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Ricotta is a soft, fresh Italian cheese made by reheating the whey left over after making another cheese. The word means “re-cooked” — ri-cotta — and that second heating is the whole trick: proteins still floating in the whey clump together into delicate, sweet, milky curds. Technically, many cheesemakers will tell you ricotta is not a cheese at all but a whey product, a by-product turned into something beautiful.

It is one of the most humble foods in the Italian kitchen and one of the most misunderstood abroad, because what most Americans buy in a plastic tub is often a different product wearing the same name. Here is the real thing.

How ricotta is made

When a cheesemaker makes pecorino or caciotta, rennet sets the casein proteins in milk into curd. What drains away — the thin, greenish whey — still carries other proteins, mainly albumins and globulins, which rennet does not catch. Heat the whey to somewhere around 80–90°C, often with a splash of fresh milk and a little acid or salt, and those whey proteins coagulate and float to the surface as fine white flakes. The cheesemaker skims them off and lets them drain in a basket. That is ricotta.

Nothing is wasted. In the pastoral economy of southern Italy, where shepherds made pecorino in mountain huts, ricotta was the reward of the same day’s milking — eaten warm, often straight from the basket, with bread. In Calabria and across the South that tradition is still very much alive.

The milk changes everything

Sheep’s milk ricotta

The classic of central and southern Italy. Richer, slightly grassy, with a deeper sweetness. Ricotta Romana DOP is made from the whey of sheep’s milk in Lazio and is the ricotta of Roman pastry.

Cow’s milk ricotta

Milder, lighter and the most common in the North and abroad. Good for baking and fillings where you want the ricotta in the background.

Buffalo milk ricotta

Made from the whey of buffalo mozzarella in Campania. Ricotta di Bufala Campana DOP is creamy, rich and quite rare outside Italy — the sister of burrata and mozzarella in the same dairies.

Goat’s milk ricotta

Found locally, especially in the South; brighter, with a gentle tang.

Ricotta beyond the fresh tub

• Ricotta salata — fresh ricotta pressed, salted and dried until firm enough to grate or crumble. Salty and milky, wonderful over pasta alla Norma or a tomato salad.
• Ricotta infornata — baked ricotta with a browned crust, a Sicilian speciality.
• Ricotta affumicata — smoked ricotta, made in Calabria and other parts of the South, grated over pasta much like an aged cheese.
• Ricotta forte — a fermented, pungent spread from Puglia. Not for beginners.

What to look for on a US label

Real ricotta has a very short ingredient list: whey (and sometimes milk or cream), salt, and perhaps an acid. Many mass-market American ricottas are instead made from whole milk acidified directly — closer to a fresh curd cheese than a whey ricotta — and some include stabilisers or gums such as carrageenan or xanthan gum to keep a uniform, spoonable texture over a long shelf life.

None of that is dangerous. But it is a different product, and you can taste it: a grainy, wet, faintly sour texture instead of the cloud-like, sweet curds of fresh ricotta. Our advice is the same as for olive oil: read the label, keep the ingredient list short, buy fresh, and buy from someone who will tell you how it was made. It is the same principle behind single-source traceability.

How to eat ricotta

The simplest and best way

A spoonful of fresh ricotta on warm toasted bread, a pinch of flaky salt, black pepper, and a generous thread of fresh extra virgin olive oil. The oil’s green bitterness and peppery finish wake up the ricotta’s sweetness — the same contrast that makes good oil over burrata so compelling. A little lemon zest or a few torn mint leaves if you like. This is how we eat it at the farm, and it is where a high-quality oil is most obvious: a stale oil tastes of nothing here, a fresh one tastes of the grove. (If you are not sure which is which, our guide to tasting olive oil like a professional will train your palate.)

In pasta

Fill ravioli or cannelloni with ricotta, spinach and nutmeg; or toss hot pasta with ricotta loosened with a little pasta water, lemon zest and olive oil for a five-minute sauce. Finish with grated Pecorino Romano for salt and edge.

In sweets

Ricotta is the soul of southern Italian pastry: cannoli and cassata in Sicily, the Neapolitan pastiera at Easter, ricotta cheesecakes baked across Rome. Sheep’s milk ricotta, well drained, is traditional.

Baked and savoury

Layered in lasagne, folded into meatballs for tenderness, or baked in a dish with olive oil, herbs and cherry tomatoes until golden at the edges.

How to store fresh ricotta

Real fresh ricotta is perishable — keep it covered in the fridge and eat it within a few days. If it has released whey, simply drain it in a sieve. For desserts, drain it overnight to concentrate the texture.

Ricotta deserves a real olive oil

Ricotta is a quiet ingredient. Everything you put on it is heard clearly. That is why we suggest an extra virgin olive oil pressed from one estate, recently harvested, with the fruit, bitterness and pepper still alive. Olive Father is pressed from the groves of Azienda Agricola Posterino in Calabria — six generations, one source. See more ways to cook with it in our recipe collection, or explore the range →

Risotto is a northern Italian rice dish in which short-grain rice is toasted, then cooked slowly in hot broth added a little at a time, until the grains release their surface starch and the whole pot turns creamy while each grain keeps a faint bite at its centre. No cream is involved. The creaminess comes from the rice itself, from patience, and from a final beating-in of fat and cheese the Italians call mantecatura.

We are an olive oil family, so we will be honest up front: the classic risotti of Milan and the Po valley are butter dishes. But risotto travels, the South cooks it too, and there are precise moments where a good extra virgin oil does something butter cannot. Here is the whole picture.

Where risotto comes from

Rice reached Italy through Mediterranean trade in the Middle Ages and was being cultivated in the wet plains of Lombardy and Piedmont by the fifteenth century. Those flooded paddies around Vercelli, Novara and Pavia are still Europe’s great rice country. Risotto grew out of that landscape: a frugal, warming dish built from local rice, local broth and local dairy. The most famous version, risotto alla milanese, is coloured gold with saffron and traditionally served beside ossobuco; the stories about its invention are charming, but they are stories.

