn't even thinking
about pepperoni as being a meat product, if that makes
any kind of sense. Like, I don't know, like it
holds this separate space in my mind. There are a
lot of or like more vegetarian options for pepperoni these
days than when we originally did this episode, which was
(03:22):
in August of twenty eighteen. Wow, oh, I know, right,
early on, early on. Oh, but also back to Valentine's Day.
So aside from zombies in this perfume, yeah, Hormel offered
and entered to win pizza kit with heart shaped pepperoni included.
(03:43):
It called the heart shaped pepperoni the sweetest shape and
sliced meats. Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, you're like, all right,
I'll give it to him. Why not?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I can't really think of another one, so yeah, absolutely,
there you go.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Also, and I maybe unrelated to I don't think it's
specifically related to Valentine's Day, but the soda company, the
like Low sugar soda company Perfe released a limited edition
Pepperoni pizza soda. It contains tomato concentrate, some salt, some
natural flavors, and some sweeteners. They say it has a cheesy,
(04:29):
saucy pepperoni flavor. I'm unfamiliar with the brand. Annie is
making a look of absolute abject horror.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, I just wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah right, yeah, and this one is actually for sale.
You don't have to like win it, and the deadline
for trying to win it is not passed as of
whenever you're hearing this, so hypothetically, if it hasn't sold
out yet, you can go purchase some if you so choose.
I can't tell you what to do with your money.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
If you do choose, please let us know again, because
I'm very curious about this, I have to say, Oh, well,
I guess we should let pass. Annie and Lauren take
it away. I guess. Hello, and welcome to food Stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I'm Annie Ree and I'm Lauren vocal Baum, and today
we're talking about pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes we are. Do you have any opinions thoughts about pepperoni? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It gets a little bit greasy for me sometimes, but
I mean it's delicious. It's made of like salt and fat, yeah,
and savory flavors, and I mean, what can go wrong
other than a number of things with your health?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I mean, yeah, absolutely. I have a friend and pepperoni
is like her favorite food. If you see someone eating
almonds out of a bag, she'll be eating pepperoni out
of a bag. Okay, she seems relatively healthy.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Sure, well, I mean, you know, in all things a balance,
In all things a balance. She eats some vegetables other
than that, then she's probably doing just fine.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I have not personally witnessed it, but I assume that
she eats other vegetables. She's one of my best friends too,
And now that I think about it, I really don't
see eat too many vegetables. Well, I'll talk to her
after the show. But we want to thank eleven year
old Alison four handwriting as a letter yes, and requesting
that we talk about Pepperoni rules, which we will be
(06:44):
talking about as part of this Pepperoni discussion. Absolutely, And
Pepperoni Pizza Day is coming up on September twentieth. This
hardly ever happens when we're recording the day is usually like.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh yeah, it's usually in the middle of the year
some other time.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yes, And September twentieth is my mom's birthday, and it's
also close to super producer Dylan's birthday. There you go,
so happy birthday to both of them. And I want
to include this quote from the Pepperoni Pizza Day website.
Does have a website. Pizza is consumed at every point
(07:21):
in the day, piping hot for dinner and lunch and
cold in the morning. Some people even profess that pizza
tastes far better cold than it does hot from the
even though we think that's largely dependent on the type
of pizza. Oh and for those of you who are
engaged in that whole pineapple versus no pineapple debate, we're
here to weigh in on that pineapple is a fine
pizza topping. You are allowed to disagree. Of course, We've
(07:42):
never been in the business of stopping people from going
about the business of being wrong. We know that eventually
you'll come around. But in the meantime, we can agree
on pepperoni pizza being the best of pizzas.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Ooh, I would disagree. Ooh really contention co Lauren has again.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Okay, there's a song called Thanks for the Pepperoni by
George Harrison. I had no words in it, though, at
least the version I heard, and I was kind of like, huh,
I'm not getting a pepperoni vibe. But perhaps I missed.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I am unfamiliar with it. Maybe maybe sometime we can
call in our compatriot Christopher Christopher Hacioist come do another
side dish segment with us and talk to us about it.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
We absolutely should, But in the meantime we must answer
this question, the very important question, pepperoni. What is it?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, pepperoni is a type of dry sausage made typically
from a blend of ground pork and beef plus a
number of spices, plus some preserving agents. All pork, all
be for a blend of poultry, even are also common.
I know most of the flavor of pepperoni comes from
these spices that are used usually at paprika, which is
(08:57):
dried ground sweet peppers plus other spy I see your capsicum,
anim peppers like cayenne, plus some other stuff like a
black pepper, garlic, fennel or an ee seed, and mustard seed.
It's usually served if you've never seen pepperoni, in like
thin to medium slices, and the texture is sort of
chewy but also sort of soft, and the flavor is
savory and salty, in a little sweet, spicy, smoky, tangy, herbal.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Lots of things going on in pepperoni. It does, I does.
I think I've ever appreciated it fully.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I certainly appreciated it while I was doing this research
and also got very hungry. This was an extremely hungry
research week. Yes, sausage in general has been around for
a long dang time. It can be cooked and eaten fresh,
of course, or it can be cured that is preserved
in some way so that you know, microbes don't get
a chance to eat it before you do. Pepperoni specifically
(09:51):
is air dried and treated with a number of preservatives
to reduce the water content and thus prevent microbe growth.
But it's also usually fermented with friendly bacteria that incidify
it just enough to prevent unfriendly bacteria from growing.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And that's right.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Part of what makes pepperoni so great is bacteria.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
It cannot be. You cannot.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I feel I'm starting to feel like Peewee Herman or
maybe Oprah.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I just imagine like an epic reverb on it every
time you do it, and then it's like light speed
effect is happening hyperspace.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, yeah, I'm picturing like glitter and balloons and like
loud horns. I don't know, but anyway, I like both
of these versions. So okay, But before you get to
the bacteria boop, first, you need to form up your sausage.
So meats are ground in the right proportion of fats
to you know, actual meat, and then blended with spices,
some dehydrating preservatives like a salt, nitrites and or celery juice,
(10:58):
and a lactic acid bacterial culture, plus some sugars to
feed the bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria, you may remember, are
the same things that make cheese and yogurt possible.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
And delous delicious.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, this mix is piped into sausage casing, twisting it
into links as it goes. The casing could be edible,
and then it'll be either natural that is made from
the lining of an animal's small intestine, or artificial, which
doesn't mean it's made of like plastic. It's usually made
of a processed animal collagen from like skins or bones
of other animals. Or it could be inedible casings, which
(11:34):
might be made from cellulose that's plant fibers, or from plastic,
and either way will probably be removed before the pepperoni
is packaged for sale. Yes, that's how the sausage is made. Okay,
So once you've got these these links of pepperoni sausage,
you let them ferment for two to three days, letting
the bacteria go to work eating those sugars and excreting
lactic acid, which drops the pH level below where most
(11:58):
other microbes want to. It also adds a little bit
of flavor, as a less flavorful shortcut citric acid might
be added instead of allowing for that bacterial fermentation. Yeah.
Sometimes the links are smoked after this, and sometimes they're
heat treated for like ultimate safety, but either way, they
are finished by air drying in a room with careful
(12:21):
temperature and humidity control for anywhere from a couple of
days to a couple of weeks until the pepperoni has
lost sixty to eighty percent of its original weight due
to moisture loss woo.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Before these links are sliced or if they're kept in
a factory sealed package, this processing allows pepperoni to be
kept at room temperature for about six months.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah. And the bright red color can come either from
the preservative nitrates used in making it, which is the
same reason why spam and corned beef are pink, and
or from those red peppers that it contains.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, and I read a lot of I read a
lot of very essays about pepperoni, pizza, and pepperoni in general,
and I find that the color is important.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah yeah, and even the color of the of the
oil of like the grease off of the pepperoni. Like
people are like, if it's not bright orange, I don't
care about it.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I don't want How does not my pepperoni pizza? It
is a bright contrasting color with the chee cheese. Oh yeah, yeah,
But we should talk about some uh some nutrition.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Huh maybe, I mean, come on, like, like, you know,
you know that pepperoni isn't a health food.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Well, my friend I got to talk to her about it.
