Cured Meats

Sorry folk, i'm in a mini hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:19:00 +0000

As you can see, the last post was quite a while ago. Sorry about that. I also wanted to let readers know that for at least another couple of months I most likely won't be doing much of any curing.

Certain events have taken over all my weekend time, and let's face it, cured meats are pretty low on the priority list of life events.

thanks, and i hope you keep an eye on the blog. Hope to be back to posting soon enough.

Critical Ingredient - Cure #1 and #2

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:34:00 +0000

All my recipes I've posted thus far have called for "cure #2". I've been asked a number of times by email what exactly this ingredient is. I figured I'd write a short post about it to clarify.

Cure #2, also called "Prague Powder #2", is a mixture of salt, sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite. Cure #2 is used on items that are dry cured over an extended period of time, like salumi or cured meats. The sodium nitrate in the cure breaks down over time to sodium nitrite and that is then broken down to nitric oxide, which acts as an oxidizing agent keeping the meat safe from our most evil of enemies, botulism. It's therefore CRITICAL to making safe cured meats. At least in my mind it is.

Cure #1 consists of salt and sodium nitrite only. The nitrite keeps the meat safe for a short period of time, and keeps the meat a nice red color as well as give it that "cured" taste. This is used in products that are made and then cooked and eaten quickly like fresh sausages. Don't confuse cure #1 with cure #2 they are NOT interchangeable.

You can buy both of these items very cheaply ($4 for 16 oz, which is enough for many years of sausage making) from many online sources. Just google the name of the cure you're looking for, you should find it very easily.

I don't feel like writing a scientific explanation, suffice to say that if you're not a risk taker and value your life, you should use cure #2 in your cured meats. Can you do without, maybe. I guess you could. Would I? Hell no.

Please don't email me telling me nitrates are bad for you. I don't feel like arguing, and it'll just prove you haven't done your research because there are more nitrates in a bowl of spinach than in a WHOLE salame.

Hope this helps.

Salame di Brianza - Production and Tasting Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:50:00 +0000

Salame di Brianza is a salame produced in the region of Milan, Lecco and Como. It is actually a DOP product which means in order to use the name it has to follow certain strict guidelines and come from a specific area. Clearly mine wouldn't meet the DOP requirements. It's a very simple salame with just salt, pepper, garlic and wine for flavoring. This is by far the biggest cased product I've made. I made it to use for sandwiches, so I wanted it large to be able to slice it thin and use in a nice ciabatta bread.

Salame di Brianza
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork ham meat	1270	70
Pork belly (70/30 fat/lean)	544	30
Salt	49	2.7
Cure #2	4.54	0.25
Dextrose	9	0.50
White pepper (whole)	5.45	0.3
White pepper (ground)	0.6	0.03
Garlic powder	1	0.06
F-LC starter culture	1	0.06

I basically forgot to take pictures of each step, so you should refer back to any of the other salami, such as the latest one : Salame di Sant'Olcese.

I ground the meat using the large kitchenaid grinder plate, which is 3/16". I used the same method as the other salami I've previously made: cube meat, cube belly, mix with spices, chill way down, grind, then add starter culture diluted in distilled water, and mix until a good bind is formed.

This is the spice mix I used in the salame. Nothing too exciting, just looking for a nice porky, tasty salame.

This is the mixture cased. It's a 100mm collagen casing. It's huge, and this "chub" held all of the mixture; 4 lbs of meat! Packed it in as tightly as possible, but I could tell this was going to be a challenge to get in there without air pockets.

Just like for other salami such as the Chorizo, this one was sprayed with M-EK-4 mold. It was incubated for 72 hours at 70 deg. F. I incubated about 24 hrs longer than other salami because of it's size.

This picture shows the salame after 24hrs in the fermentation box.

Nice mold!

It was then put into the curing chamber at 54 deg. F and 70-75% RH.
It was at 70% at the beginning, then I raised it to about 75% to try and slow the drying.

Here is the salame, cured and ready to eat. It cured just about 2 months, and lost 38.7% of it's weight. It could easily have gone longer, but I wanted a salame that's pretty soft, it makes for better sandwiches since it feels moister.

Here is the salame sliced. It's got a great texture, and fat distribution, but you can see exactly what I was concerned about above regarding the pockets of air. You can see them in the picture pretty clearly. This is a concern because it can cause problems in the aging, oxidation on the inside and potentially spoilage.
Fortunately there was no spoilage, just some oxidation flavor, so i'm still going to eat it. The oxidation is, luckily, limited and the flavor isn't impacted much at all, especially if you eat this with a nice piece of bread.