The rice: why you cannot use just any grain

Risotto rice is short and plump, with a high proportion of amylopectin starch on the outside of the grain and a firmer core. That outer starch dissolves into the broth to make the sauce; the core keeps the bite.

• Carnaroli — the cook’s favourite. Large grains, a firm core, very forgiving of a minute too long.
• Arborio — the most widely sold. Releases starch generously, but softens faster, so watch it.
• Vialone Nano — smaller, rounder, beloved around Verona; absorbs broth beautifully and gives a looser, wavier risotto.

Long-grain or basmati rice will not work. And never rinse risotto rice: you would be washing away the starch that makes the dish.

The method, step by step

1. The soffritto

Finely chopped onion (sometimes shallot) sweated gently in fat until soft and translucent, never browned.

2. Tostatura — toasting the rice

Add the dry rice to the pan and stir for two or three minutes until the grains turn glassy at the edges and feel hot to the touch. This seals the surface so the grains cook evenly rather than turning to mush.

3. Sfumare — the wine

A splash of dry white wine, stirred until it has evaporated and the sharp smell of alcohol is gone.

4. The broth, a ladle at a time

Hot broth — it must be kept at a simmer in a separate pot — added a ladle or two at a time, stirring often, adding more as each addition is absorbed. Most risotto rice needs roughly sixteen to eighteen minutes. Taste from the fourteenth minute onwards.

5. Mantecatura

Off the heat, beat in cold fat and finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano, cover, and rest for a minute or two. The texture you want is all’onda — “like a wave”: when you tilt the plate, the risotto should flow slowly, not sit in a stiff mound.

Butter or olive oil? An honest answer

For risotto alla milanese, risotto alla parmigiana and most of the northern canon, butter is the traditional fat for both the soffritto and the mantecatura, and we would not pretend otherwise. Butter’s milk solids give that sweet, rounded richness. (We go deeper on the two fats in olive oil vs butter.)

But olive oil earns its place in three ways:

• The soffritto. Many Italian cooks start the onion in extra virgin olive oil and save butter for the end. It is gentler on the onion and lets the fruit of the oil sit quietly underneath.
• Vegetable and seafood risotti. Risotto with asparagus, courgette flowers, peas, or with prawns and lemon is often made entirely with olive oil — butter would muffle the freshness, and cheese is frequently left out of seafood versions.
• The finish. A thin thread of raw extra virgin over each plate, right before serving, adds a green, peppery top note that cuts through the starch. This is olive oil used as a finishing oil, and it is where a fresh, high-polyphenol oil really shows itself.

That last point matters. A flat, oxidised supermarket oil adds nothing but greasiness to a delicate risotto. A recently harvested, single-estate oil adds aroma, bitterness and pepper in exactly the balance the dish needs. If you are unsure what separates the two, start with what quality really means in olive oil.

The mistakes that ruin risotto

• Cold broth. Every cold ladle stops the cooking and the starch never releases properly.
• Too much liquid at once. You end up boiling rice, not making risotto.
• Overcooking. Risotto keeps cooking as it rests. Pull it when the centre still has the faintest resistance — the same instinct as cooking pasta al dente.
• A stiff plate. If it holds its shape like a scoop of mashed potato, it needed another splash of broth before the mantecatura.
• Weak broth. Risotto is mostly rice and broth. A good homemade stock, or at least a well-seasoned one, decides the dish.

A simple risotto to start with

For two: 160 g Carnaroli, half a small onion, a small glass of dry white wine, about 800 ml hot vegetable or chicken broth, 40 g grated Parmigiano, 20 g cold butter, and extra virgin olive oil. Sweat the onion in two tablespoons of olive oil, toast the rice, add the wine, then the broth ladle by ladle for around seventeen minutes. Off the heat, beat in the butter and cheese, rest one minute, plate, and finish each bowl with a thin line of raw extra virgin and black pepper. Simple, and completely dependent on the quality of four ingredients.

For more dishes cooked the way we cook them at home, browse our Italian olive oil recipes.

Finish it with an oil worth tasting

Olive Father extra virgin olive oil comes from one family estate in Calabria — six generations, named groves, olives milled within hours of picking. It is the oil we pour over our own risotto at the table. Explore the range →

In southern Italy, the end of summer has a sound: the crank of a food mill, the clink of glass bottles, and a whole family talking over a kitchen full of tomatoes. That day’s work is called la salsa, and what goes into the bottles is passata — the tomato base that will carry the household’s sauces through the winter. If you have seen the word on a jar and wondered what makes it different, this guide is for you.

What is passata?

Passata (passata di pomodoro) is ripe tomatoes that have been puréed and strained of their skins and seeds, leaving a smooth, pourable, bright red liquid. The name comes from the Italian verb passare, “to pass through” — because the tomatoes are literally passed through a sieve or food mill.

Good passata is minimally processed. It is typically heated only briefly for safety and bottling, not simmered down for hours, so it tastes of fresh tomato rather than of cooked sauce. Many of the best versions contain nothing but tomatoes, sometimes with a little salt.

Passata vs tomato paste, purée, crushed tomatoes and marinara

Tomato products are confusingly named, especially between Italy and the US. Here is the practical difference:

• Passata — smooth, strained, uncooked or lightly heated. Fresh flavour, thin-to-medium body. No seeds or skins.
• Tomato paste (concentrato) — tomatoes cooked down until very thick and concentrated. Used by the spoonful for depth, never as a sauce base on its own.
• US tomato purée — usually cooked and somewhat concentrated, so it tastes more “cooked” and is thicker than most passata.
• Crushed tomatoes — tomatoes broken into pieces, often with some purée. Chunky rather than smooth.
• Marinara — not an ingredient but a finished sauce, typically built with garlic, olive oil and herbs. See our marinara sauce recipe for the full method.