I'm not sure now, and.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I know, and I guess, I guess you can count
like the mental health obtained from eating pizza. That's real.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh I know. I went through the throes of like
the most stereotypical breakup like a year and a half ago,
and I know all about it.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Pizza pizza is a mental health food.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Of course, the exact nutritional value of any given piece
of pepperoni is going to vary based on exactly what
it's made of, but the calories generally come about eighty
percent from fat and twenty percent from protein, and then
there's like a wee smattering of minerals and vitamins in there,
and the fats in it are a blend of good
fats and bad fats, Like it could be worse for
(14:22):
you that that protein and fat can make it a
filling snack or like a decent ingredient in small amounts
like less than an ounce, but it should probably be
considered a treat.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Oh man, this conversation's not gonna go well. My friend, Sorry, sorry,
she needs to hear the truth.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
She does, she does, and you know, and everybody is different.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It's true, she's probably gonna throw pepperoni at my face,
but jokes on her.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Because I'll ease then you'll just eat it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, yeah, too bad. And if we're looking at pepperoni numbers,
it is hard to separate pepperoni from its so mate
and holy matrimony pizza. Uh huh. Pepperoni is the most
popular pizza topping of choice in the US that probably
surprises no one. It's the de facto topping, I believe
at Little Caesar's. It's the like default option when you
(15:16):
just say pizza, pepperoni, pizza oh wow, huh yeah, And
over one third of pizzas ordered in the US will
have pepperoni on top per year. For some people, playing
pizza is pepperoni pizza, it's the pizza modi, although I
think that has more to do with color. Oh yeah,
still still but still. However, in recent years, is more
(15:36):
and more artisanal pizza places have opened. Those fancier pizza
places probably won't have pepperoni as an option. I've been
keeping an eye on this since we've done the research. Yeah,
and I have noticed, Yeah, pepperoni is not not as common.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Do they have like salami or something equivalent, or is
it just like just just eat sausage like a normal
person kind.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Of There is one like is it super setta say that?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh yeah, sure, I think you're soapersada.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Sure, yeah, there's one like thinly sliced not salami, but
similar meat, but.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Like a nice spicy sausage product.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
That yeah, well, but not pepperoni. You might find broccoli
Brussels sprouts, but no, they draw the line somewhere. And
you won't find pepperoni in too many restaurant kitchens either.
And this is sort of a thing. Pepperoni is very
much looked down on by a lot of folks. Michael
(16:30):
Rohlman who has written a book on Sharquteri and salami
inspecific set of pepperoni, bread, cheese, and salami. Is a
good idea, But America has a way of taking a
good idea, mass producing it to the point of profound
mediocrity and losing our sense of where the idea comes from.
Wo harsh words. And speaking of harsh words, there's a
(16:51):
rant over at the So Good blog titled no, I
don't want to order Pepperoni pizza? Do I look like
I'm twelve years old, which was later reblogged on Slice
as part of an article called why Pepperoni Pizza sucks?
And I want to include a quote. Pepperoni, while okay,
is simply not good enough to have earned its place
(17:13):
as the default pizza order of choice on merit alone.
Hell no, I believe it has earned that place through
process of elimination on adventurous American taste buds and dumb luck.
It's cheap, it's meaty, it's salty, and it adds additional
flavor to an otherwise bland pizza. But you know what,
so does sausage. But sausage just doesn't look good in
(17:35):
photos like pepperoni does. So pizza places don't advertise the
shit out of it. With your help, we can knock
Pepperoni pizza from its undeserved throwne is the go to
pizza option after cheese. Yes. With your willingness to speak
out and a little elbow grease, we can end the
tyranny of Pepperoni pizza and return it to its rightful police,
off the default pizza pedestal and back onto the list
(17:58):
of general topping choya with everyone else, which frankly is
where it belongs. Pepperoni pizza is not special, It is
not above criticism, and it is not deserving a protected status.
It goes on, it goes on and on. There was
a little a little taken aback. Oh, I can keep
(18:20):
scrolling like, oh.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And they're not done yet to.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Me, I mean people have opinions, as we've said on
the show. Absolutely, but some chefs big on the head
to tail whole animal movement are crafting fancy pepperoni that
uses a lot of celery juice in place of nitrates,
for example, which does mean it loses its bright red
orange hue and the bright grease that results. What we
were talking about. Some are trying to bring that chewy,
(18:46):
smoky hot pepperoni into this artisanal pizza movement, and one
restaurant in New York City, Teresi Italian Specialties, has several
upscale takes on pepperoni, like Pepperoni snow and they use
the same method to make that I used for butter
and piecrest, which is to freeze it and then shave
it with like a creator. Yeah, Pepperoni vinagrette and a
(19:07):
pepperoni potato salad. That sounded amazing and I want it
right now. Oh, if you know they want to send
it to me.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, if anyone wants to ship us, carefully, friends.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Carefully, don't poisonous please. Hormel is the best selling brand
of pepperoni. The company sold forty million feet of pepperoni,
enough to tunnel through this very planet that we live
on leading up to the twenty eleven super Bowl. Oh,
just leading up to the super Bowl. Okay, for the
Dominoes factor of the episode, and Dominoes, you should really
(19:37):
get in touch. Apparently, the executive vice president of operations
estimates that fifty percent of pizzas ordered from Dominos are pepperoni,
and that's compared to you about thirty five years ago
when the number was about thirty percent. Oh wow, which
equates to an annual twenty nine million pounds of pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Woo.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah. Serious Eats ran an article a few years back
calling super Seta the new Pepperoni. But Pepperoni has had
some serious staying power, and I don't think it's going anywhere.
Me neither, So so it's not going anywhere. Where has
it been?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Let's find out. But first let's take a quick break
forward from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
And we're back.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So fermented dried sausages
have been around in multiple cultures for multiple thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, we talked about it a little bit in our
hot Dog episode.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
A tiny bit. The fermented kind are sort of in
a separate category, and we'll have to get more into
that at another date and time. But Pepperoni, pepperoni, not
so much. Pepperoni is very new, yeah, and it.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Is a true blue American invention and not Italians a
lot of us might think, although certainly Italian immigrants to
the United States played a role, So not Italian, but
Italian American. In Italian, the word pepperoni, although spelled with
one P instead of two refers to big peppers like
bell peppers. There's in a salami called pepperoni. There are
(21:19):
some that are similar to pepperoni, but they aren't called pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And like I said earlier, pepperoni does usually contain dried
ground sweet peppers like bell peppers. So maybe like a
little bit of linguistic confusion over whether the Italian term
pepperoni referred to the peppers or the sausage made with
the peppers, created the American term pepperoni, meaning just the sausage.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I don't know, No one knows, no one knows.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Mysteries of sausage history.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yep, but the first written instance of pepperoni didn't occur
until nineteen nineteen, around the time when Italian American pizzerias
and butchers started popping up in the US, which is
also when soldiers coming back home after the end of
the First World War, or possibly in eighteen ninety four
is when it first appeared in written language, when the
(22:10):
US government's Yearbook of Agriculture mentioned a dry sausage that
might have been pepperoni. Again, mysteries of sausage history. As
we mentioned in our delivery episode, Pizza although a little
different than what we think of now, came over to
the United States with Italian immigrants, and it was seen
(22:31):
as an Italian food and looked down upon because of
that until the nineteen fifties. And part of that had
to do with soldiers returning from Europe after World War
Two this time, and part of it had to do
with the availability of the gas powered pizza oven, and
part of it had to do with the media being like, hey,
have you heard it as pizza things. One of my
(22:51):
favorite examples of this is The New York Times lamented
in nineteen forty seven that pizza could quote be as
popular as snacks the hamburger if Americans only knew more
about it. Oh man, I hope you lived to see
the day. Oh me too. Now. Pepperoni was something that
Attalgian Americans used to approximate what they would use in Italy,
(23:14):
but with ingredients easier and cheaper to access in the
United States. So in Italy, where you would use oregano,
Italgian Americans used basil salami, which might be more common,
but was more expensive and time intensive to make, was
not practical for pizza. It was also seen a sort
of a waste of salami, so instead enter pepperoni, fast, easy,
(23:38):
and cheap. At the time, pepperoni only needed to be
hung in the caring process for a week maybe three,
but slami might take months, and before pepperoni, folks might
use might top pizza with bacon or sausage.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Still find choices, according to.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Me me as well, me as well. One of the
first known photos of pepperoni pizza dates back to nineteen
fifty at a restaurant called The Spot in Connecticut. Pepperoni
was available as something you might find on a chaquiti
plate before that, but not so much a topping. I
find that kind of kind of funny. Yeah, And that
brings us to the opening of one Pizza Hut in
(24:18):
Kansas in nineteen fifty eight and Dominoes in Michigan in
nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Oh yeah, the beginnings of Dominoes and Pizza Hut were then.