Just another picture from a little further away. I figured you can't have too many pictures of cured meats.

Overall i really like this. It's REALLY convenient for sandwiches, the taste is great, just porky and meaty. It has a nice flavor without it being tangy. I'm really liking this lower temperature, slower fermentation. It could probably use more pepper, and a little more garlic, and I also realized i forgot to add wine. Oops!

As far as the air pockets, I think next time i'll grind the meat finer. It seems that the larger cased salami always have a finer texture. I'll also mix it more and try to get a better bind. Other than that, i'm not sure what else I could do. I tried to be careful when casing it, and packed it in as I went, but i guess I didn't do a very good job at it!

So, overall this salame is a winner. Good flavor, good texture, needs a little more pepper, a solid B.

Natural or Artificial Casings?

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:16:00 +0000

I've often wondered if using natural casings when making salami really makes a difference. Let's face it, artificial casings have numerous advantages: they're clean, they're evenly shaped and sized, they are shelf stable, they come in just about any size, and I'm sure I could think of a few other good reasons why artificial collagen casings are advantageous. The disadvantages are that they are more expensive, and they aren't "traditional".

Since I'm a very practical person (well, as practical as anyone who cures his own meats in his basement can be!), unless there is good, documented evidence for using something (natural casings) over an easier substitute (collagen casings), I won't use more difficult product. I like to explore these things myself; see my Farmer Vs. Commercial Pork Battle 1, and Battle 2 . So during the last batch of salame I made, which was the Sant'Olcese, I decided to take the opportunity to do a head to head of salame cased in natural beef middles and 60mm diameter collagen casings.

So, the product came out a few weeks ago from the curing chamber. What was interesting was that the product in the collagen casings took about 5 or 6 days longer to lose the same amount of weight by %. The 2 salami stared off pretty close in weight, but for whatever reason the collagen casing took a little bit longer. This may be cause by a couple of things:

The salami were in different places in the curing chamber, and therefore their exposure to air and humidity currents was different. Possible but unlikely. They were pretty close to each other.
The collagen casing slows the moisture loss of the meat mixture more than the natural casing.

I don't see this difference as a huge deal, but I do see if as a slight advantage for the collagen casing. The slower curing/drying theoretically would allow more flavors to develop.

In cutting the 2 products they looked identical (I would post a picture but i've vacuum packed the collagen salame already). They were indistinguishable visually, both cut, and uncut. Both had a nice mold bloom.

More importantly...how did they taste? They were indistinguishable. The same, delicious, and equivalent.

So, as far as using beef middles, well, i'll use up what I have, which is about 56 miles of casings, and then i'll move to using 60mm collagen casings. I do have 1 more test of collagen vs. natural casings and that's with a hog bung. Since the hog bung is a very fatty, thick casing, this may slow the drying to be even slower than the collagen one, so it may in fact be better. Only a trial will tell. I will note that the hog bung casings are MUCH more expensive than a collagen one; about 10 times the cost!

So this time, modernity has beat out tradition I'm afraid.

Sorry traditionalists.

Chorizo - Tasting Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 03:25:00 +0000

The chorizo is ready! Well, it was ready last week, but I'm just getting around to writing about it now. This is the 1st one I've taken out. It's the one that was cased in an artificial round, 43mm casing. It lost about 43% of it's weight. I've left the others in the curing chamber to lose more weight. I think chorizo needs to be pretty hard. This one was a touch too soft really.

As you can see, the fat is nice and distinct. There is the correct amount of it, and it is well dispersed.

The flavor is good, but not great. It is a bit too strong on one or more of the flavorings. I'm still trying to work out which. I think it might be too much garlic, and possibly too much smoked paprika.

The black pepper is right. A friend of mine, who knows Spanish chorizo better than I do, says the black pepper is too prominent, and the garlic is correct. Maybe I'm just used to more Italian salami. Either way, I do like it, and would make it again, but reducing the garlic by about 20%, and maybe reducing the smoked paprika by about 15%, and replace that with a hot paprika. It does need some more heat, the cayenne wasn't enough.

The salt is correct, it's nice and
savory.

I'm looking forward to trying the ones that i've left in the curing chamber. I think they'll be nicer with some "heavier" chew to them, and with the added time in the chamber, maybe the overly strong notes will mellow out.

The mold as you can see did its job. The salame is nicely covered.

