German Style Prosciutto - Aldi: Cherry Hill, NJ
I never realized how much I enjoy savory foods and snacks until I started blogging about food. The majority of the items I find and review are sweets, so when I find something savory, it's a real treat. (Kind of the opposite of what it's supposed to be, huh? First world food blogger problems.)
This item, as well as a bunch of Italian themed food products, had been offered at Aldi recently, and since I am (mostly) Italian and Hungarian (not a joke, I actually am), I thought I should check a few of them out. This prosciutto says it's German style, but we're going to lump it in with the Italian foods anyway.
Again, don't panic when you look at the expiration date! I ate this a while ago and took notes, I'm finally getting around to typing up all my reviews, so don't worry. I didn't eat spoiled meat.
The packaging for this item consists of a recyclable plastic tray with a peel-back style lid, which is small, convenient, and serves it purpose well. This item is part of the Specially Selected line, which is a slightly higher-end no-frills store-brand item, but the design on the front of the package is still pretty nice. It beats the pants off a lot of items I see in normal grocery stores anyway, so kudos to Aldi for that. (Plus it might be small, but it contained quite a bit of product.)
I peeled back the plastic to give this prosciutto a try, and it smelled like a salty cured ham.
The meat is finely cut into tiny irregular pieces, and there are a few chucks with hefty potions of fat still attached. I tried a few pieces bits as-is, and it wasn't phenomenal, or life changing. They tasted like tiny bits of smokey ham, which was pleasant, but no where near as good as the prosciutto I had when I was in Italy, but that's to be expected. I'm buying a prepackaged, diced up, grocery store brand prosciutto. I'm no food snob, and I think a lot of cheaper options can work in fancy and high end situations, but this isn't one of them. This is yummy for what it is, which is salty little bits of cured ham, but it's not going to fool anyone into thinking it's gourmet.
I took a bunch of this and dumped it into a pan with some onions and garlic, heated everything up, and added it to my pasta sauce for dinner, and I gotta say, it worked out pretty well. Cooking it up caused some of those little fat chucks to melt away and they crisped up a bit, adding a nice meaty and smokey flavoring to the sauce. It was pretty darn tasty!
I could see this being used in breakfast omelettes, salads, pasta dishes, or sauces. It's a pretty nifty little item to have on hand, and it makes it look like you put more effort into any dish you add it too, it's just not as good as the fancy cuts of prosciutto you might buy at a specialty shop or over seas. This was an Aldi specialty buy item, so who knows if and when it'll return, but if it does, I'll definitely re-buy.
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
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