It would take about a decade for each business to
really start to franchise out and another few years to
become pizza empires with factories providing basically the same ingredients.
Two thousands of stores by the mid seventies to early.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Eighties, which means they needed toppings that could be easily
mass produced, and this was right when pepperoni's popularity was
on the upswing. It was salty, provided a nice contrasty color,
and had a nice long shelf life, traveled well, and
was cheap key. As chain pizza became more popular, so
(25:01):
did pepperoni pizza since that was the topping of choice.
By the early eighties, the Zo Sausage Company out of Columbus,
Ohio became the first to sell pre sliced pepperoni for pizza.
They used to supply for the chains until the chains
became way too big and push the prices down, so
they don't do that anymore. And ESO's has been asked
for a vegan pepperoni because it is such a key
(25:23):
piece of pizza. Customers have asked the company to come
up with a vegan a vegan approximation.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
There are also a lot of recipes for making your
own vegan pepperoni on the internet, should you want to
do so.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah. In New York, one of our pizza hot spots
in America, the Health Department made suessing out illegally made
cured meats one of their goals in two thousand and seven.
You had to have a permit to air cure your
own meat, so they were going around trying to find
people who were not who didn't have the permit.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Hey, hey, no, stop that sausage making. Exactly stop it
right now.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
And from what I can tell, New York is definitely
leading the charge on fancifying pepperoni or making it more
true to its Italian roots. One pizza place that I
got to eat at last time I was in New
York and also got in a fight with a cabby
with a bunch of our coworkers around is called Ruby Rosa,
and it came up in the discussion a lot of
this kind of making your own pepperoni. And they would
(26:23):
slice their nickel sized pepperoni daily, but they switched to
horor mel because when people order pepperoni pizza there's particular
taste and texture they have in mind. And it wasn't
that Oh wow, isn't that interesting? That comes up a lot?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, yeah, okay, but what about the pepperoni roll?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Well, okay, I want to try one of these so badly.
You've never had a pepperoni No, I didn't even know
it was a thing, And now, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Dness, you are so from the South. Okay, all right,
we can make this happen.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Okay, Well, if you're like me and you don't know
what this is, it is a delicious sounding state food
of a West Virginia. Essentially, this is pepperoni wrapped in
bread dough, and the dough is a soft, yeasty roll
made with white flour. As the role bakes, the fat
from the pepperoni sort of infuses into the bread. Oh yeah.
(27:19):
The widely accepted inventor, Joseph Argiuo, immigrated to West Virginia
from Italy in nineteen twenty to work in the coal mines.
Some sources attribute the invention to his wife, or at
the very least a coal miner's wife, or maybe Tomorrow's Bakery,
the oldest Italian bakery in West Virginia. I have to
(27:39):
mention it because it sounds like it can cause fights
to the death in the state. I don't want anyone
coming after me over this. Eventually, our Giro saved enough
money to pay for his wife and child to have
passage to the United States, quit coal mining, and they
opened up a store Country Club Bakery in nineteen twenty seven.
(28:00):
His time in the minds observing the common lunch option
among immigrants. Thirty percent of the immigrant population was Italian
in West Virginia by nineteen ten. By the way of
basically there, the go to option was bread, pepperoni, and
a bucket of water, and this gave him the idea
to combine pepperoni and bread in a more easily transportable
(28:22):
and devoured role that could be eaten at any temperature,
although I believe the preference these days is warm. Absolutely, Okay.
It has been compared to a calzone or a British
sausage roll, and I love those, so I'm pretty sure
this is gonna be good for me.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
And the British sausage roll is also invented for miners
different episode, but wanted to throw that in there. Thus,
sometime between nineteen twenty seven to nineteen thirty eight, the
pepperoni roll was born. He tested out a lot of
different proportions of bread to meat, using the local beer
hall patrons as test subjects. Lucky them, all of the
(29:00):
testing paid off, literally and it was pretty much an
immediate success. Oh and also the Country Club Bakery, the
one our Giero started. It remains open. They turn out
up to nine hundred dozen a day. Oh my goodness,
and it's like a popular football tailgating item. I can
(29:20):
see it. Oh.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
One thing I found fascinating about this whole story is
that the pepperoni role is so hyper regional that if
it's a food in your family, if you mentioned that
you and your grandfather enjoyed them together or something, it
would give a genealogist a decent idea about a piece
of your family's ancestry. Oh wow, from ancestral findings quote.
(29:43):
Knowing the history of the food and that your ancestors
likely ate it is something that helps you get to
know your ancestors better as the people they were. Knowing
they snacked on pepperoni rolls gives you a glimpse into
their everyday lives that is invaluable to genealogists. Wow, fascinating.
I also thought this was interesting. A restaurant in Clarksburg,
(30:04):
West Virginia, called Mama's Country Kitchen serves Italian style foods.
I find that very interesting. That's where like the whole
ground zero of this was. But it just goes to
show how many Italian Immigan.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Immigrants were there.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
There sure a headline at munchies called pepperoni rolls an
edible part of West Virginia history, but enter the US
government in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Not into my pepperoni role.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yes, they were coming for your pepperoni rolls. The Department
of Agriculture wanted bakries serving pepperoni rolls to be reclassified
as the more strictly regulated meat processing plants. West Virginia
Senator one Jay Rockefeller intervened to stop this proposal. He said,
had it been passed, quote, the pepperoni role may have
ceased to exist. How would be a tragedy. It has
(30:56):
splintered into a couple of different preparations cheese and pepperoni
roll shredded versus ground, pepperoni single stick versus multiple sticks,
sticks versus slices, cheese versus no geese. You can get
them all over, from gas stations to fancy bakeries. Possibly
the one in the gas station is from the fancy bakery.
They can vary largely in size. There are claims that
(31:21):
the pepperoni roll cannot be replicated outside of the region,
much like bagels in New York because of the water.
So yeah, people got opinions.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
They certainly do I've had some, like I guess apocryphal
pepperoni rolls from Pennsylvania, from the Pennsylvania area, even even
moving into Ohio. This is probably very, very controversial. Probably
I didn't know. I enjoyed them for once, I was
not on the forefront of the controversy.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I just liked eating them. Excellent.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
We have another controversy for you about the curl of
pepperoni to curl or not to curl. But first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
So okay, Annie, when you're eating a slice of pepperoni pizza,
do you prefer for the for the pepperoni slices to
lie flat or to kind of curl up?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I like a curl?
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You like a curl? Oh, A slight not too much
of a curl, with a slight curl, like enough to
get like the edge all crispy. Yeah, yeah, all right,
so yeah, yes, y'all may have also noticed that some
pepperoni slices on pizza curl up all like a concave,
like when they're cooked on top of on top of pizza.
You know, the edges pop up creating creating that shape
(32:53):
sort of like a contact lens, which places those edges
closer to the heat source and creates yes, this all
most burnt, crisp, melty sort of ring around the edge
of every pepperoni slice, and a little bit of liquid
fat might pool in the center of those curved slices.
Writing for Serious Eats, one j. Kenji Lopez Alt calls
this a grease chalice. This is This is after the
(33:18):
winning entry from a pai coup contest.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Crisp pepperoni edge curled from heat. A chalice of sweet
hot oil m that was submitted to the Pai ku
contest by one mister Sin in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Very beautiful moving, mister Sin.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But other pepperoni slices lie flat and cook fairly evenly.
