Canonsburg man’s meat-making hobby unites friends, family
Bobby Dellorso cuts meat that he will use to make sausage.
Bobby Dellorso placed this bacon in a smoker at his home in Canonsburg.
Bobby Dellorso cuts meat that he will use to make sausage.
Some of Bobby Dellorso’s fondest memories involve making sausage with his grandmother in the kitchen of her Canonsburg home.
Today, the Canonsburg man continues the tradition, making meats with – and for – family and friends.
“I was about 6 years old when Grandma Dellorso started teaching me. I started out with the privilege of turning the crank on the hand grinder,” recalled Dellorso. “I loved it. I enjoy doing this. My heart is in everything I make.”
And Dellorso makes a lot.
Every 20 days, he produces about 60 pounds of bacon, which he gives to family and friends.
During the winter, he makes hundreds of pounds of soppressata – 120 pounds each Tuesday in January and February – prosciutto and capicola.
And Dellorso prepares a variety of homemade sausages: hot and sweet Italian, Slovenian, maple breakfast links and kielbasa.
On Saturday mornings, Dellorso, a transportation coordinator who contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, drives to the Strip District to purchase meats, then heads to Pittsburgh Spice to pick up casings and spices.
When he was 16, Dellorso began working as a butcher at Alexander Co-op, and later at Loutsion’s Butcher Shop, where he learned to make kielbasa and mastered smoking bacon and hams.
He began purchasing sausage-making and meat-making equipment when he was a teenager.
“I bought the meat slicer and sausage press when I was probably 17 years old,” Dellorso said. “I went to Brody’s Butcher Supply with my father to look around, and I bought both of these. My dad kind of laughed and said, ‘We don’t need this.’ I said, ‘Dad, this will make our life easier. We’ll use them. And we did.”
Dellorso shares his culinary knowledge during frequent get-togethers with friends and family in the basement of his mother’s home in Canonsburg, where he keeps a smoker, commercial refrigerator and all of his other equipment.
“Anytime Bobby’s making something, he lets his friends know. If you come and help out, you can take some with you,” said John Husk, owner of J&D Winery in Eighty Four, who often added his wines to Dellorso’s sausage. “With Bobby, it’s all about the tradition. His sausage starts with the old family recipe, and he’s proud about that.”
Dellorso assigns his assistants tasks, and they dig in to help him transform pans of pork into delectable meats. Often, he’ll set out trays of cheese and olives and bottles of wine while they work.
Or, he’ll purchase a “big chunk of meat on sale,” call up buddies and say, “Come on, let’s make some meatballs.”
Friends pitch in by chopping onions and grating cheese, and Dellorso grinds the meat and mixes ingredients.
The group rolls 200 to 300 meatballs, divides them, and takes them home to make spaghetti and meatballs.
Dellorso doesn’t just create meats.
When a group of women who golf at the Golf Club of Washington, where Dellorso is a member, expressed interest in learning to make gnocchi, he organized a gnocchi-making day.
Dellorso instructed a Boy Scout troop on how to make sausage, and he turned 12-year-old Taylor Zaletski of Carnegie, the daughter of a family friend, into a skilled ravioli and pierogi maker.
Her mother, Kelly, said Taylor wanted to throw a ravioli-making party for her 10th birthday.
“So we cooked raviolis. She and her friends made them and had some to eat, and then everybody took a dozen home,” said Kelly. “It was fun. Today, everybody’s so busy sometimes that it’s easier to go to the store and buy ready-made food, but Bobby’s doing it old-school. Taylor’s been cooking with him for three years, and she enjoys it so much.”
In the summer, Dellorso spends three days making roasted red peppers from three bushels of peppers, then gives them as gifts at Christmas.
“To me, it’s all about the tradition and carrying it on,” said Dellorso. “I love the camaraderie and friendship. It brings me back to the time when I spent with my grandmother, and with my great-aunt and great-uncles, and we would all just be together.”
While cutting a slice of prosciutto, dry cured – remarkably – for five years, Dellorso described the extensive curing process for making the Italian ham.
After trimming and rubbing it with salt, “You put it on an oak plank and every day for about two weeks you move it. The salt draws all the liquid out. You move it every day, and when there’s no more wet spots on the board, then you take another board and put it on top and you put a weight on it,” said Dellorso.
For two to three weeks, Dellorso continues to squeeze the liquid out of the meat and adds salt daily.
“Then, after a five- to six-week period, you hang it up and then you wait,” said Dellorso.
The process, he said, is the same one used by delicatessens in New York City.
Dellorso’s fiancee, Deborah Holden, knows that his sausage-making goes beyond a hobby.
“He loves when family and friends bring people who have never been there and they learn how to make sausage. It’s a lost art,” said Holden. “I think from his standpoint, he doesn’t have any kids, so for him to teach the Italian tradition to children is important. And he wants people to know what goes into the process. It’s not easy. So the next time you go to buy the $30 steak or the sausage, you know the process it takes to make that and you appreciate it more.”
Dellorso also serves as president of the Italian-American Cultural and Heritage Society of Washington County, which has grown from nine members to 400 in its 25 years of existence.
The group awards 11 $3,000 academic scholarships each year to high school students of Italian heritage who plan to attend a four-year college. The club also holds monthly meetings, where, of course, members take turns cooking Italian foods.
Health issues, including a shoulder injury and Bell’s palsy, have made it more difficult for Dellorso to make meats in recent years, but he doesn’t intend to slow down.
“This is what I love to do, spending time with family and friends, and preserving my heritage,” said Dellorso. “Everyone who comes here is family, and I love them all. Family is so much bigger than blood.”