APULICA / MEATS AND CURED MEATS

Vasto ventricina

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Meats and cured meats · Abruzzo

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked: 2026-10-11

In brief

A cured meat from the middle and upper Vasto area in the province of Chieti, made from knife-cut pieces of leg, loin and shoulder. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese)
It is seasoned with equal parts salt and sweet Altino pepper powder and stuffed into a bladder, forming a ball of one to two kilos. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese)
It dries near the fire, is coated in lard at three months and is eaten after seven or eight, cut thickly by knife. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese)
It is on Abruzzo's list of traditional products. (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))

History and origin

Few places are as bound to a cured meat as the upper Vastese is to ventricina. In the past each family cut it only at important moments of the farming year, such as the wheat and grape harvests, and one pig yielded about three good-sized ventricine.

Preserving meat stuffed with salt and spices into the pig's stomach has old roots in Abruzzo. In 1811 the statistical survey of the Kingdom of Naples ordered by Joachim Murat describes, for Abruzzo Citra, today's province of Chieti, a pig's stomach filled with meat seasoned with salt and fennel. Dried pepper, today the hallmark of Vastese ventricina, seems to have reached local butchers only in the nineteenth century, as chilli spread through Italy.

Black or red pigs were once used; today the more common white breeds are raised. The producers of the Slow Food Presidium have formed an association with shared rules, and ventricina is on Abruzzo's list of traditional products.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese · Fondazione Slow Food — Arca del Gusto, Ventricina teramana · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

After slaughter the finest parts are chosen, legs, loin and shoulders, which are trimmed, boned and freed of the tough bits near the bone, then cut with a knife into pieces of two or three centimetres and left to rest overnight.

They are seasoned with equal amounts of salt and sweet pepper powder, sometimes with wild fennel and a little black pepper. The powder comes from the small, sweet red peppers of Altino, dried for a couple of days, cleaned and pounded in a mortar: about twelve hundredweight of fresh peppers make one hundredweight of powder.

The mix is stuffed into a pig's bladder, pressed well to push out the air, forming a ball of one or two kilos, which is wrapped in netting, tied by hand and hung for seven or eight days in a room with a lit fire. It then ages somewhere cool and airy; at three months the mould is cleaned off and it is coated in lard. The rules require heavy pigs raised locally without GMOs and ban chemical preservatives.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese

How to recognise it

It comes as a ball of one or two kilos, wrapped in netting and protected by lard. The meat is orange-red, a colour that also spreads around the pieces of fat, and shows the hand-cut chunks of meat.

The aroma is fragrant, the result of long ageing and spicing; sometimes there are citrus notes, because the bladders are washed in water scented with oranges or lemons. The finish is dominated by heat, which never masks the taste of the meat and spices.

It is eaten after seven or eight months; the Presidium sets a minimum maturation of 120 days. It is made all year except in the hottest periods.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese

In the kitchen

It is usually eaten raw, cut into thick slices with a knife so that you can feel the texture of the chunks of meat. In its home area it is also diced and added to ragù, giving colour and a bold flavour.

Guides suggest it to enrich a starter, a snack or an aperitivo, together with other Abruzzo cured meats and cheeses: a cured meat rarely found outside the region and well worth tasting on the spot.

Once its appearance on the table was an event, tied to the wheat and grape harvests: even today opening a well-aged ventricina feels like an occasion to share.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese · Italia.it — Prodotti e piatti tipici abruzzesi: la guida

Where to taste it

Ventricina is made in the middle and upper Vastese, in the province of Chieti: the cooler areas of the hilly interior, where a few producers still follow the old technique. The cured meat is still common throughout the Vasto area. Altino, which supplies the sweet peppers for the powder, is another name to remember.

Vasto is the natural starting point: a town overlooking the Adriatic, best explored on foot between Piazza Rossetti, the Caldoresco castle, the Cathedral and Palazzo D'Avalos, with its civic museums and an eighteenth-century garden facing the sea.

From the coast, heading inland, the Vastese hills lead to the villages where ventricina ages: a trip that brings together the sea at Vasto and the inland countryside.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese · Italia.it — Vasto

Protection

Slow Food Presidium — ventricina-del-vastese (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Ventricina del Vastese)
Traditional agri-food product (PAT) — Abruzzo, n. 32, 26th revision (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))

When

The sources consulted give no months.

Where

Abruzzo

Ventricina from the Vasto area and Molise

It is neither PDO nor PGI: it is a family of traditional salami. The Slow Food Presidium of the Vasto area, the Montenero di Bisaccia version, the spreadable Teramo type and the Altino pepper.

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