Maybe some slices are crisper than others based on like
the heat distribution in the oven.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
But but that's it.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
What the aforementioned Serious Heats writer went on a deep
dive about why this happens. So deep. He ran a
bunch of experiments with different types of pepperoni, and what
he determined is that whether your pepperoni curls or lies flat,
depends on a couple of science factors.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Pepperoni science factors.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Oh yeah, the thickness of the slices is one of them,
and how the pepperoni was stuffed into its sausage casing.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Is the other.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Really yeah, all right, So the physics at work when
your pepperoni curls up is that once those pepperoni slices
are in a hot oven, the top side of the
pepperoni slice is going to get hotter faster than the
bottom side that's actually touching the pizza. That's because the
air in the oven touching the tops of the pepperoni
is very hot, but the bottom side is insulated by
(34:38):
the cheese, the sauce, and the dough beneath it. That
means that the top cooks faster than the bottom does,
meaning that water evaporates from it faster, meaning it shrinks faster.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Okay, the edges.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Which receive the most heat of all, shrink the fastest,
thus curling upward, you know, like sort of like like
pinching in yeah, up up towards the source of the heat,
while the cooler center stays stays put. The edges can
also shrink faster than the center because since pepperoni is
dry aged, the edges will have had more moisture evaporate
(35:11):
out of them to begin with. But yeah, once the
edges are away from that insulating pizza, they can crisp up,
sort of like like bacon in that hot of an air.
So the thickness of the slice of pepperoni matters because
if a slice is too thick, it takes longer for
the heat to permeate even the edges, and it'll more
(35:32):
or less stay flat. And if the slices are too thin,
they'll heat up pretty fast all the way through so
that they won't have a chance to curl up. Medium
cut slices have the right amount of temperature differential to
cup the most.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Oh, I'm so glad science exist to tell me this.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Less important but still at work here is how the
sausage was made to begin with. Because okay, when the
ground meat is stuffed into the casing, it may either
go in pretty smoothly and evenly, or it may flow
in unevenly and fill the casing in more of like
a like a U shape than a straight line that
the edges of the casing feel more quickly than the center.
(36:14):
That might be because the meat is kind of sticking
to the side of the casing as it hits, or
because you're using a pipe that's smaller in diameter than
the casing, and it's just a flow pattern thing that happens.
But yeah, evenly versus U shape. Also, as we discussed
at the top of the show, pepperoni can be made
either with edible casing that that's meant to be kept
on or in inedible casing that will usually be peeled
(36:38):
off before the pepperoni leaves the factory, and when the
ground meat is stuffed into the inedible casing, it can
flow in more evenly and freely that the inedible casing
is less sticky in like stretches more than the edible kind.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I see.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, However, an uneven flow may have happened. If you
take a cross section of the pepperoni with the edible casing,
you will probably see a U pattern in the meat,
meaning that any given slice will be inclined to curl
with that pattern, regardless of whether the casing edible or
non is still attached.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Man, I'm gonna have to pay so much attention to
my pepperone.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
I know. It's a terrible burden.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Oh geez, what am I gonna do now this pizza
will get cold. I'm just gonna be like, hold on,
weight wait, I need to study this.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
But like I said, this matters less if you are
cooking your pepperoni in an oven or even just in
a pan where there's a large temperature differential. You know,
in the oven, the top of the slices are so
hot and in the pan they're touching the bottom of
the hot pan that those temperatures are going to override
this smaller effect of how the sausage was packaged, and
(37:52):
the edges will curl toward the heat source. But if
you cook it in the microwave, where the whole slice
is gonna be heating evenly all the way through, you
can see the U pattern influence the curvature.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Oh man, I have such a microwave experience experimenter. I
was the kid in fifth grade. Our teacher is like,
these are all the weird things that you shouldn't do
in a microwave. And I went home that night and
I blew the door off my microwave grounded for weeks.
Oh wow, But this seems like a much safer There's
a much.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Safer one yes, perfect, Yeah, I mean safe safe for
your health, maybe not, but.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Save for the microwave. Yes, that's okay.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Cool and so yeah, yeah, there are pepperoni sold that
that are like guaranteed to lie flat, and they are
They are made with care to ensure that there's no
U shape of the casing and also are sliced thin
enough that the whole slice will heap through at the
same time.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Hmmm, So this is people have.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Figured out how to make pepperoni live flat.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Should you so desire? Yeah? What's your preference, Lauren?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Oh, that grease challice thing kind of freaks me out,
to be honest. I mean, I like the crispy edges,
but but I kind of like dot the grease out
of the out of the pups because it's just too much.
It's like too much oil in my mouth.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Also, my preference overall, yes, is for slices of meatball
on top of pizza. Oh, rather than slices of pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
I've never had that. Oh it's so good. Huh. This
is also a substitute.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
I shouldn't usually eat sausage because frequently it's made with
stuff that I can't have, like a like a lot
of onion and garlic and also some of that sweet
pepper kind of stuff. Meatballs usually are not made with
at least the sweet pepper parts, so I'm more likely
to be able to eat them.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I'll have to keep an eye out for that.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Oh yeah, it happens in more places than you would think.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Perhaps, I think when I see meatball on a manua,
I assume it's a huge meatball, which is a really
dumb thing to think. Now that, now that I ponder
it with with more more than like half.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
A second, I would also eat that. To be fair,
I just really like meatballs.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I'm not sure, like I'm a very Don't get me wrong,
I will eat pretty much any food, but I do
think a lot about like how difficult will this be
to eat? And meatball and pizza seems difficult.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
But if it's slices, yeah, yeah, I mean a whole
large meatball and pizza would definitely require something to like
fork and possibly fork a knife situation.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
That's such a funny.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I do I do, or like you'd have to sort
of like wrap it around, like wrap the slice around
mealtball and then it's a weird sandwich. And I don't
know I.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Also eat my pizza crust first, oh yeah, which people like.
Every time someone sees me eat pizza, someone will.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Ask me, you pick it up and eat it crust first.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah. Really, I don't know why I always done it
that way, all right. I think it's because the crust,
I mean, usually is the least exciting part for you. Yeah,
so I get it, I eat that, I get it
out of the way. I eat it out of the way,
and then it's just all uphill or downhill from there.
(41:17):
I've never understood the meaning of that phrase. That is
a different episode entirely on different show, entirely.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
An etymology show that we've never managed to quite get
off the ground one day.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I want to pitch that idea pretty early on, because
I just don't understand. I don't understand. And that brings
us to the end of this classic episode. We hope
that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing
it back. I have to say I mentioned in here
(41:48):
I have a friend who loves pepperoni. I recently was
hanging out with her. I have another friend who hates pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Oh oh wow.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And I wasn't involved in the negotiations, but I got
the pizza arrived that had pepperoni on it, and I'm
not sure. I don't know if they like did rock
paper scissors. I don't know how it happened. But I
had a slice right before, right before this. It's great.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, yeah. I last week I ordered a pizza with
some sliced meatballs on it and it was great.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Yeah, yeah, delicious, delicious. All well, listeners, if you have
any thoughts about pepperoni, any recipes or any because we
did mention before how America falls behind on like Halloween pizzas,
but what we do is like we make shapes.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Of like a jack O lantern with pepperoni. If you
have any creative uses for pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Oh yeah yeah, first stories or other recipes that you
put it in other than like a pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Pizza, Yes, exactly. You can email us our email us
hello at saviorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
blue Sky and Instagram at saver pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Save is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Lorn Vogelbaum, and today we have a classic
episode for you about Pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, was there any particular reason this was on your mind?
To bring back lord? Uh?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Good?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Maybe I felt like it was a vaguely romantic food
item in some way, just because it's like such a
nice comfort food and weirdly enough, as it turns out,
a bunch of brands agree with me, so okay. Specifically
for Valentine's Day this year, Domino's United Kingdom created this
(00:53):
limited edition Pepperoni inspired perfume. O uh huh. It apparently
has a warm, woody bass with notes of pepper and spice.
You cannot purchase it. It is not for sale, but
you can't enter to win a bottle or could up
in like from like February tenth through the seventeenth. The
(01:15):
bottle is pyramid shaped to a vocal slice of pizza.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wow, this is very funny because my first question was
do you think wearing such a perfume would attract zombies?