I would grade this a C+ for my tastes. Good, but needs work. Not that it's surprising. I've never made this before, and just took a number of recipes that sounded good, and mashed them together:)

Salame di Sant'Olcese - Tasting Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:27:00 +0000

It may not seem like long enough has passed from the posting of the recipe for the salame di Sant'Olcese for it to be ready, but that's only because i've been sitting on the recipe for a couple of weeks! Anyhow...it's ready. Or at least, i've taken one of the 3 that I made out of the curing chamber out.

I took one out pretty early, as I wanted to keep this salame pretty soft. By weight, it "claims" to have lost about 43% of it's weight, over 20 days. I say "claims", because it feels rather soft, and i'm wondering if I mis-weighed them when i put them into the curing chamber...all other salami that i've made before felt considerably harder, at less water weight loss. Either way, I felt like eating one.

As i've said, it is quite soft. Maybe a tiny bit too soft, it probably could have used another 4-7 days, good thing I have 2 or 3 more in the curing chamber. If i were to compare it to something in softness, the first thing that comes to mind is a marshmallow, maybe a little bit harder.

As far as the tasting goes, it's excellent. Really is. The pepper is quite pronounced, it's nicely salty, and the garlic is there in the background. It is not sour at all, which is nice, as I don't care for the San Francisco style of cured meats that are prounouncedly sour. I think it's because of the starter culture i used, and becuase i ferment at a low temperature (70F).

The fat is distinct, and is in perfect proportion to the meat. The salame so far does not present any air pockets. Overall I'm really pleased.

Of course, there are some improvements that can be made, there always are. In slicing the salame, one can see, and feel while chewing, about a 1/8" ring on the outer edge which is slightly drier. I attribute this to my humidity not being high enough in the chamber. As such, for the stuff that's still in there, i bumped up the humitiy from about 70% to about 75%. This should also slow down the curing/drying time, which I believe will lead to better flavor as well.

I'd give this salame a solid B+. It's a touch soft, and the dry ring around the edge keeps it from an A :).

Salame di Sant'Olcese

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:17:00 +0000

I didn't know much about the salame from Sant'Olcese until i read about it in an Italian cured meats blog. Sant'Olcese is a small town outside Genova. This salame is characterized by a 50/50 mix of beef and pork for the lean portion, and pork fat. It is also traditionally very lightly smoked. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to smoke the salame, so mine will be a Sant'Olcese style salame. This is true for all my salami. None of them can be the real thing, since that requires me to actually be there. They are all "in the style of" the place or region. Anyhow, let's get to the recipe and method.

Salame Sant'Olcese
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork ham meat	908	37.75
Beef chuck meat	908	37.75
Pork belly (70/30 fat/lean)	590	24.5
Salt	65	2.7
Cure #2	6	0.25
Dextrose	12	0.50
Black pepper (whole)	6	0.25
Black pepper (ground)	2.4	0.1
Garlic powder	2.4	0.1
F-LC starter culture	1	0.042

You'll recognize a number of the pictures from the chorizo post. I didn't see a point of taking different pictures for the exact same step. I'm reposting them in case people end up in this post through a link from somewhere, so they can see the whole process.

The usual suspect. A ham steak. This is cubed up nicely.

Pork belly strips waiting to be cubed up as the fat component of the salame. Hmmmm pork belly.......

This shows the beef chuck, which was also cubed, the ham meat, and the pork belly. I forgot to take a picture of the piece of beef chuck, but i think you might have seen one before at a grocery! Buy one, remove fat and sinew and cube it up.
This is mixed with the cure and spices shown below, and put in a freezer to get nice and firm for 45 minutes or so.

This is the spice mixtures and cure that went into the salame. It's very simple. Not a lot of flavors to get in the way of porky beefyness.

The meat was ground on the large kitchen aid plate. Which i think is 1/4"...i don't recall, and i keep forgetting to measure it. I don't know what is wrong with this picture, i couldn't get the white balance on the camera right, and the picture looks blue...anyhow...the meats and fat are ground.

The starter culture was diluted with about 30g of distilled water, and the poured over the ground meat mixture.

The mixture is then mixed for about 2 minutes with the Kitchen Aid or about 3-4 minutes by hand until a nice bind is achieved. I forgot to take a picture of the mixed product. Sorry.