In short: passata is the blank canvas. Everything else is either more cooked, more concentrated, or chunkier.

What does passata taste like?

Clean, bright and sweet-acidic, like a ripe tomato without the skin. Because it has not been cooked for long, it keeps the fresh, slightly grassy notes that long-simmered products lose. This is why the quality of the tomatoes matters so much — there is nothing to hide behind.

How to cook with passata

A 20-minute sugo, the way we make it

1. Warm three generous tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a wide pan over medium-low heat.
2. Add a crushed clove of garlic and let it turn fragrant and pale gold — never brown.
3. Pour in a 700 g bottle of passata, add a pinch of salt, and simmer gently for 15–20 minutes, stirring now and then, until it thickens slightly and turns a deeper red.
4. Tear in fresh basil off the heat and finish with a raw thread of olive oil.

Toss with bronze-drawn pasta and a splash of the cooking water. The rough surface grips a smooth passata sauce in a way that slick industrial pasta cannot.

Other ways to use it

• Pizza sauce — season raw passata with salt, oregano and olive oil and spread it thin. It cooks on the pizza.
• Braises and ragù — the liquid base for slow-cooked meat sauces.
• Soups — a quick base for minestrone or tomato soup.
• Classic Roman sauces — it is the natural base for amatriciana and puttanesca.
• With ‘nduja — melt a spoonful of Calabrian ‘nduja into your sugo for heat and depth.

Why the olive oil matters as much as the tomato

A passata sauce has very few ingredients, so each one shows. Olive oil does two jobs here. First, many of the flavour and colour compounds in tomatoes — including lycopene — are fat-soluble, so cooking tomato in oil carries and rounds out its flavour. Second, a raw finishing drizzle adds aroma that cooking cannot.

That finishing oil should be fresh extra virgin with real fruit and a peppery edge; a flat or old oil adds nothing but fat. Tomato and a green, early-harvest Italian oil share a grassy, tomato-leaf note that makes them natural partners — something you can learn to recognise on our tasting and pairings page.

How to buy passata

• Check the ingredients. Ideally just tomatoes, perhaps salt. Added sugar, citric acid or thickeners are signs of a lower-grade product.
• Prefer glass. It lets you see the colour — a vivid, even red is a good sign.
• Look for origin. Italian-grown tomatoes, harvested ripe, make a sweeter, more balanced passata.
• Refrigerate after opening and use within a few days, or freeze leftovers in small portions.

The bottom line

Passata is the most honest tomato product in the Italian pantry: strained, smooth and barely cooked, so its flavour is entirely down to the tomatoes. Pair it with good pasta and a serious extra virgin olive oil, and twenty minutes is all it takes to make a sauce that tastes like an Italian August.

For more dishes built around the bottle, browse our Italian olive oil recipes.

Make your next sugo with oil pressed from a single Calabrian grove — explore the Olive Father range.

Our oil comes from San Procopio, in the hills of southern Calabria. So when people ask us what ‘nduja is, we are not answering as tourists. We are answering as people who grew up with a crock of it in the pantry, a loaf of bread on the table, and a bottle of new-harvest oil within reach. This is our guide to the most talked-about food to come out of the toe of Italy’s boot.

What is ‘nduja?

‘Nduja (pronounced en-DOO-ya) is a soft, spreadable, fiercely spicy pork salume from Calabria. It is most closely associated with the village of Spilinga in the province of Vibo Valentia, though families across the region make their own. Where most cured sausages are firm enough to slice, ‘nduja stays soft at room temperature — closer in texture to a rich pâté than to salami.

The name is generally traced to the French andouille, a word that likely arrived in southern Italy centuries ago. The food itself, though, is entirely Calabrian: a way of preserving pork through the year using the one ingredient the region has in abundance — chili.

What is ‘nduja made of?

Traditional ‘nduja is built from a short list:

• Pork — historically the fattier trimmings left after the prized cuts were set aside; today most producers use fat, belly and shoulder.
• Calabrian chili — a lot of it. The chili gives ‘nduja its brick-red colour and much of its preservation power.
• Salt.

The mixture is finely ground, stuffed into natural casing, often lightly smoked, and left to cure for weeks to months. The high fat content is what keeps it spreadable, and the chili and salt are what keep it safe.

What does ‘nduja taste like?

Heat arrives first — a warm, round, fruity chili heat rather than a sharp, vinegary one. Then comes the depth: savoury cured pork, a gentle smokiness, a faint fermented tang from the curing. Because it is so rich in fat, it melts on the tongue and coats the palate, which is exactly why a little goes a long way.

Think of it less as a sausage and more as a seasoning: a spoonful can turn a plain tomato sauce, a pan of eggs, or a slice of bread into something unmistakably Calabrian.

How to eat and cook with ‘nduja

On bread — the way it starts at home

Toast a thick slice of country bread, spread it thinly with ‘nduja while the bread is still warm, and finish with a thread of extra virgin olive oil. The warmth loosens the ‘nduja, and the oil carries the chili across your palate. This is the simplest and still the best way to understand it.

Melted into pasta

Warm a spoonful of ‘nduja in a pan with olive oil over low heat until it collapses into a glossy red sauce. Add a ladle of pasta water, toss in short bronze-drawn pasta, and finish off the heat with more oil and a little grated pecorino. Rough-surfaced bronze-drawn pasta holds this kind of sauce far better than slick, Teflon-extruded shapes. (If you enjoy this, see our guide to guanciale, the other pork that defines southern pasta.)

