PITTSBURGH — It's been a while, but David Pulice can still remember the pain that came hand in hand with making his family's homemade pork salami.
When his mother, Carmela, and father, Alberto, immigrated from Belmonte Calabro in Italy's Calabria region to Weirton, West Virginia, in the late 1940s, they brought many of their food ways with them. Making the dry-cured Italian sausage known as soppressata each winter was one of them.
After slaughtering their pigs in the fall, Italian families would save the unwanted parts of the carcass along with any leftover bit of meat to turn into sausages to last through the winter. The Pulices continued the tradition in their new home with an army of aunts, uncles and cousins.
Soppressata-making is often a multi-day affair that requires multiple hands to complete the time-consuming jobs of grinding, seasoning, mixing and stuffing the meat into casings. Once Pulice turned 14, he "graduated" to one of the most unenviable jobs of all: tying the plump, slightly spicy sausages into manageable links with string.
As if the pungent smell of the casings wasn't bad enough, "the twine would cut through your skin, and salt would make its way deep inside the cuts," Pulice, of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, recalled. You had to tape your pinky and forefinger to avoid injury.
Which helps explain why, when Pulice started teaching some colleagues at Reed Smith how to make soppressata as a team-building experience eight years ago, he switched out the cotton twine for this more-modern invention: a cable tie gun.
"It's a huge time saver," he said, not to mention more finger-friendly.
As the law firm's director of innovation, it's Pulice's job to make legal services more efficient and cost-effective through available technology. Gathering his team each winter to make sausage, he said, has only improved the process, because the hands-on experience encourages communication among its members. It also builds trust and improves interpersonal relationships.
Jardanian Josephs, the firm's director of legal operations, has been an eager participant since the start. Even though sausage-making wasn't part of his Italian family's tradition, he grew up eating plenty of it, along with other Italian specialties. Learning how to stuff and cure it under his co-worker's careful eye, he said, has since become a passion.
His own three kids now love it, too. So much so that, when he told them his work group was again gathering on Feb. 5 at the Saddlewood Clubhouse in Bridgeville to make 140 pounds of "supra-sot," as some old-time Italians like to call it, his daughter "was jumping for joy."
"It's hands-on, and you get to share something at the end of the day," Josephs, of West Deer, said of the event, which this year drew 11 participants. Coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, it felt even more special than in previous years.
"The majority of us haven't even seen each other since last year," he noted. "This is a true team environment, and Dave gets so excited bringing people together."
"Anything that gets us together is something we like to do," agreed practice innovation coordinator Crystal Angle, who was there for a third time. "Because you don't become a team simply because you work together."
Also, it's just plain fun.
A family tradition
In the old days, Pulice's family did all the work by hand, using a primitive hand grinder that also served as the stuffer. Even the youngest kid pitched in: He remembers turning the handle in turn with six or seven cousins, for what seemed like 48 straight hours, to grind the pork butt or shoulder into finely ground meat.
Spices were carefully mixed in a bit at a time, and participants also spent many hours carefully flushing, scraping and cleaning hundreds of feet of hog intestine with water and salt to stuff the meat into.
When Pulice's father started to get up in age, he and his brothers and nephews happily grabbed the reins. "It means a lot to me to remember my mom and dad by upholding their traditions," he said. "Making soppressata is a big part of that. It has a way of connecting you with the old world tradition."
His cousin Antonio "Tony" Conforti proved an especially good teacher in bridging the gap between old and new processes, Pulice said. "He really taught me a talent I now share with so many people."
When Pulice and his nephew, Dan Pulice, took over in 2013 with a new generation of aunts, uncles and cousins, things got a bit easier. For the first time, they got the pork butts deboned, saving half a day's work. They also upgraded to an industrial grinder before eventually switching to using pre-ground pork from Cheplic Packing in Finleyville, Ohio, which made it so much simpler to trade and share the results with family and friends as a thank you.
They also now use beef intestine instead of hog for the casings, because it's less difficult to work with. And they leave the casings turned inside out to stuff instead of spending hours scraping unwanted bits of fat and membrane from the thin, edible coverings.
Beef intestines are also not as stinky as hog casings, which is not to say they smell good. Their funky odor sticks with you for days, said Pulice, joking that "you almost need to exfoliate" to get rid of it.
He readily admitted it took some convincing to bring his current work group into the fold, mostly because even with the above shortcuts, making soppressata isn't easy.
"I spent many hours explaining that it was an arduous process that involved cleaning casings and mixing meat until your hands were nearly frostbitten," he said. Your feet also ache from standing on them for hours on end, as the casings are stuffed, smoothed into a tube, eyeballed for weight, twisted shut and tied off with a zip tie.
In 2014, a colleague whose family was also Calabrese finally convinced him to teach her and a friend how to make it; when the innovation group found out, they begged him to teach them, too. He started a third yearly session for friends and neighbors the following year, after word got out at a pool party. When all the sausage has been cured, there's an official blind soppressata tasting to determine the best batch.
"And there's a lot of pride in taking home a title," Pulice said.
Strength in numbers
Pulice was waiting with 140 pounds of ground pork butt, and many yards of casing, when his colleagues started arriving at 10 a.m. on a bright and chilly winter Saturday. After everyone got set up, one group started rinsing the casings, while another tackled mixing the meat with salt and a proprietary blend of spices Pulice weighed in advance. Once the meat was adequately blended with the correct consistency (slightly moist), it was ready for stuffing.
But first, some nourishment. This is a group that takes food seriously, and the Italian-themed potluck lunch members prepared brought their A games: Along with homemade rigatoni, risotto balls, wedding soup and salad, the meal included a giant pan of creamy tiramisu and cheesecake for dessert.
After eating, they get busy stuffing for the next several hours.
This year, there was a senior member at the table for the first time: chief operating officer Nick Bagiatis of Peters, Pennsylvania. He was eager to get his hands a little dirty, he said, because "the better we know each other, the better we work together." And what brings people closer than huddling together for hours over a stainless steel vertical stuffer, churning out "lunch box"-size sausages?
As Bagiatis slowly cranked the handle, seasoned meat pushed out of the stuffing tube and into the attached 2-foot section of casing. Pulice carefully smoothed the meat into a fat tube while also gently shaking it to get all the air out. Then came the moment of truth: After twisting it into a link, practice innovation specialist Jeremy Teckmeyer of Moon, Pennsylvania, zip-tied the tube shut and cut it off with a pair of scissors, with fingers crossed it would weigh a perfect 1.2 pounds when tossed on the scale.
The goal, Pulice said, is to stretch the casing tight, but not so much it bursts; "There's a feel to it" that can take a novice many tries to perfect. And if it accidentally spits? No harm, no foul; they simply reuse the meat.
Before taking part in the sessions, Teckmeyer, who also helped clean the casings, never thought turning intestines inside out would be fun. "But I actually enjoy it," he said. He also appreciated the team's camaraderie. "We're just closer when we get together outside of the 9-to-5."
During the months-long curing process, the sausages will lose about 30% of their weight as they dry. Some, like Josephs, will take their allotted share home to hang in a cool, dry spot; others will let Pulice do the honors for them. Not that he minds.
"I'm amazed by how many people over the years have asked to help make soppressata," he said. "It just makes my heart swell in being able to share my family's tradition."