The salame was cased into 3 natural casings, and 1 collagen 60mm casing. I figured I'd take the opportunity to to a scientific taste test of salame cured in natural casings and one cured in artificial. Will it make a difference? I don't know! We'll see. I must admit, using the artificial ones is MUCH more convenient. They are shelf stable, even, don't smell, don't require washing, but they do lose the natural appeal and old world look.

The M-EK4 mold mold is mixed with 30 or so grams of distilled water and allowed to bloom for a couple of hours.

The mold "concentrate" is then diluted with about 300g of distilled water in a spray bottle.

The salami were placed in the fermentation box at 70 deg. F. for 48 hours. I was actually able to keep my basement room right around 70 or 71 F, no need to run the lightbulb in the fermentation box.

After the 48 hours, the salami had a nice coating of mold already.

The salami were fermented for 48 hours, and then put into the curing chamber at 54 deg. F and about 70% RH.

Looking forward to trying them in about a month or so.

Spanish Chorizo

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:34:00 +0000

I'm an equal opportunity cured meat eater. The product doesn't have to be Italian, it just has to taste GOOD. Case in point, Spanish Chorizo. Chorizo is a salame like cured product redolent of smoked paprika, garlic and oregano. This is the 1st time I've made it, and since it isn't ready yet, I won't know if this formula is any good until I try it. Try at your own risk!

Spanish Chorizo
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork ham meat	998	69.8
Pork belly (about 75/25 fat/lean)	431	30.1
Salt	40	2.8
Cure #2	3.43	0.24
Dextrose	2.86	0.2
Sugar	2.86	0.2
Black pepper (ground)	8.58	0.6
Smoked paprika (sweet)	28.6	2
Oregano (dry)	2.86	0.2
F-LC starter culture	0.5	0.035
Cayenne pepper	1.4	0.1
Garlic (fresh)	12	0.9

I started with my usual ham steak. As I've said previously, I prefer the ham steak to the shoulder/boston butt because there is less sinew and intramuscular fat that has to be trimmed out.

The ham steak was cubed up into about 1" cubes

For the fat component I used pork belly. I tried to choose pieces that were particularly fatty. I'd say they were about 70-80:20 fat to lean.

The belly is cubed up and combined with the ham cubes.

The spice mixture is carefully mixed to get good distribution of everything, and the garlic cloves are mashed through a garlic pressed, in preparation to be put into the meat.

I mixed the spice mixture and the crushed garlic into the meat and fat cubes and massaged it for a while to make sure everything was nice and evenly mixed together.

The mixture then goes to the freezer to get really cold before grinding. I let the meat get to at least 33 or 34 deg. F, before grinding.

I ground the meat and fat through the large Kitchenaid plate, which if i remember correctly is 1/4". Since i kept everything cold, the fat and meat are nice and distinct.

The starter culture was mixed with a pinch of dextrose and a splash of distilled water, and let stand for 15 or so minutes to allow the bacteria to wake up, and then poured over the meat.

I mixed the meat with the Kitchenaid paddle attachment for about 1.5 minutes on low speed. This is done to make sure everything is mixed together, the starter culture is dispersed, and to allow the proteins to form a good bind.

Don't mix too much or you'll smear the fat...not good...not good at all. You want the fat to stay in distinct blobs.

I stuffed the chorizo into 1 43mm collagen round casing, and 2 60mm natural beef middle casings. As usual, I tried to avoid any air pockets in the meat mixture by massaging it meat once it was cased, and popping and pricking the casing where there were air pockets on the surface.

Earlier that afternoon i had mixed up about 1.5g of M-EK-4 mold with about 30g of distilled water.

This was left for about 3-4 hours to "bloom".

I then diluted that mold mixture with an additional 300g of distilled water in a spray bottle. Shook it up real well, and let it sit another 15-30 minutes. (Really i don't know if these sitting periods are necessary..but i guess they can't really hurt).

The salami were sprayed and put into the fermentation box at 70 deg F. for 48 hours.

They were sprayed again with the mold 12 hours after being put into the box. The lid on the box was closed for the whole 48 hours to keep it nice and humid. As you can see on the left, the mold after 48 hours was already developing very nicely.

Here are the chorizos and a few other salami i made that day (write up coming soon) in the curing chamber.
The chamber is set at 54 deg F. and 70% RH.

I expect the 43mm chorizo to be ready in about 2 weeks, and the larger ones in about a month. Looking forward to trying something new!

Cotechino - Results

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:18:00 +0000

Last week when my brother was in town I cooked up one of the cotechini. I left it in it's vacuum bag, put it in a large pot of water, and slowly brought the temperature of the water up to 190-195 deg.

