Beloteiros

Ricardo Pereira's connection to sausages and smoked meat is not familiar, nor is it old. The current responsible for Beloteiros had - and still has - a construction company and this is his main activity. One day, in 2014, he passed the door of the factory, in Arronches, and realized that the former owner had decided to close it. “I'm from Alentejo, I like these things. It couldn't be.”, He tells us with the pride of those who decided to recover a business and a beloved brand from the land, with more than 30 years of history.

He picked up Beloteiros just in time to recover some of the former employees and got down to business. It ensures that all processes, and even the raw material, have improved, and the next step is to evolve towards breeding. He works only with pigs from Alentejo, from head to tail, raised in farms with hundreds of hectares that eat everything there is in. “Their secret is space”, he confesses, while showing a pork belly in salt for a week: the intramuscular fat does not lie, it is pork from Alentejo.

Currently, they receive slaughter material every Wednesday. On average, there are 150 pigs per week, which were reduced to 20 in the post- COVID period. "It was necessary to start over slowly", he explains. From there, work begins, based on artisanal recipes, which later translates into a portfolio that includes chorizo, loins, paios, farinheiras, bacon, and even an innovation: white cacholeira (a Portuguese traditional sausage from Alentejo) with a black pig. All smoked in holm oak, the favorite one.