Salo (food)

Salo (, са́ла, szalonna słonina, сланина (slanina) or less often сало (salo), сланина (slanina), Romanian slănínă or slánă, Serbo-Croatian, Czech and Slovak: slanina) is a traditional Central and Eastern European food: slabs of pork underskin fat, with or without skin. As a trend, the Eastern European one is salted or brine fermented, hence the names slonina/slana/szalonna (solonýna in Ukrainian and solonina in Russian mean any kind of salt-cured meat, such as corned beef). The Central European one is usually treated with paprika or other condiments, while the South European one is often smoked.

The Slavic word "salo" as applied to this type of food (it has other meanings as well) is often mistranslated to English as "bacon" or "lard". Unlike lard, salo is non-rendered pork fat. Unlike bacon, salo has little or no meat (however low-meat high-fat bacon is also commonly referred to as salo).

Preservation
For preservation, salo is salted, sometimes also smoked and aged in a dark and cold place, where it will last for a year or more. For flavouring and better preservation salo may be cured, or covered with a thick layer of paprika, or sometimes black pepper. Usually the underbelly fat is not used for salting. The slabs of fat are cut into manageable pieces, typically 15×20 cm, and smeared with salt. The slabs are placed skin-down into a wooden box or barrel, alternating with one-centimetre layers of salt.

When salo has been aged too long, or exposed to light, the fat may become oxidized on the surface and become yellowed and bitter-tasting. Then it can be used as a water-repellent treatment for leather boots or as a bait for mouse traps.

Culinary
Salo may be consumed raw, but can also be cooked or fried or finely chopped with garlic as a condiment for borscht (beet soup). Small pieces of salo are added to some types of sausage. Thinly-sliced salo on rye bread rubbed with garlic is a traditional snack to accompany vodka in Russia, or horilka in Ukraine.

Salo is often chopped into small pieces and fried to render the fat for use in cooking, while the remaining cracklings (shkvarky in Ukrainian) are used as condiments for fried potatoes or varenyky.

The thick pork skin that remains after using the salo's fat can also contribute to the stock for soup or borscht. After boiling it is discarded.

Salo in popular culture
In Eastern-European humour, salo is a stereotypical attribute of Ukrainian culture, analogous to vodka in Russian. In jokes salo is often represented as the highest object of desire for the stereotypical Ukrainian. Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin wrote a scandalous book, Blue Salo (a pun with the expression "blue blood").

Salo in Chocolate
The expression "chocolate-coated salo" (salo v shokoladi), originating in an ethnic joke about Ukrainians, has become cliché among Eastern Slavs, referring to an eclectic mix of tastes or desires. In the early 1990s, the joke became reality at an unorthodox, art-oriented restaurant "Lyal'ka" in Lviv, which made the dish an exclusive, expensive novelty. The BBC reported it among the World's Most Unhealthy Foods, failing to report its humorous irony.

In the 2000s, Odessa Confectionery Factory started production of candies Salo v Shokolade, ,. Popular singer Ruslana is a fan of this treat. The chocolate candies were invented as an April Fool's Day joke (Odessa being the de facto humour capital of the former Soviet Union). They are not actually salo; they contain a regular caramel filling with a small amount of rendered fat added as a salty flavouring.