In tomato sauce, eggs, and on pizza

Stir a teaspoon into a simple tomato sauce for instant Calabrian character. Fold it into scrambled eggs at the last moment. Dot it over a pizza as it comes out of the oven so it melts rather than burns. It also works beautifully with seafood — mussels and clams take to it naturally.

Why low heat matters

‘Nduja is mostly fat and chili. High heat will scorch the chili and turn it bitter. Always melt it gently, and let the olive oil do the work of spreading it.

Why ‘nduja needs a serious olive oil

Capsaicin, the compound that makes chili hot, is fat-soluble. That is why olive oil and ‘nduja are natural partners: the oil dissolves and carries the chili’s flavour evenly, softening its edges while lengthening its finish. But not any oil will do.

A flat, refined or old oil simply disappears under ‘nduja. A fresh, early-harvest extra virgin olive oil from the same landscape answers it — green fruit, bitter almond, and a peppery catch at the back of the throat that meets the chili halfway. That pepper comes from oleocanthal and other polyphenols, and you can read how to recognise it on our tasting and pairings page. Calabrian food and Calabrian oil grew up together; they were always meant to be on the same table.

How to buy and store ‘nduja

• Read the label. Good ‘nduja lists pork, chili and salt, with little else. Long lists of starches, colourings or flavourings are a warning sign.
• Look for Calabrian origin. The chili and the curing tradition matter.
• Store it cold once opened. Keep it wrapped in the refrigerator and use it within the time the producer recommends. A thin layer of olive oil over the cut surface of a jar helps keep air out.

The bottom line

‘Nduja is Calabria in a spoonful: frugal in origin, generous in flavour, and built for sharing with bread and oil. Treat it as a seasoning, melt it gently, and pair it with an extra virgin olive oil that has enough character to stand beside it.

Our oil is pressed in the same Calabrian hills, from olives harvested early and milled within hours — you can follow the whole process on our harvest and cold pressing page.

Bring Calabria to your table — explore Olive Father’s single-source extra virgin olive oil and cook your first ‘nduja pasta the way we do at home.

Most people meet mascarpone once a year, folded into tiramisù. That is a shame, because in Italian kitchens it is a quiet workhorse: stirred into risotto, loosened into pasta, spooned over fruit. Here is what mascarpone actually is, how it is made, how it compares with the cheeses it gets confused with, and how to use it well.

What is mascarpone?

Mascarpone is a fresh, unaged Italian cheese made from cream. It comes from Lombardy, the northern region around Milan, where rich dairy has shaped the cooking for centuries. It is soft, spoonable and ivory-white, with a texture closer to thick whipped butter than to anything you would slice.

Technically it is often described as an acid-set cream product rather than a classic rennet cheese — and that distinction explains almost everything about how it tastes and behaves.

How mascarpone is made

The method is short and elegant:

• Start with cream, not milk.
• Heat it to a high temperature, typically well above what is used for most cheeses.
• Add a food acid — traditionally tartaric or citric acid, sometimes lemon juice or vinegar at home — which gently thickens the cream.
• Cool and drain it through cloth until it is dense and smooth.

There is no culture, no rennet and no ageing. What you taste is the cream itself: sweet, milky and very rich.

What does mascarpone taste like?

Mild, buttery and faintly sweet, with almost no tang. Its fat content is very high, which is why it melts into sauces without splitting and whips into airy creams without collapsing. It acts less like a cheese and more like a luxurious binder.

Mascarpone vs cream cheese

• Base: mascarpone is made from cream; American cream cheese from milk and cream with a bacterial culture.
• Flavour: cream cheese is noticeably tangy and salty; mascarpone is sweet and neutral.
• Texture and fat: mascarpone is richer and silkier; cream cheese is firmer and denser.

Mascarpone vs ricotta

Ricotta is made by reheating whey, so it is lighter, grainier and much lower in fat. Mascarpone is smooth and indulgent. Some Italian desserts use both — ricotta for body, mascarpone for richness. If you love fresh Italian cheeses, see our guide to what burrata is.

Good mascarpone substitutes

Nothing is identical, but in a pinch: full-fat cream cheese beaten with a splash of heavy cream (for tang-tolerant recipes), or strained whole-milk ricotta blended smooth with a little cream. For tiramisù, it is worth finding the real thing.

How Italians use mascarpone beyond tiramisù

• Risotto: a spoonful at the very end, instead of extra butter, for a glossy finish.
• Pasta: loosened with hot pasta water and lemon zest, it becomes a five-minute cream sauce. A bronze-drawn pasta with a rough surface holds it best — here is why texture matters.
• Fruit: spooned beside roasted figs, pears or stone fruit.
• Baking: folded into frostings and fillings, or paired with an olive oil cake whose peppery crumb it softens beautifully.

Mascarpone and olive oil: the unexpected pairing

A spoon of mascarpone, a pinch of flaky salt and a thread of green, peppery extra virgin olive oil is one of the simplest desserts in Italy — and one of the best. The oil’s bitterness and pepper cut through the cream’s richness, the way acidity cuts through fat in a great sauce. It only works with fresh, genuinely extra virgin oil; a flat, stale oil just tastes greasy. Try the same idea in our olive oil ice cream, and pour from a single-estate bottle like our Calabrian extra virgin olive oil.

How to buy and store mascarpone

• Read the ingredients: good mascarpone is essentially cream and an acid. Avoid tubs padded with gums and stabilisers.
• Check the date: it is a fresh product. Once opened, keep it cold, covered, and use it within a few days.
• Bring it up gently: let it sit out for ten minutes before whipping so it loosens without splitting.

The bottom line

Mascarpone is a fresh Lombard cheese made by gently acidifying hot cream: sweet, silky and far more versatile than its tiramisù reputation suggests. Like all great Italian ingredients, it rewards buying simple and buying fresh — the same principle behind why Italian food is so good.

