Pepperoni is a variety of spicy salami made from cured pork and beef seasoned with paprika or other chili pepper.
Prior to cooking, pepperoni is characteristically soft, slightly smoky, and bright red. Sliced pepperoni is one of the most popular pizza toppings in American pizzerias.
Traditionally made pepperonis curl into “cups” in the pizza oven’s intense heat; commercialization of the production of pepperoni created slices that would lie flat on the pie. The curled “cup and char” style of pepperoni remained popular in pockets of the Midwest.
The term “pepperoni” is a borrowing of peperoni, the plural of peperone, the Italian word for bell pepper. The first use of “pepperoni” to refer to a sausage dates to 1919. In Italian, the word peperoncino refers to hot and spicy chili peppers.
In 1919 Italian immigrants in New York City created pepperoni. It is a cured dry sausage, with similarities to the spicy salamis of southern Italy on which it is based, such as salsiccia or soppressata. The main differences are that pepperoni is less spicy, has a finer grain (akin to spiceless salami from Milan), is usually softer in texture, and is usually produced with the use of an artificial casing.
Pepperoni is made from pork or from a mixture of pork and beef. Turkey meat is also commonly used as a substitute, but the use of poultry in pepperoni must be appropriately labeled in the United States. It is typically seasoned with paprika or other chili pepper.
Prior to cooking, pepperoni is characteristically soft, slightly smoky, and bright red. Curing with nitrates or nitrites (usually used in modern curing agents to protect against botulism and other forms of microbiological decay) also contributes to pepperoni’s reddish color, by reacting with heme in the myoglobin of the proteinaceous components of the meat.
Sliced pepperoni is one of the most popular pizza toppings in American pizzerias. According to Convenience Store Decisions, in 2009 Americans consumed 251.7 million pounds of pepperoni annually, on 36% of all pizzas produced nationally.
Pepperoni is also used as the filling of the pepperoni roll, a popular regional snack in West Virginia and neighboring areas.
In the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, deep fried pepperoni served on its own (usually with a honey mustard dipping sauce) is common pub food.
Pepperoni has a tendency to curl up from the edges in the heat of a pizza oven; historically all pepperonis showed at least some of this tendency to curl in the oven because of their natural casings.
As commercial suppliers became the main suppliers to pizza shops, they developed a fibrous casing which was intended to be stripped from the pepperoni before it was sliced. This resulted in a pepperoni that did not curl. One benefit of non-curling pepperoni was that it eliminated the small deposits of hot grease that formed in the cupped pepperoni, therefore also eliminating any possible liability for customers who burnt themselves on it. The original style became known as “cup and char” pepperoni.
The cup and char style remained popular in parts of the midwest, while much of the rest of the United States switched to the more readily-available noncurling commercial product as a pizza topping and largely forgot the traditional curling style.
Cup and char pepperoni, also called “roni cups”, are smaller, thicker discs which are placed on top of the cheese layer and form small “cups” with charred edges in a pizza oven’s intense heat; the style is traditional in the midwest, particularly around Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York, and regained popularity in other areas in the 2010s. The style is seen as more attractive for social media posts. It is more expensive to produce.