I then put the pot in the oven set at about 225, so that the heat would be even from all sides. The water stayed right around 200 deg. I let it cook about 2 hours, took the pot out of the oven, and then let it sit another 20-30 minutes.

The bag had blown up like a baloon, i assume from the air in the sausage expanding. It had quite of bit of fat in it that was released from the cotechino. I opened the bag, got rid of the fat, and removed the casing. The cotechino was served over lentils.

It was AWESOME. It was slightly salty, and slightly too cinnamony. I think this is likely because the salt and spices weren't diluted by direct contact with the water. Next time i'll reduce the salt by about 10-15%, and the cinnamon by about 10%.

The flavor was really good. The spices in it were pretty distinct and very tasty. The texture was great, with nice gelatin from the cooked skin, and a good quantity of fat.

Next year I may also try grinding the meat using the fine plate instead of the KA coarse one. I'm worried it might make it too much of a fine ground sausage paste, but i guess it's worth a try!

So..i'm sold. I'll be cooking my cotechini in vac bags from now on!

Cotechino - That which started my adventure!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:50:00 +0000

This is the salume that started my adventure into curing meats.

These are available from a few Italian butchers in New York, but I haven't seen them anywhere else. They're pretty uncommon here in the US. Cotechino is a traditional, cooked, New Year's sausage that was created in the town of Modena. It's a MUST at every New Year's party in Italy and is eaten with lentils, polenta or mashed potatoes. Alternately, a Zampone is eaten which is the same recipe, except the the mixture is stuffed into a deboned front pig leg, instead of casings. These sausages are supposed to bring fortune in the new year (with the lentils bringing money). The name "Cotechino" derives from the Italian word for pig skin; cotiche, and as you might imagine, it contains a fair amount of them.

The pig skin that's ground in with the meat and fat gives the cotechino a very sticky unctuous mouthfeel after it's been cooked for a few hours very gently in water. The sausage is pretty heavily spiced and has a delicious assertive flavor of traditional Christmas spices and herbs, as well as porky goodness. It's most definitely my favorite cooked sausage.

I've varied my recipe every year I've made this (about 5 or 6 years), and I'm still searching for a recipe that gets me the results I remember eating in Italy, which were made by a small town butcher in Modena. Mine are great, but those were fantastic. This year i decided to use pork belly instead of the usual fatback I use. I'll be cooking mine next week, so I'll see if it was a good decision.

Cotechino
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat+Skin
Pork shoulder meat	1645	35
Pork belly (about 60/40 fat/lean)	1645	35
Pork Skin (fatless)	1362	29
Salt	82	1.7
Cure #1	7	0.15
Dextrose	18.4	0.4
Coriander powder	1.7	0.037
Nutmeg	0.5g	0.011
Clove	1	0.022
Mace	0.5	0.011
Cinnamon	1	0.022
Cayenne	1.4	0.03
Black pepper (cracked large)	6	0.129
White pepper (ground fine)	6	0.129

Since i haven't blogged in a while, I forgot to take pictures for everything, but I think I got all the important stages. Remember to keep everything you're grinding COLD COLD COLD. After i cubed up my meat and fat i put them in the freezer for about 1.5 hours to cool way down. It will grind better and won't smear the fat as much.

Pig skin is incredibly tough, so much so that if I were to try grinding it my grinder would likely explode. It has to be boiled first. I don't know if butchers in Italy do this, or if their grinders are strong enough to grind the skin raw, but somehow I can't imagine they are able to. So the pig skin is boiled until it is fork tender. This takes about 30 minutes. Once this is done remove as much excess fat attached to the skin as possible. This can be done before boiling, but i think it's a little easier to do it after. This picture shows what the skin looks like after boiling and cooling a little.
The pork skin gets cut up into chunks so it can fit into the grinder throat.

The pig skin is ground alone first. I used a 3/16" plate (the small kitchenaid plate that comes with the grinder)

Here is a picture of the pork belly. You can see that it's about 60/40 or 50/50 fat to lean. It was nice looking pork belly.

The skin is removed and the cut up into chunks.

Cut up pork belly. Not very exciting...but delicious!

This is the pork shoulder i used. It was trimmed a little, but I didn't spent a whole lot of time trimming it.

I forgot to get a picture of the ground skin alone. Anyhow, it looked like a big pile of sticky beads:)
Mix the ground pork skin with the chunked meat and pork belly.