Finish your next dessert the Italian way — shop Olive Father single-estate extra virgin olive oil.

Ask a Roman cook what makes cacio e pepe taste like Rome and the answer will not be the pasta or the pepper. It will be the cheese. Pecorino Romano is sharp, salty, faintly animal and unmistakably alive — the backbone of four of Italy’s most famous pasta dishes. Here is what it actually is, how it is made, and how to buy and use the real thing.

What is Pecorino Romano?

Pecorino Romano is a hard, aged cheese made from whole sheep’s milk. The name tells you most of the story: pecora is Italian for sheep, and Romano points to the countryside around Rome where it was born. It is one of Europe’s oldest continuously produced cheeses, and Roman writers described sheep’s milk cheese as a staple of daily life two thousand years ago.

Today it is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO / DOP) product. That means only cheese made in the defined production zones — Lazio, the island of Sardinia, and the province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany — using the approved method may carry the name. Somewhat surprisingly, the large majority of genuine Pecorino Romano is now made in Sardinia, where the sheep pastures are.

How Pecorino Romano is made

The method is deliberately simple and deliberately slow:

• Sheep’s milk only. No cow’s milk, no blends. Sheep’s milk is richer in fat and protein, which gives the cheese its dense, crumbly texture.
• Coagulated with lamb rennet, then the curd is cut small, pressed into tall cylindrical forms and marked on the rind with the consortium’s identification.
• Dry-salted by hand, repeatedly, over weeks. This is why Pecorino Romano is so much saltier than most hard cheeses — salt is part of its identity and its preservation.
• Aged for at least five months for table cheese, and eight months or more for the grating cheese most of us buy.

What does Pecorino Romano taste like?

Assertive. Expect a strong salty hit, a sharp, tangy middle and a slightly gamey, lanolin-like finish that comes from the sheep’s milk. The paste is white to pale straw, firm and crumbly rather than crystalline. On its own it can be intense; melted into hot pasta water with starch, it becomes a savoury cream that nothing else quite replicates.

Pecorino Romano vs Parmigiano Reggiano

They are not interchangeable, and the difference is worth knowing:

• Milk: Pecorino Romano is sheep’s milk; Parmigiano Reggiano is cow’s milk.
• Flavour: Pecorino is saltier, sharper and tangier; Parmigiano is nuttier, sweeter and more savoury-brothy.
• Region: Pecorino belongs to Rome and the south; Parmigiano to Emilia-Romagna in the north.
• Use: Roman pastas are built for Pecorino. Swap in Parmigiano and the dish loses its bite.

Is “Romano cheese” the same thing?

Not necessarily. In the US, a tub labelled simply “Romano” may be made from cow’s milk and has no connection to the Italian PDO. If the label does not say Pecorino Romano and name sheep’s milk, it is a different cheese. It is the same lesson we teach about olive oil: the name on the front means little unless the origin and method stand behind it — see our guide to reading an olive oil label.

The four Roman pastas that depend on it

Pecorino Romano is the common thread through Rome’s great quartet:

• Cacio e pepe — pecorino, black pepper and pasta water, nothing else. Our cacio e pepe recipe shows how to keep it silky rather than clumpy.
• Gricia — cacio e pepe plus crisped guanciale.
• Carbonara — gricia plus egg. See our authentic carbonara.
• Amatriciana — guanciale, tomato and pecorino. Here is our amatriciana recipe.

All four ask for a pasta with a rough, porous surface so the emulsified cheese clings. That is exactly why we make our bronze-drawn Calabrian pasta the slow way.

How to buy and store it

• Buy a wedge, not a shaker. Pre-grated cheese often contains anti-caking agents and loses aroma fast.
• Look for the PDO seal and the words “Pecorino Romano DOP” or “PDO”.
• Grate it fine, just before using, on a microplane — fine shreds melt evenly into pasta water.
• Store it wrapped in wax or parchment paper, then loosely in a container, in the fridge. A well-wrapped wedge keeps for weeks.

Pecorino and olive oil: a southern Italian partnership

In the south, a shaving of pecorino and a thread of peppery extra virgin olive oil is a complete appetiser: fava beans in spring, sliced pears in autumn, a hunk of bread any time. The cheese brings salt and tang; a fresh, green oil brings bitterness and pepper to balance it. Save your best finishing oil for this — our single-estate Calabrian extra virgin olive oil is pressed within hours of harvest for exactly that kind of lively, green flavour.

The bottom line

Pecorino Romano is a PDO sheep’s milk cheese from Lazio, Sardinia and Grosseto: salty, sharp, aged at least five months, and irreplaceable in Roman pasta. Buy it by the wedge, grate it fresh, and pair it with ingredients that are just as honest about where they come from.

Build the full Roman table — shop Olive Father extra virgin olive oil and bronze-drawn pasta.

Walk into any salumeria in Bologna and the biggest thing behind the counter is usually a mortadella — a pale pink cylinder that can be wider than a dinner plate, sliced so thin the light comes through. Americans tend to meet it as “fancy bologna.” That undersells it badly. Mortadella is one of Italy’s great charcuterie traditions, and once you have had a good one, sliced fresh, the supermarket version stops making sense.

What is mortadella?

Mortadella is a large cooked pork sausage from Bologna, in Emilia-Romagna. Pork is ground to a very fine, smooth paste, seasoned, and studded with small white cubes of firm pork fat. Many versions add whole pistachios; some add black peppercorns or a hint of myrtle, nutmeg or coriander. The mixture is packed into a casing and cooked slowly in dry-air ovens until it sets.

That last step is what separates mortadella from most Italian salumi. Prosciutto and guanciale are salt-cured and aged. Mortadella is cooked, which is why its texture is silky and tender rather than firm and chewy, and why it is ready to eat as soon as it cools.