And then you ended with pyramid shaped bottle and now
I'm thinking about pyramid head and There is a pizza
(01:42):
scene in Silent Hill too, which is where Pyramidhead debuted.
Do you how deep do you think this goes?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I think way less deep than you're going with it,
but I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I don't think it smells particularly fleshy. Possibly a tiny
bit meaty. I'm not sure, but you know, someone, if
anyone out there wins a bottle, let us know.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, yeah, and we're gonna have to later off my
talk more in depth about I've never really thought about
the smell, the zombie smell element.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Of like what what zombies are attracted to?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, yeah, think about this.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, no, absolutely, this is something that I have thought about.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So here we are excellent. I love how it's like
Valentine's Day zombies, zombies. That's very un brand for us.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I will say, sorry, y'all'll usually try to space out,
like our animal protein based episodes, and we just did
abaloni and now here this one is popping up, So
my bad.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I hope.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
While I was picking the topic, I wasn't even thinking
about pepperoni as being a meat product, if that makes
any kind of sense. Like, I don't know, like it
holds this separate space in my mind. There are a
lot of or like more vegetarian options for pepperoni these
days than when we originally did this episode, which was
(03:22):
in August of twenty eighteen. Wow, oh, I know, right,
early on, early on. Oh, but also back to Valentine's Day.
So aside from zombies in this perfume, yeah, Hormel offered
and entered to win pizza kit with heart shaped pepperoni included.
(03:43):
It called the heart shaped pepperoni the sweetest shape and
sliced meats. Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, you're like, all right,
I'll give it to him. Why not?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I can't really think of another one, so yeah, absolutely,
there you go.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Also, and I maybe unrelated to I don't think it's
specifically related to Valentine's Day, but the soda company, the
like Low sugar soda company Perfe released a limited edition
Pepperoni pizza soda. It contains tomato concentrate, some salt, some
natural flavors, and some sweeteners. They say it has a cheesy,
(04:29):
saucy pepperoni flavor. I'm unfamiliar with the brand. Annie is
making a look of absolute abject horror.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, I just wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah right, yeah, and this one is actually for sale.
You don't have to like win it, and the deadline
for trying to win it is not passed as of
whenever you're hearing this, so hypothetically, if it hasn't sold
out yet, you can go purchase some if you so choose.
I can't tell you what to do with your money.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
If you do choose, please let us know again, because
I'm very curious about this, I have to say, Oh, well,
I guess we should let pass. Annie and Lauren take
it away. I guess. Hello, and welcome to food Stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I'm Annie Ree and I'm Lauren vocal Baum, and today
we're talking about pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes we are. Do you have any opinions thoughts about pepperoni? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It gets a little bit greasy for me sometimes, but
I mean it's delicious. It's made of like salt and fat, yeah,
and savory flavors, and I mean, what can go wrong
other than a number of things with your health?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I mean, yeah, absolutely. I have a friend and pepperoni
is like her favorite food. If you see someone eating
almonds out of a bag, she'll be eating pepperoni out
of a bag. Okay, she seems relatively healthy.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Sure, well, I mean, you know, in all things a balance,
In all things a balance. She eats some vegetables other
than that, then she's probably doing just fine.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I have not personally witnessed it, but I assume that
she eats other vegetables. She's one of my best friends too,
And now that I think about it, I really don't
see eat too many vegetables. Well, I'll talk to her
after the show. But we want to thank eleven year
old Alison four handwriting as a letter yes, and requesting
that we talk about Pepperoni rules, which we will be
(06:44):
talking about as part of this Pepperoni discussion. Absolutely, And
Pepperoni Pizza Day is coming up on September twentieth. This
hardly ever happens when we're recording the day is usually like.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Oh yeah, it's usually in the middle of the year
some other time.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yes, And September twentieth is my mom's birthday, and it's
also close to super producer Dylan's birthday. There you go,
so happy birthday to both of them. And I want
to include this quote from the Pepperoni Pizza Day website.
Does have a website. Pizza is consumed at every point
(07:21):
in the day, piping hot for dinner and lunch and
cold in the morning. Some people even profess that pizza
tastes far better cold than it does hot from the
even though we think that's largely dependent on the type
of pizza. Oh and for those of you who are
engaged in that whole pineapple versus no pineapple debate, we're
here to weigh in on that pineapple is a fine
pizza topping. You are allowed to disagree. Of course, We've
(07:42):
never been in the business of stopping people from going
about the business of being wrong. We know that eventually
you'll come around. But in the meantime, we can agree
on pepperoni pizza being the best of pizzas.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Ooh, I would disagree. Ooh really contention co Lauren has again.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Okay, there's a song called Thanks for the Pepperoni by
George Harrison. I had no words in it, though, at
least the version I heard, and I was kind of like, huh,
I'm not getting a pepperoni vibe. But perhaps I missed.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I am unfamiliar with it. Maybe maybe sometime we can
call in our compatriot Christopher Christopher Hacioist come do another
side dish segment with us and talk to us about it.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
We absolutely should, But in the meantime we must answer
this question, the very important question, pepperoni. What is it?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, pepperoni is a type of dry sausage made typically
from a blend of ground pork and beef plus a
number of spices, plus some preserving agents. All pork, all
be for a blend of poultry, even are also common.
I know most of the flavor of pepperoni comes from
these spices that are used usually at paprika, which is
(08:57):
dried ground sweet peppers plus other spy I see your capsicum,
anim peppers like cayenne, plus some other stuff like a
black pepper, garlic, fennel or an ee seed, and mustard seed.
It's usually served if you've never seen pepperoni, in like
thin to medium slices, and the texture is sort of
chewy but also sort of soft, and the flavor is
savory and salty, in a little sweet, spicy, smoky, tangy, herbal.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Lots of things going on in pepperoni. It does, I does.
I think I've ever appreciated it fully.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I certainly appreciated it while I was doing this research
and also got very hungry. This was an extremely hungry
research week. Yes, sausage in general has been around for
a long dang time. It can be cooked and eaten fresh,
of course, or it can be cured that is preserved
in some way so that you know, microbes don't get
a chance to eat it before you do. Pepperoni specifically
(09:51):
is air dried and treated with a number of preservatives
to reduce the water content and thus prevent microbe growth.
But it's also usually fermented with friendly bacteria that incidify
it just enough to prevent unfriendly bacteria from growing.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And that's right.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Part of what makes pepperoni so great is bacteria.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
It cannot be. You cannot.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I feel I'm starting to feel like Peewee Herman or
maybe Oprah.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I just imagine like an epic reverb on it every
time you do it, and then it's like light speed
effect is happening hyperspace.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, yeah, I'm picturing like glitter and balloons and like
loud horns. I don't know, but anyway, I like both
of these versions. So okay, But before you get to
the bacteria boop, first, you need to form up your sausage.
So meats are ground in the right proportion of fats
to you know, actual meat, and then blended with spices,
some dehydrating preservatives like a salt, nitrites and or celery juice,
(10:58):
and a lactic acid bacterial culture, plus some sugars to
feed the bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria, you may remember, are
the same things that make cheese and yogurt possible.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
And delous delicious.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, this mix is piped into sausage casing, twisting it
into links as it goes. The casing could be edible,
and then it'll be either natural that is made from
the lining of an animal's small intestine, or artificial, which
doesn't mean it's made of like plastic. It's usually made
of a processed animal collagen from like skins or bones
of other animals. Or it could be inedible casings, which
(11:34):
might be made from cellulose that's plant fibers, or from plastic,
and either way will probably be removed before the pepperoni
is packaged for sale. Yes, that's how the sausage is made. Okay,
So once you've got these these links of pepperoni sausage,
you let them ferment for two to three days, letting
the bacteria go to work eating those sugars and excreting
lactic acid, which drops the pH level below where most
(11:58):
other microbes want to. It also adds a little bit
of flavor, as a less flavorful shortcut citric acid might
be added instead of allowing for that bacterial fermentation. Yeah.
