Conference turris::cooks

    Wow, I'll bet both the guesses and facts can run the gamut on this one.
    I'll give you a little of both but tell you which are guesses.
    
    Salami is a sausage made of ground meat.  I think it can be either pork
    or beef though I have only dealt with beef dealers.  The companies
    which make kosher salamis usually try the hardest to only use "normal" cuts of
    beef from kosher-killed and processed cows or bulls.  Different kosher
    packers have different standards and I don't remember who's who anymore
    but the differences were things like [highest standard] killed by a
    trained jewish person [insert proper name], evicerated, or at least
    entrails examined by same or similar person.  Later as the meat aged,
    it was kept moist by a similar person.  Then when the meat was cut from
    the bone, special effort was made to also remove the nerves and veins
    from the meat.  The result would be examined by said specially trained
    person, certified to be kosher and sold to a kosher salami, hotdog,
    whatever, processor.  Typically the meat was all forequarter cuts
    because it is harder to kosher cut a hindquarter-- fewer skilled
    cutters.
    
    Now suppose the salami is not kosher, but is beef, then it might
    contain any bovine cut including by-products, hat difference does it
    make, it's all ground up anyway.  A typical byproduct might be "cheek
    meat" or hearts.  (These are guesses.)
    
    As for cholesterol, given that there is little consistency to the
    content, why should fat content be any different.  The animals that I
    always handled for the kosher producers were much lower in fat than average
    But there's nothing to prevent the packer from adding fat to the
    ground beef, I watched it being done to the patties made for several
    fast food places.
    
    Try this, weigh a piece and then proil it.  All the lost weight is
    either fat or water.
    
    The only thing that was certain was that everything went somewhere. 
    :-)
    
    ed

    Fat content is almost obvious when you look at the salami; 
    remember too that this is a highly cured meat and contains a 
    lot of salt/nitrates. Nitrates should be dealt with caution by
    migraine sufferers as it is a common trigger. (This goes for
    all "cold cut" type meats that have been cured).
    
    Monica

RE: .2

That's nitrITEs, not nitrates.  They're also a suspected carcinogen (but what
isn't, these days?).

--PSW

    Actually, it's often both nitrates and nitrites -- at least it was
    on the ingredients list I read a few days ago.
    
    					andrew

    My "Encyclopedia of Food Values" lists dozens of brands of salami.
    Here are a few...
    
    type			cal.	prot(g)	fat(g)	chol(mg)
    beef, Boars Head, 1 oz	60	5	4.0	20
    beef, hebrew natl, 1 oz	80	7	7	15
    beef, 1 slice, .8 oz	72	4.2	5.7	17
    cotto, Kahn's, 1 slice	45	3	3	??
    cotto, Eckrich, 1 oz	70	4	6	??
    cotto, Light&Lean, 2 slices	80	6	6	??
    hard, Oscar Meyer, .3 oz	33	2	2.8	 8
    hard, Hebrew Natl, 1 oz	120	6	10	30
    pork, 1 oz			115	6.4	9.6	??
    genoa, Hickory Farms, 1 oz	110	6	10	20
    turkey, Louis Rich, 1 oz	54	4.4	4	20
    turkey, cotto, Long Acre	52	4	4	20
    
    It's also pretty high in saturated fats.  If you are watching your
    cholestol/fat I'd say stay away from it.  
    
    Enjoy!
    D!