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Curing Guanciale with sweetbreads attached?

Posted: Sat May 01, 2021 07:56
by so_not_rad
So here is something that i've been wondering about for a long time.
When I buy jowl cheek from my butcher, it always has a bit of the glands and sweetbreads attached. I always trim the outside parts of the glands but sometimes inside the layer of fat theres more of them. From looking at pictures online and watching videos I cannot figure out if its okay to leave them ?
From what I've read you're always supposed to remove them completely. But when seeing some photos of cured guanciales form Italy it seems like there are some glands still inside the guanciale.
Thoughts?

Re: Curing Guanciale with sweetbreads attached?

Posted: Sun May 02, 2021 17:52
by redzed
Standard practice is to remove the glands. However, that's not always possible because there are so many scattered throughout the jowl. And yes, some cure the jowl glands and all. When adding to sausage it's recommended to trim out all the glands.

Re: Curing Guanciale with sweetbreads attached?

Posted: Mon May 03, 2021 13:03
by so_not_rad
redzed wrote:
Sun May 02, 2021 17:52
Standard practice is to remove the glands. However, that's not always possible because there are so many scattered throughout the jowl. And yes, some cure the jowl glands and all. When adding to sausage it's recommended to trim out all the glands.
Thanks!
Spoke to a fellow Italian chef, he said apparently as you said standard practice is to remove the glands. But lower quality producers will keep some of the glands to gain more. Quite interesting! I will mostly likely try on my next batch to leave one guanciale with some of the glands and see how much it will affect the flavor.

Re: Curing Guanciale with sweetbreads attached?

Posted: Mon May 03, 2021 14:30
by Scogar
Can you get at all of them without tearing the jowl all up? The small ones peppered throughout that middle layer may take a bit of digging around