Sometimes the links are smoked after this, and sometimes they're
heat treated for like ultimate safety, but either way, they
are finished by air drying in a room with careful
(12:21):
temperature and humidity control for anywhere from a couple of
days to a couple of weeks until the pepperoni has
lost sixty to eighty percent of its original weight due
to moisture loss woo.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Before these links are sliced or if they're kept in
a factory sealed package, this processing allows pepperoni to be
kept at room temperature for about six months.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah. And the bright red color can come either from
the preservative nitrates used in making it, which is the
same reason why spam and corned beef are pink, and
or from those red peppers that it contains.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, and I read a lot of I read a
lot of very essays about pepperoni, pizza, and pepperoni in general,
and I find that the color is important.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah yeah, and even the color of the of the
oil of like the grease off of the pepperoni. Like
people are like, if it's not bright orange, I don't
care about it.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I don't want How does not my pepperoni pizza? It
is a bright contrasting color with the chee cheese. Oh yeah, yeah,
But we should talk about some uh some nutrition.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Huh maybe, I mean, come on, like, like, you know,
you know that pepperoni isn't a health food.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Well, my friend I got to talk to her about it.
I'm not sure now, and.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I know, and I guess, I guess you can count
like the mental health obtained from eating pizza. That's real.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh I know. I went through the throes of like
the most stereotypical breakup like a year and a half ago,
and I know all about it.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Pizza pizza is a mental health food.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Of course, the exact nutritional value of any given piece
of pepperoni is going to vary based on exactly what
it's made of, but the calories generally come about eighty
percent from fat and twenty percent from protein, and then
there's like a wee smattering of minerals and vitamins in there,
and the fats in it are a blend of good
fats and bad fats, Like it could be worse for
(14:22):
you that that protein and fat can make it a
filling snack or like a decent ingredient in small amounts
like less than an ounce, but it should probably be
considered a treat.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Oh man, this conversation's not gonna go well. My friend, Sorry, sorry,
she needs to hear the truth.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
She does, she does, and you know, and everybody is different.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It's true, she's probably gonna throw pepperoni at my face,
but jokes on her.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Because I'll ease then you'll just eat it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, yeah, too bad. And if we're looking at pepperoni numbers,
it is hard to separate pepperoni from its so mate
and holy matrimony pizza. Uh huh. Pepperoni is the most
popular pizza topping of choice in the US that probably
surprises no one. It's the de facto topping, I believe
at Little Caesar's. It's the like default option when you
(15:16):
just say pizza, pepperoni, pizza oh wow, huh yeah, And
over one third of pizzas ordered in the US will
have pepperoni on top per year. For some people, playing
pizza is pepperoni pizza, it's the pizza modi, although I
think that has more to do with color. Oh yeah,
still still but still. However, in recent years, is more
(15:36):
and more artisanal pizza places have opened. Those fancier pizza
places probably won't have pepperoni as an option. I've been
keeping an eye on this since we've done the research. Yeah,
and I have noticed, Yeah, pepperoni is not not as common.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Do they have like salami or something equivalent, or is
it just like just just eat sausage like a normal
person kind.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Of There is one like is it super setta say that?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh yeah, sure, I think you're soapersada.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Sure, yeah, there's one like thinly sliced not salami, but
similar meat, but.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Like a nice spicy sausage product.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
That yeah, well, but not pepperoni. You might find broccoli
Brussels sprouts, but no, they draw the line somewhere. And
you won't find pepperoni in too many restaurant kitchens either.
And this is sort of a thing. Pepperoni is very
much looked down on by a lot of folks. Michael
(16:30):
Rohlman who has written a book on Sharquteri and salami
inspecific set of pepperoni, bread, cheese, and salami. Is a
good idea, But America has a way of taking a
good idea, mass producing it to the point of profound
mediocrity and losing our sense of where the idea comes from.
Wo harsh words. And speaking of harsh words, there's a
(16:51):
rant over at the So Good blog titled no, I
don't want to order Pepperoni pizza? Do I look like
I'm twelve years old, which was later reblogged on Slice
as part of an article called why Pepperoni Pizza sucks?
And I want to include a quote. Pepperoni, while okay,
is simply not good enough to have earned its place
(17:13):
as the default pizza order of choice on merit alone.
Hell no, I believe it has earned that place through
process of elimination on adventurous American taste buds and dumb luck.
It's cheap, it's meaty, it's salty, and it adds additional
flavor to an otherwise bland pizza. But you know what,
so does sausage. But sausage just doesn't look good in
(17:35):
photos like pepperoni does. So pizza places don't advertise the
shit out of it. With your help, we can knock
Pepperoni pizza from its undeserved throwne is the go to
pizza option after cheese. Yes. With your willingness to speak
out and a little elbow grease, we can end the
tyranny of Pepperoni pizza and return it to its rightful police,
off the default pizza pedestal and back onto the list
(17:58):
of general topping choya with everyone else, which frankly is
where it belongs. Pepperoni pizza is not special, It is
not above criticism, and it is not deserving a protected status.
It goes on, it goes on and on. There was
a little a little taken aback. Oh, I can keep
(18:20):
scrolling like, oh.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And they're not done yet to.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Me, I mean people have opinions, as we've said on
the show. Absolutely, but some chefs big on the head
to tail whole animal movement are crafting fancy pepperoni that
uses a lot of celery juice in place of nitrates,
for example, which does mean it loses its bright red
orange hue and the bright grease that results. What we
were talking about. Some are trying to bring that chewy,
(18:46):
smoky hot pepperoni into this artisanal pizza movement, and one
restaurant in New York City, Teresi Italian Specialties, has several
upscale takes on pepperoni, like Pepperoni snow and they use
the same method to make that I used for butter
and piecrest, which is to freeze it and then shave
it with like a creator. Yeah, Pepperoni vinagrette and a
(19:07):
pepperoni potato salad. That sounded amazing and I want it
right now. Oh, if you know they want to send
it to me.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, if anyone wants to ship us, carefully, friends.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Carefully, don't poisonous please. Hormel is the best selling brand
of pepperoni. The company sold forty million feet of pepperoni,
enough to tunnel through this very planet that we live
on leading up to the twenty eleven super Bowl. Oh,
just leading up to the super Bowl. Okay, for the
Dominoes factor of the episode, and Dominoes, you should really
(19:37):
get in touch. Apparently, the executive vice president of operations
estimates that fifty percent of pizzas ordered from Dominos are pepperoni,
and that's compared to you about thirty five years ago
when the number was about thirty percent. Oh wow, which
equates to an annual twenty nine million pounds of pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Woo.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah. Serious Eats ran an article a few years back
calling super Seta the new Pepperoni. But Pepperoni has had
some serious staying power, and I don't think it's going anywhere.
Me neither, So so it's not going anywhere. Where has
it been?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Let's find out. But first let's take a quick break
forward from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
And we're back.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So fermented dried sausages
have been around in multiple cultures for multiple thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, we talked about it a little bit in our
hot Dog episode.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
A tiny bit. The fermented kind are sort of in
a separate category, and we'll have to get more into
that at another date and time. But Pepperoni, pepperoni, not
so much. Pepperoni is very new, yeah, and it.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Is a true blue American invention and not Italians a
lot of us might think, although certainly Italian immigrants to
the United States played a role, So not Italian, but
Italian American. In Italian, the word pepperoni, although spelled with
one P instead of two refers to big peppers like
bell peppers. There's in a salami called pepperoni. There are
(21:19):
some that are similar to pepperoni, but they aren't called pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And like I said earlier, pepperoni does usually contain dried
ground sweet peppers like bell peppers. So maybe like a
little bit of linguistic confusion over whether the Italian term
pepperoni referred to the peppers or the sausage made with
the peppers, created the American term pepperoni, meaning just the sausage.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I don't know, No one knows, no one knows.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Mysteries of sausage history.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yep, but the first written instance of pepperoni didn't occur
until nineteen nineteen, around the time when Italian American pizzerias
and butchers started popping up in the US, which is
also when soldiers coming back home after the end of
the First World War, or possibly in eighteen ninety four
is when it first appeared in written language, when the
(22:10):
US government's Yearbook of Agriculture mentioned a dry sausage that
might have been pepperoni. Again, mysteries of sausage history. As
we mentioned in our delivery episode, Pizza although a little
different than what we think of now, came over to
the United States with Italian immigrants, and it was seen
(22:31):
as an Italian food and looked down upon because of
that until the nineteen fifties. And part of that had
to do with soldiers returning from Europe after World War
Two this time, and part of it had to do
with the availability of the gas powered pizza oven, and
part of it had to do with the media being like, hey,
have you heard it as pizza things. One of my
(22:51):
favorite examples of this is The New York Times lamented
in nineteen forty seven that pizza could quote be as
popular as snacks the hamburger if Americans only knew more
about it. Oh man, I hope you lived to see
the day. Oh me too. Now. Pepperoni was something that
Attalgian Americans used to approximate what they would use in Italy,
(23:14):
but with ingredients easier and cheaper to access in the
United States. So in Italy, where you would use oregano,
Italgian Americans used basil salami, which might be more common,
but was more expensive and time intensive to make, was
not practical for pizza. It was also seen a sort
of a waste of salami, so instead enter pepperoni, fast, easy,
(23:38):
and cheap. At the time, pepperoni only needed to be
hung in the caring process for a week maybe three,
but slami might take months, and before pepperoni, folks might
use might top pizza with bacon or sausage.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Still find choices, according to.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Me me as well, me as well. One of the
first known photos of pepperoni pizza dates back to nineteen
fifty at a restaurant called The Spot in Connecticut. Pepperoni
was available as something you might find on a chaquiti
plate before that, but not so much a topping. I
find that kind of kind of funny. Yeah, And that
brings us to the opening of one Pizza Hut in
(24:18):
Kansas in nineteen fifty eight and Dominoes in Michigan in
nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Oh yeah, the beginnings of Dominoes and Pizza Hut were then.
