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This article was published 09/04/2021 (2037 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For someone who has just launched an artisanal cured meat business, Tyrone Welchinski isn’t a huge proponent of a carnivorous diet.

“It seems counterintuitive,” he says. “Meat’s not something I think should be eaten every day or all the time. I think we should be more selective with the meat we’re consuming, so I’m trying to alleviate some of that.”

Welchinski’s Meats, a small-batch online salami shop, is the newest culinary venture for the former executive chef of Nonsuch Brewing Co. Welchinski is making old-world Spanish-, French- and Italian-style sausages with local pork and Manitoba terroir, such as foraged blueberries, saskatoons, mushrooms and sumac. His is one of the first shops in the province to offer locally made, sustainably sourced whole salami to the general public.

“The reason I started making salami myself was because there wasn’t a place to purchase them, and this way I knew the animals that were being used — everything aligned with my ethics,” he says. “Local, regenerative farming practices, organic feed, those things are all very important to me.”

The decision to start a retail food business wasn’t entirely by choice. Welchinski was let go from Nonsuch in January and has been doing pop-up events at restaurants around Winnipeg for the last few months.

The pandemic has made work in the food industry unstable and unrecognizable, so he took a leap of faith.

“It’s stressful, it’s uncertain, but in a way it feels right — it feels more certain than, you know, hoping guests will come down to a restaurant,” he says. “I’m missing cooking, but during (COVID-19) cooking changed into something that I never wanted. I never wanted to be a chef plating food in containers to go. The thing I love about cooking is the connection to people and now people were more or less eliminated from the equation.”

So far, uptake has been slow, but the endeavour has made him think about food differently.

“It could be a way to reach more people. I feel like restaurants have this exclusivity to them where you don’t always get to dine in,” he says. “This is more accessible; anyone can grab a salami or a pack of hot rods and head out to the park and have a picnic or include it in their cooking.”

While a storefront could be in the cards someday, Welchinski’s Meats currently lives in a commercial kitchen and online store. Customers can place orders for things like chorizo, hunter salami, soppressata and hot rods online and arrange for pickup on Fridays.

Welchinski was first introduced to the process of curing meat by chef Tristan Foucault of Preservation Hall Eatery and has made custom meats at most of the restaurants he’s worked in. The butchering, grinding, seasoning, fermenting and drying takes anywhere from four to six weeks and the end result can be a bit of a mystery.

“I get very excited for new batches,” he says. “I don’t exactly know how they’ll turn out — it’s a bit of a gamble — but it’s so satisfying.”

Welchinski is currently waiting on a batch of ghost pepper salami that had his eyes watering during assembly. New seasonal sausage flavours will be released weekly and he’s working on adding pickles, jams and mustards to the menu.

Visit welchinskis.com for more details.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney