Pepperoni has a combination of tastes: spicy, sour, salty, and smoky — in addition to its curly and soul-satisfying taste.
Suggested Use & Menu Ideas
Great as a pizza topping or as an ingredient. Also great for pasta dishes.
Fully cooked. Serve warm or cold. Simply open package and portion as needed.
And speed became essential. As pizza gained in popularity in the United States and chain franchises (like Pizza Hut and Domino’s) began opening, ingredients needed to be mass-produced, easy to supply, and—most of all—readily available. Pepperoni filled all those requirements. “Pepperoni wasn’t really something people were doing a whole lot of until the chains really started popping up,” admits Ezzo.
Colin Caplan, author of New Haven Apizza, says that it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that the real marriage of pizza and pepperoni was celebrated. The first evidence he found of pepperoni as a pizza topping came in 1950 from a photo of a wall menu at a pizzeria named The Spot in New Haven, Connecticut. Since then it began to trickle into toppings selections around the country.
The only question isn’t whether or not we should eat pepperoni; it’s which pepperoni is the best. Opinion is divided on whether a slice of the stuff should curl when cooked, or lie flat. Some say that the little cups of cooked pepperoni perform an important job: confining the spicy, molten fat from pouring out over the surface of the pizza. Others are looking for a (slightly) healthier, flat disc. We prefer our oversized large diameter pepperoni to ensure you get a little in each bite.
Pepperoni is essentially an American version of salami, something close to what Italians might call salame piccante, a generic term that means “spicy salami.” It’s made from beef and cured pork mixed together and then seasoned with a blend that usually includes paprika, garlic, black pepper, crushed red pepper, cayenne pepper, mustard seed, and fennel seed. Every pepperoni producer uses a different mix and ratio of ingredients, but paprika is always present: it’s what gives pepperoni its color. And clearly that list of ingredients had some influence on the name!
In 1919 we see the first mention of pepperoni in the Italian-American delis of Lower Manhattan, though during the First World War the word started being used among Italian-American soldiers as a synonym for sausage. After the war, pepperoni began to appear as a pizza topping, though still primarily in pizzerias in New York City.
Homemade Pepperoni
FAQ
Is pepperoni supposed to be spicy?
How hot is pepperoni?
What does pepperoni taste like?
Is pepperoni spicy vs salami?
What is pepperoni made of?
Pepperoni is a bright red American variation of spicy salami (cured sausage dried by air exposure) made from pork or beef and seasoned with paprika or chili. This article will tell you everything you need to know about pepperoni, including where it comes from, how spicy it should be, and when to use it.
Is Pepperoni spicy?
Pepperoni is supposed to be spicy, it is a pork and beef sausage seasoned with pepper. Cayenne pepper has the most concentrated flavor of spice, hence giving pepperoni its characteristic spiciness. This seasoning is responsible for the spiciness of pepperoni.
What does pepperoni mean in Italian?
The term “pepperoni” is a borrowing of peperoni, the plural of peperone, the Italian word for bell pepper. The first use of “pepperoni” to refer to a sausage dates to 1919. In Italian, the word peperoncino refers to hot and spicy chili peppers . In 1919 Italian immigrants in New York City created pepperoni.