It would take about a decade for each business to
really start to franchise out and another few years to
become pizza empires with factories providing basically the same ingredients.
Two thousands of stores by the mid seventies to early.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Eighties, which means they needed toppings that could be easily
mass produced, and this was right when pepperoni's popularity was
on the upswing. It was salty, provided a nice contrasty color,
and had a nice long shelf life, traveled well, and
was cheap key. As chain pizza became more popular, so
(25:01):
did pepperoni pizza since that was the topping of choice.
By the early eighties, the Zo Sausage Company out of Columbus,
Ohio became the first to sell pre sliced pepperoni for pizza.
They used to supply for the chains until the chains
became way too big and push the prices down, so
they don't do that anymore. And ESO's has been asked
for a vegan pepperoni because it is such a key
(25:23):
piece of pizza. Customers have asked the company to come
up with a vegan a vegan approximation.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
There are also a lot of recipes for making your
own vegan pepperoni on the internet, should you want to
do so.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah. In New York, one of our pizza hot spots
in America, the Health Department made suessing out illegally made
cured meats one of their goals in two thousand and seven.
You had to have a permit to air cure your
own meat, so they were going around trying to find
people who were not who didn't have the permit.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Hey, hey, no, stop that sausage making. Exactly stop it
right now.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
And from what I can tell, New York is definitely
leading the charge on fancifying pepperoni or making it more
true to its Italian roots. One pizza place that I
got to eat at last time I was in New
York and also got in a fight with a cabby
with a bunch of our coworkers around is called Ruby Rosa,
and it came up in the discussion a lot of
this kind of making your own pepperoni. And they would
(26:23):
slice their nickel sized pepperoni daily, but they switched to
horor mel because when people order pepperoni pizza there's particular
taste and texture they have in mind. And it wasn't
that Oh wow, isn't that interesting? That comes up a lot?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, yeah, okay, but what about the pepperoni roll?
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Well, okay, I want to try one of these so badly.
You've never had a pepperoni No, I didn't even know
it was a thing, And now, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Dness, you are so from the South. Okay, all right,
we can make this happen.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Okay, Well, if you're like me and you don't know
what this is, it is a delicious sounding state food
of a West Virginia. Essentially, this is pepperoni wrapped in
bread dough, and the dough is a soft, yeasty roll
made with white flour. As the role bakes, the fat
from the pepperoni sort of infuses into the bread. Oh yeah.
(27:19):
The widely accepted inventor, Joseph Argiuo, immigrated to West Virginia
from Italy in nineteen twenty to work in the coal mines.
Some sources attribute the invention to his wife, or at
the very least a coal miner's wife, or maybe Tomorrow's Bakery,
the oldest Italian bakery in West Virginia. I have to
(27:39):
mention it because it sounds like it can cause fights
to the death in the state. I don't want anyone
coming after me over this. Eventually, our Giro saved enough
money to pay for his wife and child to have
passage to the United States, quit coal mining, and they
opened up a store Country Club Bakery in nineteen twenty seven.
(28:00):
His time in the minds observing the common lunch option
among immigrants. Thirty percent of the immigrant population was Italian
in West Virginia by nineteen ten. By the way of
basically there, the go to option was bread, pepperoni, and
a bucket of water, and this gave him the idea
to combine pepperoni and bread in a more easily transportable
(28:22):
and devoured role that could be eaten at any temperature,
although I believe the preference these days is warm. Absolutely, Okay.
It has been compared to a calzone or a British
sausage roll, and I love those, so I'm pretty sure
this is gonna be good for me.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
And the British sausage roll is also invented for miners
different episode, but wanted to throw that in there. Thus,
sometime between nineteen twenty seven to nineteen thirty eight, the
pepperoni roll was born. He tested out a lot of
different proportions of bread to meat, using the local beer
hall patrons as test subjects. Lucky them, all of the
(29:00):
testing paid off, literally and it was pretty much an
immediate success. Oh and also the Country Club Bakery, the
one our Giero started. It remains open. They turn out
up to nine hundred dozen a day. Oh my goodness,
and it's like a popular football tailgating item. I can
(29:20):
see it. Oh.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
One thing I found fascinating about this whole story is
that the pepperoni role is so hyper regional that if
it's a food in your family, if you mentioned that
you and your grandfather enjoyed them together or something, it
would give a genealogist a decent idea about a piece
of your family's ancestry. Oh wow, from ancestral findings quote.
(29:43):
Knowing the history of the food and that your ancestors
likely ate it is something that helps you get to
know your ancestors better as the people they were. Knowing
they snacked on pepperoni rolls gives you a glimpse into
their everyday lives that is invaluable to genealogists. Wow, fascinating.
I also thought this was interesting. A restaurant in Clarksburg,
(30:04):
West Virginia, called Mama's Country Kitchen serves Italian style foods.
I find that very interesting. That's where like the whole
ground zero of this was. But it just goes to
show how many Italian Immigan.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Immigrants were there.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
There sure a headline at munchies called pepperoni rolls an
edible part of West Virginia history, but enter the US
government in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Not into my pepperoni role.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yes, they were coming for your pepperoni rolls. The Department
of Agriculture wanted bakries serving pepperoni rolls to be reclassified
as the more strictly regulated meat processing plants. West Virginia
Senator one Jay Rockefeller intervened to stop this proposal. He said,
had it been passed, quote, the pepperoni role may have
ceased to exist. How would be a tragedy. It has
(30:56):
splintered into a couple of different preparations cheese and pepperoni
roll shredded versus ground, pepperoni single stick versus multiple sticks,
sticks versus slices, cheese versus no geese. You can get
them all over, from gas stations to fancy bakeries. Possibly
the one in the gas station is from the fancy bakery.
They can vary largely in size. There are claims that
(31:21):
the pepperoni roll cannot be replicated outside of the region,
much like bagels in New York because of the water.
So yeah, people got opinions.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
They certainly do I've had some, like I guess apocryphal
pepperoni rolls from Pennsylvania, from the Pennsylvania area, even even
moving into Ohio. This is probably very, very controversial. Probably
I didn't know. I enjoyed them for once, I was
not on the forefront of the controversy.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I just liked eating them. Excellent.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
We have another controversy for you about the curl of
pepperoni to curl or not to curl. But first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
So okay, Annie, when you're eating a slice of pepperoni pizza,
do you prefer for the for the pepperoni slices to
lie flat or to kind of curl up?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
I like a curl?
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You like a curl? Oh, A slight not too much
of a curl, with a slight curl, like enough to
get like the edge all crispy. Yeah, yeah, all right,
so yeah, yes, y'all may have also noticed that some
pepperoni slices on pizza curl up all like a concave,
like when they're cooked on top of on top of pizza.
