Award winning Guanciale from Northern Ireland
Italian style Guanciale has been developed by a specialist meat business in Northern Ireland. Developed by Hannan Meats, Moyallon Guanciale is already attracting the interest of top Italian restaurateurs and chefs in London and other UK centres following its recent listing as one of the Top 50 British Foods by the influential Guild of Fine Foods.
Hannan Meats, based at Moira in County Antrim and already a leading supplier of bacon and other meats to high-end British restaurants including the Mark Hix chain in London, created the Moyallon Guanciale on the back of its success in winning significant business for its range of award winning Italian sausages.
Peter Hannan, managing director of Hannan Meats, says: "We were attracted to guanciale because of our longstanding success in processing pork and bacon using our expertise in dry-curing and in culinary techniques.
"Owners and chefs in Italian restaurants asked us if we could produce guanciale, a much sought after ingredient for popular meals such as spaghetti alla amatriciana and, of course, spaghetti carbonara.
"Guanciale is highly revered by Italians for its unique flavour, it's stronger than pancetta, and has a more subtle texture. It's an extremely popular ingredient in the central region of Italy, particularly Umbria and Lazio, where it is also hard to find.It's a unique bacon and nothing like pancetta. It gives an enormous amount of porky flavour to the sauces and meals.
"Our guanciale is an unsmoked pork jowel, a cheek that's dry-cured with a blend of herbs, sugar, peppers, spices, garlic, and red wine that we've developed from our knowledge ofmolecular gastronomy.
"Being listed among the Top 50 British Foods by the UK Guild of Fine Foods is a tremendous endorsement of the quality, innovation and flavour of our guanciale. It follows the excellent feedback from Italian and other chefs in Britain from samples that we supplied them on a trial basis.
"We may even consider exporting the product to Italy to help meet the demand for it there."
The company won 19 Great Taste Awards last year for its outstanding range of meat products.The company's spicy Italian sausage won Supreme Champion Gourmet Sausage in this year's National Sausage Awards. It is now supplying to Italian and other restaurants in the UK.
The company recently installed Europe's first Himalayan Wall of Salt for dry-aging beef, bacon and pork. The 12ft high solid wall of rock salt bricks, imported from the foothills of the Himalayas in Pakistan, offers foodservice clients dry-aged meat with an exceptional flavour. The wall of salt helps to draw moisture from the meat and enhances the overall ageing process and flavour over a period of 28-45 days.