Southern Louisiana Traditional Tasso

Tasso is a lean cut of pork, the length of a pig's arm, which is smoked all day long over a pecan, oak or hickory-wood fire. This dish is a reincarnation of the French, 'Tasseau,' a heavily spiced, jerked pork. Tasso meat is intensely flavored with spices as a tool of preservation and is used in a diversity of dishes from Jambalaya to Gumbo to pasta.

Tasso is available commercially from a few sources in southern Louisiana. In the late 1970s, Chef Paul Prudhomme brought samples of Tasso from Louisiana's Acadiana County to his restaurant in New Orleans where he began using it on his menus and teaching younger chefs how to prepare it and about its origins.