Mortadella Bologna IGP: the seal that matters

Authentic mortadella from its home region can carry the Mortadella Bologna IGP designation — a European Protected Geographical Indication. The IGP rules set where it can be made, what cuts of pork go in, how it is seasoned and how it is cooked, and they limit additives. Pistachios are allowed but not required.

If you have read our guide to DOP and IGP certifications, the logic is the same one we apply to olive oil: a protected name ties the product to a place and a method, and gives you something concrete to check on the label instead of a marketing adjective.

Mortadella vs bologna: what’s the difference?

American bologna is a descendant of mortadella — the name gives it away — but the two have drifted far apart.

• Fat: mortadella keeps its fat as visible cubes you can see and taste. Bologna blends everything into a uniform paste.
• Meat: Mortadella Bologna IGP is made from pork only. American bologna can be pork, beef, chicken, turkey or a mix.
• Seasoning: mortadella is perfumed and delicate, often with pistachio. Bologna is milder and flatter.
• Size and slicing: real mortadella is made in large logs and sliced to order, paper-thin. Bologna is usually pre-sliced and packaged.

How does mortadella taste?

Sweet, gently spiced and very savory, with a soft, almost creamy texture. The fat cubes melt on the tongue; the pistachios add a little crunch and a green, nutty note. It should taste clean and bright, never greasy or sour. Good mortadella smells faintly of spice and warm pork the moment it is cut.

How Italians eat mortadella

Sliced thin, at room temperature

The purest way. Ask for it sliced as thin as the machine will go, fold the slices loosely rather than stacking them flat, and let them sit out for fifteen minutes before eating. Cold mutes the aroma.

Cubed, with aperitivo

In Bologna, thick cubes of mortadella arrive on toothpicks with a glass of Lambrusco or a spritz. Simple and excellent.

In focaccia or pizza bianca

Arguably the best sandwich in Italy: warm, olive-oil-rich flatbread split open and stuffed with a heap of mortadella, nothing else. The oil in the bread and the fat in the meat meet in the middle. Our olive oil focaccia recipe is built for exactly this. Some Roman bakeries add a smear of pistachio cream or a little stracciatella.

In the kitchen

Minced into the filling of Bolognese tortellini, whipped into a spread with ricotta, or folded into meatballs for richness. It is a cook’s ingredient as much as a deli one.

Where olive oil comes in

Mortadella is rich; what it needs next to it is something green and sharp. A piece of bread drizzled with a peppery, early-harvest extra virgin olive oil, a few bitter leaves dressed in oil and lemon, a handful of good olives — that contrast is what makes an Italian plate feel balanced rather than heavy. A flat, tired oil does nothing here. A fresh, polyphenol-rich one cuts through the fat like a squeeze of citrus.

Buying and storing mortadella

• Buy it sliced to order from a deli whenever you can, and eat it within a few days.
• Look for Mortadella Bologna IGP on the label if you want the real thing from its home region.
• Wrap sliced mortadella in paper, then plastic, and keep it in the coldest part of the fridge. A whole unopened piece keeps much longer.
• The cut face should be an even, rosy pink with clean white fat cubes — no gray edges, no slick surface.

The Italian table, done properly

Mortadella is a reminder of why Italian food is so good: a humble idea, made carefully, in one place, the same way for centuries. That is exactly how we think about olive oil. Ours comes from a single source — one family farm in Calabria, six generations deep. Build your next board around it: shop Olive Father extra virgin olive oil, pour it over warm focaccia, and let the mortadella do the rest.

Ask a Roman cook what makes carbonara taste like carbonara and you will not hear about eggs or cheese first. You will hear one word: guanciale. It is the quiet engine behind three of the four great Roman pastas, and it is the ingredient most often swapped out — and most obviously missed — when those dishes are cooked abroad.

What is guanciale?

Guanciale (gwan-CHA-leh) is cured pork jowl — the cheek, from the Italian guancia. It comes from central Italy, above all Lazio and Umbria, where it has been made for generations as a way of preserving one of the fattiest, most flavorful cuts on the animal.

The method is simple and slow. The jowl is trimmed, rubbed with salt and usually black pepper (some producers add garlic, rosemary, sage or thyme), then left to cure and air-dry, typically for several weeks to a few months. It is not smoked. What comes out is a dense slab that is mostly pale, creamy fat laced with thin ribbons of meat, wearing a dark crust of pepper.

Guanciale vs pancetta vs bacon

These three get used interchangeably in recipes, but they are different cuts and different cures — and the difference shows up on the plate.

• Guanciale — pork cheek, salt-cured with pepper, air-dried, unsmoked. The fat is firm, sweet and renders into a silky, deeply porky liquid.
• Pancetta — pork belly, salt-cured with spices, often rolled, unsmoked. Leaner and meatier, with a milder, more savory flavor.
• Bacon — usually pork belly, cured and almost always smoked. The smoke is the problem: it overwhelms the delicate balance of egg, pecorino and pepper that Roman pastas depend on.

The practical difference is fat. Guanciale has more of it, and the fat itself has a rounder, almost nutty sweetness. When it renders, it becomes the base of the sauce rather than a garnish sitting on top of it.

The dishes guanciale was made for

Carbonara

Crisp guanciale, egg yolk, pecorino romano and black pepper, bound with starchy pasta water. The rendered fat is what lets the yolks turn into a glossy cream rather than scrambled egg. Our authentic carbonara recipe walks through the technique step by step.

Amatriciana

Guanciale, tomato, pecorino and a whisper of chili — the pride of the town of Amatrice. The fat carries the tomato and gives the sauce its body. See our amatriciana recipe.

