Paid Content by Gilbert’s Provisions – Learning About Charcuterie

There’s a real art to meat and cheese. It’s called charcuterie.

Sean recently stopped by Gilbert’s Provisions in Berlin to hang out with a guy who has a passion for it. Toby Gilbert opened Gilbert’s Provisions in August 2016. For Toby, meat, cheese and pickles are more than something to put on a sandwich.

“I started to figure out the areas that I really like so I got into charcuterie, fermenting, a little bit of cheese making and slowly kind of developed a sense of that I didn’t want to be a restaurant chef and I wanted to play with food in a different way,” Toby says. “So this is the equation that I come came up with to satisfy all of those things.”

He makes much of the food he sells, in house.

“I make pate every week – two trays of it every week. And I make the duck ham,” Toby says. “With normal cooked ham, you have brown spices like cinnamon clove and allspice and juniper so it ends up being almost like a richer ham, but it’s not pork.”

It’s not like Toby did away with pork altogether, in fact one of his best sellers is bacon – with a Maryland twist of course.

“As Marylanders, and Delmarvins we love Old Bay on everything,” Toby says. So bacon good, Old Bay good, Old Bay bacon good.”

Other cured meats, like salami and prosciutto are brought in from across the country. Cheese is another specialty of Toby’s. While he brings in hard cheeses from Italy, gouda from Holland and manchego from Spain, he says he tries to get as much domestic cheese as possible.

“I know there is an amazing amount of ridiculous cheeses everywhere else but for my theory of how a business should go and how I want my business to go, I want to get as much domestic, and as much local as possible,” Toby says.

One of Toby’s passions is fermenting food.

“When you ferment things, you basically let natural, biological processes take over and process food,” Toby says. “With the fermentation I always thought that was really cool to see you put these flavors together and then let nature take care of it and all of a sudden seven days later, six months later, a year later, you have this whole different flavor. And for some reason that resonated with me and I loved it.”

Toby uses this process to make kimchi, sour vegetables, fermented garlic and sour pickles, he even makes koji rice. A savory rice that’s used to make all sorts of Asian condiments.

There’s no denying Gilbert’s Provisions is a very unique store. Even with the woodwork, milled from local red oaks, and the custom signs made at Steel N’ Glory, Toby’s focus remains on the food.

“It’s meats and cheeses and pickles and everything good in the world according to me,” Toby says.

He joins us in the DelmarvaLife kitchen today to make a charcuterie board with us.