This section holds the guides that apply to every ingredient on the site, whatever section it sits in. Each one answers a question a buyer meets with every product: what the label claims, what the mark guarantees, what the price should be, where to source it, and what cannot be bought here at all.
The guides
- How to read an Italian ingredient list: the additives, bulking agents and cheaper swaps that separate a real product from an imitation, in the order they appear on a label.
- What DOP and IGP guarantee, and what they do not: the two protected marks are not interchangeable, and each stops short of a promise about grade.
- Made in Italy, Product of Italy and Italian Style: three phrases that look interchangeable and are not, and the one that means nothing at all.
- What Italian ingredients cost in the United States: rough price bands for the main pantry and salumi categories, and how to judge a price that looks too good.
- Where to buy genuine Italian ingredients: the four routes that actually work, and which to use for which item.
- What cannot be imported: the sixty-day rule on raw milk cheese, the restrictions on cured meat, and what to buy instead.
Where to start
Start with the ingredient list, because reading a label transfers to every product and costs nothing. After that, the DOP and IGP guide tells you what the marks on the shelf actually promise, and the buying guide tells you which route suits what you are after. Those three cover most of what is generalisable. The reasoning behind all six is in the Italian ingredient and the gap worth paying for.