Gricia

Often called “carbonara without the egg”: just guanciale, pecorino and pepper. With so few ingredients there is nowhere for a poor substitute to hide. It shares its logic with cacio e pepe, which adds the pepper and cheese but leaves out the pork.

How to cook guanciale properly

1. Trim and cut. Remove the hard outer rind and most of the peppered crust (a little pepper is fine). Cut into batons or thick strips about the width of a finger.
2. Start cold, cook low. Put the pieces into a cold pan and bring the heat up gently. Slow rendering melts the fat out before the meat burns.
3. Stop at golden. You want the edges crisp and the centers still slightly tender. Take the pieces out, keep the fat in the pan — that fat is the sauce.
4. Build the sauce in that fat. Add tomato for amatriciana, or loosen with pasta water for gricia and carbonara, then return the guanciale at the end so it stays crisp.

Pair it with a shape that can hold the fat: rigatoni, mezze maniche or spaghetti are the classics. Our guide to pasta shapes and sauce explains why, and bronze-drawn pasta, with its rough, porous surface, grips a guanciale sauce far better than slick industrial pasta — more on that in why we make bronze-drawn pasta.

Where olive oil fits — and where it doesn’t

Here is the honest answer from people who sell olive oil for a living: guanciale mostly doesn’t need it. It renders more than enough fat of its own. Many Roman cooks, and the recipe promoted by the town of Amatrice itself, do start the pan with a small spoonful of extra virgin olive oil to help the render get going evenly, and that is a good habit. What you should not do is drown it.

Where a great extra virgin oil truly earns its place is in the other dishes on the table — the salad of bitter greens that cuts through all that richness, the bread, the vegetables. A peppery, polyphenol-rich oil is the natural counterweight to a plate of pork fat and pecorino.

Can you substitute guanciale?

Yes, but know what you are giving up. Unsmoked pancetta is the closest substitute; it will be leaner, so let it render longer and don’t discard the fat. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon works in a pinch. Smoked bacon changes the dish entirely — it will be good, but it will not be carbonara. Look for guanciale at Italian delis and specialty butchers; several American producers now make it too. Kept well wrapped in the fridge, a whole piece lasts for weeks.

If you love guanciale, meet its cousin: our guide to what prosciutto is covers the other great Italian cured pork.

Cook the whole plate the Italian way

Guanciale is a lesson in why Italian food works: few ingredients, each one the real thing. The pasta should be bronze-drawn. The oil on the table should come from one grove, one harvest, one family. That is what we bring from our farm in Calabria — explore Olive Father extra virgin olive oil and bronze-drawn pasta, and cook your next carbonara with nothing to hide.

Salmon is rich, oily fish, so people are sometimes surprised that the answer to “what fat should I cook it in?” is more oil. But on the Italian coast, fish and olive oil have been cooked together for as long as there have been boats and groves. Used well, olive oil for salmon does two jobs: it builds a crisp crust in the pan, and a fresh, peppery pour at the end cuts through the richness the way a squeeze of lemon does.

Can you cook salmon in olive oil?

Yes. Extra virgin olive oil is well suited to the temperatures salmon actually needs. A pan-seared fillet cooks over medium-high heat, comfortably within the range where good extra virgin behaves. The number people quote — smoke point — is only part of the story; what matters more is how stable an oil is under heat, and extra virgin’s monounsaturated fats and natural antioxidants make it notably resistant to breaking down. We unpack this in can you fry with olive oil and our guide to olive oil smoke point.

The real rule is simpler: don’t let any oil smoke. If it does, the pan is too hot for fish anyway.

Method 1: Pan-seared salmon with crisp skin

1. Dry the fish. Pat the fillets completely dry and salt them 10 minutes ahead. Moisture is the enemy of crisp skin.
2. Heat the pan, then the oil. Warm a heavy skillet over medium-high, add about a tablespoon of extra virgin, and wait until it shimmers.
3. Skin down, and leave it alone. Press the fillet gently for 10 seconds so the skin stays flat, then don’t touch it. Most of the cooking happens on this side — roughly 4 to 5 minutes for a standard fillet.
4. Flip briefly. Turn for 1 to 2 minutes, until the centre is just translucent. Salmon keeps cooking as it rests.

Method 2: Oven-roasted salmon

Rub the fillet all over with extra virgin, season, and roast at around 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 14 minutes depending on thickness. Add sliced lemon, cherry tomatoes and olives to the tray and the oil turns them into a sauce while the fish cooks. The same logic runs through our guide to roasting vegetables with olive oil.

Method 3: Olive oil–poached salmon

This is the restaurant technique that looks extravagant and is actually easy. Submerge the fillet in oil kept gently warm — well below a simmer, with no bubbles at all — and let it cook slowly until it flakes at the touch of a fork. The result is impossibly tender, almost custard-like, and never dry. Add a strip of lemon peel, a bay leaf and a garlic clove to perfume the oil. Afterwards, strain and refrigerate it and use it again for cooking fish within a few days.

Here, a good everyday extra virgin is the right call — save the most expensive bottle for the finish.

Method 4: The finishing pour

This is where most home cooks leave flavour on the table. Heat softens an oil’s aromatics; a raw drizzle keeps them. Just before serving, pour a thin line of fresh, early-harvest extra virgin across the hot fish. The warmth releases the green, grassy aromas, and the peppery finish balances the fat of the salmon the way acid does.

A Calabrian finish: salmoriglio

In southern Italy fish is dressed with salmoriglio: extra virgin olive oil whisked with lemon juice, a little warm water, dried oregano, garlic and salt. Spoon it over salmon straight from the pan. We go deeper on the oil-and-lemon pairing in olive oil and lemon juice.

Which olive oil is best for salmon?