You know, the edges pop up creating creating that shape
(32:53):
sort of like a contact lens, which places those edges
closer to the heat source and creates yes, this all
most burnt, crisp, melty sort of ring around the edge
of every pepperoni slice, and a little bit of liquid
fat might pool in the center of those curved slices.
Writing for Serious Eats, one j. Kenji Lopez Alt calls
this a grease chalice. This is This is after the
(33:18):
winning entry from a pai coup contest.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Crisp pepperoni edge curled from heat. A chalice of sweet
hot oil m that was submitted to the Pai ku
contest by one mister Sin in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Very beautiful moving, mister Sin.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But other pepperoni slices lie flat and cook fairly evenly.
Maybe some slices are crisper than others based on like
the heat distribution in the oven.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
But but that's it.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
What the aforementioned Serious Heats writer went on a deep
dive about why this happens. So deep. He ran a
bunch of experiments with different types of pepperoni, and what
he determined is that whether your pepperoni curls or lies flat,
depends on a couple of science factors.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Pepperoni science factors.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Oh yeah, the thickness of the slices is one of them,
and how the pepperoni was stuffed into its sausage casing.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Is the other.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Really yeah, all right, So the physics at work when
your pepperoni curls up is that once those pepperoni slices
are in a hot oven, the top side of the
pepperoni slice is going to get hotter faster than the
bottom side that's actually touching the pizza. That's because the
air in the oven touching the tops of the pepperoni
is very hot, but the bottom side is insulated by
(34:38):
the cheese, the sauce, and the dough beneath it. That
means that the top cooks faster than the bottom does,
meaning that water evaporates from it faster, meaning it shrinks faster.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Okay, the edges.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Which receive the most heat of all, shrink the fastest,
thus curling upward, you know, like sort of like like
pinching in yeah, up up towards the source of the heat,
while the cooler center stays stays put. The edges can
also shrink faster than the center because since pepperoni is
dry aged, the edges will have had more moisture evaporate
(35:11):
out of them to begin with. But yeah, once the
edges are away from that insulating pizza, they can crisp up,
sort of like like bacon in that hot of an air.
So the thickness of the slice of pepperoni matters because
if a slice is too thick, it takes longer for
the heat to permeate even the edges, and it'll more
(35:32):
or less stay flat. And if the slices are too thin,
they'll heat up pretty fast all the way through so
that they won't have a chance to curl up. Medium
cut slices have the right amount of temperature differential to
cup the most.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Oh, I'm so glad science exist to tell me this.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Less important but still at work here is how the
sausage was made to begin with. Because okay, when the
ground meat is stuffed into the casing, it may either
go in pretty smoothly and evenly, or it may flow
in unevenly and fill the casing in more of like
a like a U shape than a straight line that
the edges of the casing feel more quickly than the center.
(36:14):
That might be because the meat is kind of sticking
to the side of the casing as it hits, or
because you're using a pipe that's smaller in diameter than
the casing, and it's just a flow pattern thing that happens.
But yeah, evenly versus U shape. Also, as we discussed
at the top of the show, pepperoni can be made
either with edible casing that that's meant to be kept
on or in inedible casing that will usually be peeled
(36:38):
off before the pepperoni leaves the factory, and when the
ground meat is stuffed into the inedible casing, it can
flow in more evenly and freely that the inedible casing
is less sticky in like stretches more than the edible kind.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I see.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, However, an uneven flow may have happened. If you
take a cross section of the pepperoni with the edible casing,
you will probably see a U pattern in the meat,
meaning that any given slice will be inclined to curl
with that pattern, regardless of whether the casing edible or
non is still attached.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Man, I'm gonna have to pay so much attention to
my pepperone.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
I know. It's a terrible burden.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Oh geez, what am I gonna do now this pizza
will get cold. I'm just gonna be like, hold on,
weight wait, I need to study this.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
But like I said, this matters less if you are
cooking your pepperoni in an oven or even just in
a pan where there's a large temperature differential. You know,
in the oven, the top of the slices are so
hot and in the pan they're touching the bottom of
the hot pan that those temperatures are going to override
this smaller effect of how the sausage was packaged, and
(37:52):
the edges will curl toward the heat source. But if
you cook it in the microwave, where the whole slice
is gonna be heating evenly all the way through, you
can see the U pattern influence the curvature.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Oh man, I have such a microwave experience experimenter. I
was the kid in fifth grade. Our teacher is like,
these are all the weird things that you shouldn't do
in a microwave. And I went home that night and
I blew the door off my microwave grounded for weeks.
Oh wow, But this seems like a much safer There's
a much.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Safer one yes, perfect, Yeah, I mean safe safe for
your health, maybe not, but.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Save for the microwave. Yes, that's okay.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Cool and so yeah, yeah, there are pepperoni sold that
that are like guaranteed to lie flat, and they are
They are made with care to ensure that there's no
U shape of the casing and also are sliced thin
enough that the whole slice will heap through at the
same time.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Hmmm, So this is people have.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Figured out how to make pepperoni live flat.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Should you so desire? Yeah? What's your preference, Lauren?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Oh, that grease challice thing kind of freaks me out,
to be honest. I mean, I like the crispy edges,
but but I kind of like dot the grease out
of the out of the pups because it's just too much.
It's like too much oil in my mouth.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Also, my preference overall, yes, is for slices of meatball
on top of pizza. Oh, rather than slices of pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
I've never had that. Oh it's so good. Huh. This
is also a substitute.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
I shouldn't usually eat sausage because frequently it's made with
stuff that I can't have, like a like a lot
of onion and garlic and also some of that sweet
pepper kind of stuff. Meatballs usually are not made with
at least the sweet pepper parts, so I'm more likely
to be able to eat them.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I'll have to keep an eye out for that.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Oh yeah, it happens in more places than you would think.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Perhaps, I think when I see meatball on a manua,
I assume it's a huge meatball, which is a really
dumb thing to think. Now that, now that I ponder
it with with more more than like half.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
A second, I would also eat that. To be fair,
I just really like meatballs.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I'm not sure, like I'm a very Don't get me wrong,
I will eat pretty much any food, but I do
think a lot about like how difficult will this be
to eat? And meatball and pizza seems difficult.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
But if it's slices, yeah, yeah, I mean a whole
large meatball and pizza would definitely require something to like
fork and possibly fork a knife situation.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
That's such a funny.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I do I do, or like you'd have to sort
of like wrap it around, like wrap the slice around
mealtball and then it's a weird sandwich. And I don't
know I.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Also eat my pizza crust first, oh yeah, which people like.
Every time someone sees me eat pizza, someone will.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Ask me, you pick it up and eat it crust first.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah. Really, I don't know why I always done it
that way, all right. I think it's because the crust,
I mean, usually is the least exciting part for you. Yeah,
so I get it, I eat that, I get it
out of the way. I eat it out of the way,
and then it's just all uphill or downhill from there.
(41:17):
I've never understood the meaning of that phrase. That is
a different episode entirely on different show, entirely.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
An etymology show that we've never managed to quite get
off the ground one day.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I want to pitch that idea pretty early on, because
I just don't understand. I don't understand. And that brings
us to the end of this classic episode. We hope
that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing
it back. I have to say I mentioned in here
(41:48):
I have a friend who loves pepperoni. I recently was
hanging out with her. I have another friend who hates pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Oh oh wow.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And I wasn't involved in the negotiations, but I got
the pizza arrived that had pepperoni on it, and I'm
not sure. I don't know if they like did rock
paper scissors. I don't know how it happened. But I
had a slice right before, right before this. It's great.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, yeah. I last week I ordered a pizza with
some sliced meatballs on it and it was great.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Yeah, yeah, delicious, delicious. All well, listeners, if you have
any thoughts about pepperoni, any recipes or any because we
did mention before how America falls behind on like Halloween pizzas,
but what we do is like we make shapes.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Of like a jack O lantern with pepperoni. If you
have any creative uses for pepperoni.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Oh yeah yeah, first stories or other recipes that you
put it in other than like a pepperoni.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Pizza, Yes, exactly. You can email us our email us
hello at saviorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
blue Sky and Instagram at saver pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Save is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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