How a butcher and a chef spent a year fine-tuning the recipe for ham and sausage at Skô restaurant
Tomáš Valkovič, head chef and co-owner of the restaurant Skô, teamed up with David Ciboch, a butcher from Amaso. Their goal was clear: to create a sausage and ham exactly as Tomáš remembers from his home in Slovakia, just like the ones his father used to make. The entire process of development and fine-tuning of the flavours took about a year, taking place before the restaurant opened.
“I’ve never tasted the products his dad made. But since Tomáš was able to describe their characteristics very precisely, including the spices, I got a pretty clear idea. So I prepared the first taste tests, and we gradually fine-tuned everything together,” recalls David Ciboch of the early days of their collaboration.
A sausage that mustn't be perfect
While developing the ham was a long-term process, the sausage development was relatively quick. The production then took about a week. A paprika sausage that is fermented and air-dried, it differs from traditional Czech sausages in that it is intentionally less dried.
“This is typical for Slovakia and Hungary. People there are used to buying a sausage and hanging it in their pantry at home, where it gradually dries out and they slice off pieces as they go,” David explains. This is also reflected in unusual length. While standard domestic sausages are 15 to 20 cm long, the one for Skô measures an impressive 45 centimetres.
The sausage was fine-tuned in three phases:
- Basic flavour: “We were clear about the flavour from the start — paprika, caraway, garlic, salt, and pepper,” Tomáš explains. The first step was therefore to stuff and dry the sausages with these basic spices.
- The struggle for perfection and a search for texture: This is where we ran into a challenge with modern technology. “At home, we always mixed the sausage by hand, so it was pretty coarse. At Amaso, they have perfect machines, so at first it was very fine. And I wanted to preserve exactly that rustic quality of something homemade,” explains the head chef. In short, the sausage seemed too “professional” to him at first. David therefore adjusted the coarseness of the grind and even introduced intentional imperfections into the production process, such as air bubbles.
- Timing of ageing: The final goal was to find the ideal consistency. Sausages produced on the same day were tasted one by one from the fourth through the ninth day of curing, until Tomáš pointed out the right one.
Cold-smoked ham
Developing the dry-cured ham required about six test batches and took a whole year. The key issue right from the start was the shape and method of processing the pork leg.
“We debated whether to make it with or without the bone. If it were on the bone, it would take a year to a year and a half to dry. Based on our experiments, we decided that it would be a boneless leg, processed ‘flat,’ so to speak,” David explains.
“We tried various shapes, and in the end, the classic won out — a boneless, skinless leg with a layer of fat, pressed flat. It’s nice and tender on the inside, and at Skô we serve it with horseradish,” adds Tomáš Valkovič. Although its shape differs slightly from the one the Valkovič family used to make at home, in both taste and appearance, the final product most closely resembles the family’s original recipe.
The ham at Skô resembles German hams such as Black Forest ham. It is salted, lightly seasoned with spices, and, most importantly, smoked twice with cold smoke. The first smoking takes place immediately after curing; the ham then matures for a month and a half in a drying room, and after being removed, it is smoked a second time. Smoke is, in fact, the main and most distinctive flavour component. Similar to the sausage, the ham is less dried, and the curing process is not completed until it reaches the restaurant.
A natural partnership
Currently, Amaso supplies Skô with approximately 30 kilograms of sausage and 40 kilograms of ham. For David Ciboch, however, this isn’t just business—the entire process has brought him genuine inspiration.
“I really enjoyed it. Tomáš knows exactly what he wants, and we clicked on a personal level. Plus, I really like it myself. We hadn’t made this kind of thing at Amaso until then, and I’d been thinking for a long time that it would be nice to have something like that,”” David concludes, noting that although it’s Tomáš’s personal recipe, there’s a possibility that this unique ham could eventually become available to the general public.
Amaso: Guaranteed quality meat