• For cooking: a genuine extra virgin with a harvest date. It does not need to be your finest bottle, but it should be fresh. “Light” or refined oils add nothing but fat.
• For finishing: the freshest, most peppery extra virgin you have. Look for a harvest date, dark glass or tin, and a named origin — the checklist is in how to choose olive oil.
• Skip: anything labelled simply “olive oil” or “pure.” That is refined oil, and it will flatten the dish.

Common mistakes

• A cold pan. The skin sticks and tears. Wait for the shimmer.
• Moving the fish too early. It releases on its own once the crust has formed.
• Overcooking. Pull it while the centre is still slightly translucent.
• Only using oil at the start. The finishing pour is the step that makes it taste Italian.

The bottle we reach for

Our extra virgin comes from one family estate in San Procopio, Calabria — six generations on the same hillsides, milled within hours of picking and harvest-dated on every bottle. It is green, peppery and bright enough to stand up to salmon without covering it. Read how we assess it on our tasting guide.

Cook it once with a real finishing oil and you won’t go back. Shop Olive Father single-estate extra virgin olive oil.

Walk into any salumeria in Italy and the first thing you notice is the legs: whole hams hanging from the ceiling, each one stamped, dated and waiting. That quiet room is the entire answer to the question what is prosciutto. It is a pork leg, salted by hand and left to dry in moving air for many months — sometimes well over a year — until it becomes something sweet, silky and deeply savoury that no shortcut can imitate.

We are an olive oil family, not butchers. But prosciutto sits on our table as often as bread does, and it follows the same rules our oil does: one raw ingredient, minimal intervention, and time doing the real work.

What is prosciutto, exactly?

Prosciutto is simply the Italian word for ham. When Americans say it, they almost always mean prosciutto crudo — raw, dry-cured ham that is never cooked. Its cousin prosciutto cotto is a cooked ham, closer to a fine deli ham, and a different food entirely. On an Italian menu, the word on its own can mean either, so read the second word.

Crudo is safe to eat without cooking because of the curing itself. Salt draws out moisture, and long drying in controlled conditions leaves a ham too dry and too salty for spoilage organisms to thrive. It is one of the oldest preservation methods in Europe, and it still works exactly as it did centuries ago.

How prosciutto is made

1. Salting

Fresh rear legs are trimmed and rubbed with salt. Producers of the great protected hams use sea salt and nothing else — no nitrites, no smoke, no sugar. The leg rests cold while salt works inward.

2. Resting

The excess salt is removed and the hams rest for weeks in cool rooms so the salt can spread evenly through the meat. This is where the texture begins to change.

3. Drying and aging

The legs move to airy aging rooms. The exposed face is sealed with sugna, a paste of pork fat, salt and flour, so the surface does not dry faster than the interior. Then comes the long wait. Enzymes slowly break proteins and fats into the savoury, nutty, faintly sweet compounds that define a great slice. Masters test each ham with a horse-bone needle, smelling it to judge its progress.

Parma, San Daniele and the regional hams

Italy protects its best hams with DOP status (Protected Designation of Origin), the same system that governs certified olive oils — we explain it in our guide to DOP and IGP certifications.

• Prosciutto di Parma DOP — from the hills around Parma in Emilia-Romagna. Salt only, aged at least a year, and branded with the ducal crown. Delicate, sweet, rosy.
• Prosciutto di San Daniele DOP — from Friuli in the northeast, cured with sea salt and recognisable by its guitar-like shape with the trotter left on. Often a touch sweeter and more buttery.
• Regional crudos — Tuscany, Umbria and the south make saltier, more assertive hams, sometimes rubbed with pepper or herbs.

Our own region, Calabria, is better known for other cured meats — capocollo, soppressata, pancetta and fiery ‘nduja — but the logic is identical: local pigs, salt, climate and a family that knows when to wait.

How to buy prosciutto

• Buy it sliced to order when you can. Pre-packed slices are fine, but fresh-cut prosciutto is noticeably more aromatic.
• Ask for it paper-thin, almost translucent. Thick prosciutto is chewy and aggressively salty.
• Look for the fat. The white band is not waste; it carries most of the aroma. Eat it.
• Check the origin mark on the rind or pack. A named origin and a stamp tell you more than any adjective.

How to serve prosciutto

Take it out of the fridge 20 to 30 minutes before eating. Cold fat tastes of nothing; at room temperature it turns glossy and sweet. Drape the slices loosely instead of stacking them flat so they do not fuse together.

Classic pairings

• Melon or ripe figs — sweetness against salt, the oldest trick on the Italian table.
• Burrata — cream against cure. Our guide to what burrata is covers how to choose a good one.
• Warm bread and good oil — toast a slice of country bread, pour on a thread of peppery extra virgin olive oil, lay prosciutto over the top while the bread is still warm. The fat softens, the oil lifts it. This is our house antipasto.
• Pasta — added at the very end, off the heat, so it stays tender rather than frying into chips.

Why good olive oil matters on the board

Prosciutto is all nuance: sweet fat, salt, a long nutty finish. A flat, stale or refined oil adds nothing but grease. A fresh, early-harvest extra virgin brings green, grassy aromatics and a peppery catch that cuts the richness and makes the ham taste sweeter. That peppery note comes from polyphenols — compounds that only survive in genuinely fresh, well-made oil, as we explain on our polyphenols page.

It is the same principle as a great ham: honest raw material, handled carefully, served close to its best. Our oil comes from one family estate in Calabria, pressed within hours of picking and traceable to the grove — the reasoning is on our single-source page.

The short answer

Prosciutto is Italian dry-cured ham: a pork leg, salt and many months of air. Buy it thin, serve it warm, eat the fat, and put it next to bread and an olive oil that deserves the company.

Build a better board. Explore our single-estate Italian extra virgin olive oils and taste what a grove-to-bottle oil does next to a slice of real prosciutto.