Pa amb tomata amb embotits (bread with tomato and cured meats) is one of the great pillars of Catalan gastronomy. Sourdough in different formats and cooking styles: rounded bread, long loaves, coca and llonguets. Tomatoes for spreading, ripe in summer, to be hung for the rest of the year. Extra virgin olive oil to mellow the bread. And the cured meats. It all goes back to the long tradition of home butchery and harvesting from one’s own garden.
The butchering still happens, but it is no longer a daily custom in each house, assisted by the most trusted neighbours and the closest relatives. Whereas it used to be an annual festival, nowadays, when it does take place, it is an extraordinary festival. The upshot is a demanding consumer, a powerful pork industry and a very competitive craft industry. The network of butcher’s shops scattered throughout towns and cities continues to produce and improve traditional sausages and create new ones, and the hungriest pork-lovers are capable of travelling miles between different counties just to obtain the best selection.
Botifarra is an infinitely generic term. It is essentially gut stuffed with meat. A basic filling of minced raw meat seasoned with salt and pepper. It can be fried or cooked on the brasa, the glowing embers. It can be dried and cured: secallona, somalla, fuet and llonganissa sausages all use the large intestine. The raw meat can be entire pieces, not chopped, marinated with salt and pepper, or stuffed: cured loin, loin head, collar, and ham. These require dry, cool, dark larders and a precise curing time.
Cooked sausages are usually the stars of the pig butchery, basically because they can be sampled the following day, although there are also those who prefer them more matured with longer in the larder. Bisbes, peltrucs and botifarra blanca, others made from liver, blood, or head meat… In the end these are the basis of some very traditional dishes: broad beans and peas a la catalana, rices, and vegetable dishes.
Of all the products, one of the most authentic from the Girona region is the sweet botifarra dolça. Made with minced meat seasoned with sugar, cinnamon and lemon, and either eaten cooked or left to dry like a fuet, it is a relic of mediaeval cuisine.
Cured meats with the 2020-2021 Girona Excel·lent seal
Llonganissa de Pagès
To make one of the country’s most iconic sausages, at Can Pelayo, in Sant Climent Sescebes, they use only prime cuts of the Duroc breed, lean meat and shoulder, which they mince and mix with salt, sugar, pepper and natural enzymes, stuff into semi-cured pork gut and leave to dry for a few months until it is ready to eat.
Company: Enric Torrent Navarra
Baiona
Since 1925, Embutidos Artesanos Gori, charcutiers in Sant Privat d’en Bas, in La Garrotxa, have been producing an intense and tasty traditional sausage, with pork leg, sugar, salt and pepper, which is stuffed into natural casings and left to mature on its own, thanks to its geographical location and favourable climatic conditions.
Company: Gregori Lòpez Codina
Bufa d’ou
This egg sausage stuffed into a bufa (pig’s bladder) is not exceptional for its attractiveness, but rather because its generous size allows it to mature slowly, for longer than those stuffed into thinner casings, and to attain particular organoleptic characteristics. Jordi Vilarrasa makes it with eggs, salt and pepper, along with pork leg and shoulder from the Duroc-Landrace pigs he raises at Mas Janric de Begudà, in the Zona Volcánica de La Garrotxa natural park.
Company: Jordi Vilarrasa Vilanova
Botifarra de fetge
The fourth generation of Can Faner, a company founded in 1928 in the main square in La Cellera de Ter, produces this liver sausage, so characteristic of the charcuterie of the Girona region. Made with pork offcuts including dewlap and belly, kidney, liver, egg, salt and pepper, and stuffed into the blind intestine from a pig, this sausage is very tasty and ideal for eating with pa amb tomaquet (bread with tomato), but especially as the filling to a tomato and olive oil slathered llonguet roll.
Company: Andreu Coll Pla
Botifarra Negra
To make this blood sausage, one of the most versatile and widespread sausages in the country, the third generation of the Pelai butcher’s shop stuffs blind intestines with a mixture of head meat, blood, tongue, belly, snout, lungs, dewlap with its rind and white pork fat, together with salt and black pepper, which it cooks in a convection oven. It features widely in appetisers, salads and sandwiches, but is also used as a condiment and ingredient in hearty dishes.
Company: Enric Torrent Navarra
Botifarra de perol
Cooked three times, botifarra de perol is one of the tastiest sausages in Catalan cuisine and one of the most widely used in both home and restaurant cooking, be it traditional or sophisticated. First, the perol meat is cooked: head, tongue, belly, snout and dewlap with pork rind. This charcuterie, founded in 1933, then minces it and mixes it with egg, salt and black pepper, stuffs it into thin pork intestine and cooks it in a convection oven. In the kitchen, it is cooked a third time.
Company: Enric Torrent Navarra
Fuet Dolç
Fuet dolç, a sweet cured sausage, is the most distinctive sausage found in butcher’s shops in Girona. It is a confection made from a mixture of pork shoulder, sugar, salt, grated lemon peel and cinnamon, which is left to dry. Due to the ease with which it can be gobbled up, it has gradually replaced the botifarra dolça, which had to be cooked. Joan Gironell, the third generation of a business that began in 1944 in Girona’s old quarter, now makes it in Plaça del Lleó.
Company: Joan Gironell
Pernil Cuit Gran La Selva
The pernil cuit extra Gran La Selva cooked ham is made from unique pieces of pork, from Selecció Batallé, the company that has genetically improved the Duroc pig. A family company founded in 1917, La Selva specialises in cooked products, with the desire to establish itself in the premium sector. This slow-cooked ham has a high level of intramuscular fat infiltration, which makes it exceptionally palatable and gives it outstanding organoleptic qualities.
Company: Joaquim Albertí, SA
El jurat del tast d’embotits.
Cinto Arnau
Tècnic de l’IRTA (Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Alimentàries)
Magda Perramon
Gremi de Carnissers i Xarcuters. Propietària de Ca la Magda, de Ripoll
Xavier Baig
Propietari de la botiga La Noucentista, de Girona
Miquel Iglésias
Cap de sala del restaurant Els Ossos, de Batet
Pere Planagumà
Cuiner del restaurant Rom, de Roses