Any food system presupposes its own ideology. This ideological component, on the one hand, may be unconscious, far from the reflections of the earners or food producers, food distributors and end consumers themselves. On the other hand, in many ways this “unthoughtful” approach and attitude to food are based on natural conditions determined by the geographical location, the development of productive forces, and historical processes (which either presupposed or excluded relations with the outside world, and, consequently, borrowing in the alimentary sphere). For many centuries, the basis of Albanian economic activity was the breeding of small cattle. As a rule, in large families, meat was eaten quickly, family members had time to prepare something for future use (to make dried pastërma (Alb. pastërma, -ja ʻsalted meat that has been dried for a long timeʼ), salt meat, etc.), and then they waited for a new “opportunity” – the next holiday or important date of family or religious rituals. With such a course of the “food year,” meat among the broad masses of the Albanian peasantry was firmly associated with a holiday, ritual, and rite, which gave it the status of a sacred and always desired food product, inaccessible outside of ritual time. One of the most archaic methods of preparing meat in the Balkans is drying, which involves salting and subsequent drying of the product in a well-ventilated room protected from the sun for a long time. This method of preparing meat has been known on the Balkan Peninsula, according to archeology and historiography, since antiquity and the Middle Ages. Among the peasants this production method is still preserved. The most common is the drying of lamb - the favorite meat of Albanians, regardless of religion. In modern conditions, when most meat products are produced in factories using industrial technologies, home-made