Pretty much everyone has tried bologna at some point, but nobody ever really wants to
know what it's made of, or how it's made.
But maybe it's time that changed.
From pig to plate, this is how bologna is actually made.
The name "bologna" comes from Bologna, a large city in northern Italy, where butchers produce
a similar meat called mortadella, the ancient ancestor of the sandwich filling we know and
love today.
Mortadella has roots that go all the way back to the Roman Empire, as evidenced by certain
pieces of Classical Roman art and literature.
For example, the Roman author Pliny the Elder once described how the Emperor Augustus, during
a visit to the city, found himself particularly impressed with the taste of mortadella.
The meat's main wow-factor for the Romans was its saltiness.
In fact, by the Middle Ages, the people who salt-cured meats such as mortadella had formed
a powerful guild that had a significant financial backing in the Italian states.
The guild even drove up mortadella costs by up to nine times as much as a loaf of bread.
But this meat has come a long way since those days.
Although American producers of bologna might also have big bucks in their bank accounts,
bologna certainly isn't the bourgeois meat it once was.
The European Union is notorious for regulating the authenticity of a wide variety of food
products, from cheese to champagne, and mortadella is no exception.
In order for a meat product to be legally considered mortadella back in Italy, it has
to meet a number of strict certifications.
Namely: authentic, traditional mortadella must be made using a pork sausage.
No other meats can legally be used in real Italian mortadella.
Additionally, authentic mortadella has pieces of fat incorporated in the sausage, giving
the slices of the deli meat a characteristically mottled appearance.
The ground meat and fat cubes are then combined with spices like salt and pepper, and placed
in a sausage casing.
Unlike other cured meats, like salami and prosciutto, mortadella isn't dry cured, instead,
after it's finished cooking, it's sprayed with cool water.
As a result, it doesn't have the same bone dry texture of some of the more well-known
cured meats.
Of course, it's abundantly clear to anyone familiar with both that American bologna isn't
mortadella, it's actually more of a cousin of mortadella, and a distantly related one
at that.
Since U.S. laws don't strictly regulate what recipes can and can't be called bologna, America's
take on the traditional Italian deli meat has taken on a much more dynamic evolution
process.
A lot of different brands use a variety of different meats and spice blends to produce
their own variants of bologna.
However, USDA regulations do actually have one strict clause that differentiates America's
take on bologna from traditional mortadella: like hot dogs, American bologna can't have
small flecks of fat or spices in it, as the USDA dictates that all the meat and additives
must be pulverized into tiny, unrecognizable particles.
That's why America's bologna looks so very different from its speckled cousin.
But beyond that one detail, it's pretty much fair game as to what can go into your bologna:
different brands and versions use all different kinds of meats, from the traditional pork,
to beef, to more off-the-wall renditions like chicken bologna.
The USDA does say, however, that the label on American bologna must tell you what kind
of meat you're getting.
So at least there's that.
In typical American fashion, the cut of meat from which bologna is derived has changed
considerably from that of its Italian ancestor.
While mortadella typically uses meat from the back and cheek of the pig, bologna's makeup
consists of what's known as "raw skeletal muscle" and other raw meat byproducts, such
as the heart, kidney, or liver.
"Ugh!
Spit it out, spit it out, please don't swallow it."
"I love it."
"Oh my God, I'm sweating."
Raw skeletal muscle is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: it's the muscular tissue
that attaches directly to the skeleton of the pig.
This cut of meat is composed mainly of muscle fibers and connective tissues, and is a major
component for many other highly processed meats, like hot dogs and other pre-cooked
sausages.
The addition of those other meat byproducts is a way for manufacturers to ensure they
get the biggest bang for their buck, adding in parts of the animal that are more difficult
to sell ensures that the whole animal can be marketed.
That way, they don't have to dispose of the undesirable remains.
Luckily, it is possible to find out if you're getting these byproducts in your bologna.
The USDA says these byproducts must be individually named in the ingredients list, as well as
what species of animal they come from.
Both bologna and mortadella draw on a similar flavor profile, which comes from the unique
blend of spices used to flavor the two meats: coriander, celery seeds, nutmeg, black pepper,
and myrtle berries.
Essentially, this is the same blend of spices used in traditional blends of pickling spices,
except, of course, for the myrtle berries.
Small amounts of nutmeg and black pepper work to give bologna and mortadella that somewhat
warm, comforting flavor.
Meanwhile, coriander and celery seed add just the right touch of bitterness to take the
edge off all that salt that's blended into the meat.
The popular bologna manufacturer Oscar Mayer also includes ground mustard powder, beef
stock, and paprika, to help make their product stand out from the pack.
But what really differentiates mortadella and bologna from their other lunchtime competition
is the addition of myrtle berries, which gives them a particular flavor that you won't find
in any other deli meats.
While bologna is full of plenty of processed parts and chemical additives, myrtle berry
is one of the few things you'll find on the ingredients list that is pretty much all-natural.
It's also one of the key ingredients that has been carried over from mortadella.
The myrtle berry is indigenous to the Mediterranean, and has found its way into a number of different
Italian dishes beyond just mortadella.
Myrtle leaves are an especially popular flavoring for roast pork dishes, so it should come as
no surprise that its berries are the primary flavoring agent in mortadella, and by extension,
its American cousin.
In fact, the name "mortadella" might even be related to the Italian word for myrtle,
"mirto," since the spice gives the cold cut such a characteristic, semi-spicy flavor profile.
Myrtle berries themselves have a slightly astringent, citrus-like flavor, comparable
to juniper berries and rosemary.
Myrtle berries are also the main flavor component in a popular Italian liqueur known simply
as mirto.
This digestif even has a flavor, according to the Huffington Post, that actually kind
of tastes like bologna.
Nice, huh?
"My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R."
Well that's great, but that doesn't change the fact that there are 18 ingredients in
a slice of Oscar Mayer's beef bologna.
And that's a whole lot of ingredients for a lunch meat that started out as something
relatively simple, and those ingredients aren't all meat and spices either.
While things aren't all bad for the brand's cold cuts, there are a number of questionable
additives, from corn syrup to a number of strange chemical compounds.
Processed meats such as bologna tend to get a lot of flack for potentially having carcinogenic
properties, and Oscar Mayer's bologna is no exception.
In fact, one of the ingredients in the company's bologna, sodium nitrite, is a common additive
in processed meats, and might actually contribute to their cancer-causing properties.
While sodium nitrite is an effective preservative in bologna, hot dogs, and many other meat-based
products, the International Agency for the Research of Cancer has said that ingestion
of nitrites is likely linked to higher rates of bowel cancer.
One other risky additive in Oscar Mayer's bologna is sodium phosphate, which is generally
used to cure meat products and help keep them moist.
And while the FDA does consider sodium phosphate to be generally safe to eat in small quantities,
it has been linked to elevated rates of mortality for those with kidney disease and cardiovascular
disease.
So once you've got all your ingredients together, for better or for worse, just how do you go
about making it into bologna?
Well, after all of the meat and fats and spices are ground up into a fine mince, the mixture
is funneled into a sausage casing.
Traditionally, sausage casings are made from animal intestines, often, the same kind of
animal as the meat from which the sausage is derived.
In the case of traditional mortadella, this would be pig intestine, but the jury's out
for bologna.
Animal intestines can be hard to come by nowadays, in fact, many sausage producers have turned
to using a chemically derived sausage casing, often using compounds such as cellulose, collagen,
or even plastics.
But even traditional Italian mortadella is allowed to contain artificial sausage casings
such as these, since it can be inconvenient and expensive to obtain the intestines necessary
to create a 100-percent-natural casing.
You may find that some of the bologna you purchase in stores has what resembles a red
seal around it, this is most likely an artificial casing.
Most of the popular brands remove the casing before packaging their bologna, but if you're
unsettled at the thought of accidentally ingesting plastic in your next bologna sandwich, then
be sure to peel off that red casing if you find it.
Oscar Mayer says all of their casings are plant-derived, however, so if you do happen
to digest any, there's really no need to panic.
As you know by now, the USDA doesn't have the same strict regulations on defining bologna
that the European Union has for mortadella.
But there is one particularly interesting regulation that really separates American
bologna from its Italian cousin: it's essentially mandated by law that bologna be made using
a meat batter rather than finely ground up or minced meat.
This is why bologna and mortadella look so different, despite having similar flavor profiles:
while the base of mortadella is a rather heterogeneous blend of meat, fat and spices, all those components
must be reduced to particles when making bologna in America.
Meat batters have a fluid, homogeneous consistency that's created by the emulsion of animal fats
and a liquid, while the protein in the meat serves to combine the two liquids into a stable
mixture.
In order to do this effectively, the proteins in the meat must be ground down to very fine
particles, and manufacturers must be very careful about the amount of salt and acidic
ingredients they add to the mixture.
Otherwise, they risk inadvertently destabilizing the batter.
Once the bologna batter has been made, it's funneled into those casings.
"I measure out the dry ingredients, I mix in the slurry real slow, and load 'em all
into the extruder."
After the meat and spice emulsion has been transferred to its casing, it's then cooked.
This process can differ depending on the brand and variant of bologna, and American bologna
is often cooked differently from Italian mortadella.
According to the European Union's regulations on producing authentic mortadella, the Italian
product is slow-cooked in a warm room for a few hours to a full day, depending on the
size of the sausages being cooked.
The mortadella-making process features dry-air heaters that heat up the internal temperature
of the sausage to around 158 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once the cooking process is complete, it's sprayed with cool water and cooled down to
stabilize the product before packaging.
In the United States, bologna manufacturers have two options for finishing their bologna
products.
According to USDA regulations, bologna is a member of a family of processed meats called
"frankfurters," you know, like hot dogs, which can be either cooked or smoked.
Because of this, many bologna brands feature a smoky flavor, comparable to bacon.
This, of course, is just another factor that differentiates the flavor profile of American
bologna from the more highbrow Italian product.
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