Closeup of the belly, meat and skin mixture. You can see the skin looks like little pellets.

This is the spice mixtures i used. The spices were all (except the large cracked black pepper) ground in a coffee grinder, and mixed with the salt.

The spice mixture is mixed into the meats and skin and well massaged to distribute everything.

The mixture is passed through a 1/4" grinder plate (the large kitchenaid standard plate).
Note how the meat and fat chunks are pretty distinct. That's because the mixture was nice and cold before grinding.

The ground mixture is mixed well by hand and sort of gently kneaded to develop the bind. You'll know it's ready to stuff when you get a white film of protein building up on the sides of the bowl.

You can sort of see that in this picture.

This batch made 6 750g cotechini. I think 750g is a good size as it'll feed about 4 or 5 people as a main dinner with lentils or some other side dish. Cotechino is a VERY heavy dish, it sits in your stomach like a brick, so i don't advise eating this and then going out partying:)

I used a pretty large artificial casing. It's about 80mm in diameter. I like the cotechino to be quite thick.

To store, they can be vacuum packed and frozen. I've kept it this way for a year, and then eaten it. It's still great.

Some people dry their cotechini as if it were a salame for 5 or 6 days. I've never done that, but i imagine it would be pretty good!.

To cook it, the casing is punctured with a skewer (a large toothpick) in multiple places (i punctured these about 40 times) to allow some of the fat to come out while it's cooking. It is then wrapped VERY tightly in aluminum foil, closing off the ends like a giant candy, and put into cold water. Bring the water to a GENTLE (190 deg. F) simmer, and simmer for about 2-3 hours (or put the pot of water/cotechino in the oven at about 200 deg. F . After 2-3 hours turn off the heat and let it sit in the water for about 20 minutes. Carefully remove it from the water, remove the casing (which may have burst), and slice into slices about 1/2" thick. Serve HOT over polenta or lentils or mashed potatoes. It has to be eaten hot, otherwise the gelatinous skin hardens and you miss what makes it so good.

This year i think i'm going to try cooking one in one of the vacuum bags. My theory is that there will be less flavor loss to the water it's cooking in. There may also be less fat loss, which may or may not be good! We'll see. When i cook it next week i'll put another post up to report back.

I'm still here, and a glimpse into the next project!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Hey everybody just wanted to let you know i'm still around, even if not posting right now. I just moved and as you might imagine, my wife thinks unpacking boxes, hanging pictures and painting stuff should take precedence over curing meats! Sounds crazy to me too!

Anyhow, i'm planning my next post. It'll be cotechino, which is a cooked italian new years sausage. It's the salume that started it all!

Stay tuned please!

Long absence

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:39:00 +0000

I haven't posted anything in quite a while. I'm running short on salame, and i need to make some stuff. Unfortunately I'm in the process of moving which is keeping my weekends completed busy.
So....sorry for the few posts..i wish i could post more, but i'm not home long enough!

Pancetta - Ready to use

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:30:00 +0000

Sorry for the long delay on posts. I've been really busy at work, and with life, and i've been left with little to no time on weekends for cured meats. It makes me sad. Hopefully i'll post more often after my move in a couple of months. Until then, accept my apologies for the lack of posts.

So, the pancetta is finally ready, actually, it was ready about a week ago. I left it in the curing chamber for 3 weeks, at 55 deg. F and 65% RH. The picture on the left is what it looked like after that period of time. It's lost about 30% of its weight. At this point the pancetta is pretty hard, it's pretty dry and smells great.

The pancetta can be used right away, but i've found that it is better if you wrap it in a damp paper towel and put it in a sealed bag for about a week. This will soften it just a little bit, and make it easier to cut.

After a few days wrapped in a damp paper towel, and then cut this is what the pancetta looks like.
It smells great. Peppery, bayleaf-y, porky, yummy. I've only tasted one slice quickly, so i haven't really used it much, but i can tell it is very peppery, hopefully not too much so. The herbs are strong on it, probably because i caked it on for the drying phase! I'm happy with it, but will know a little more after a cook something with it.

Added 9/20/08 - I used some of this pancetta last night in a pasta..it was GREAT. It's peppery, and bay-leafy. It has the right amount of salt. The flavor is balanced, tending towards black pepper. It's one of the better pancettas i've made. MAKE IT!

Pancetta - Off to the curing chamber

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:33:00 +0000

The pancetta has been curing with its spices and salt for about 10 days. It's become pretty firm and the flavors should have permeated the meat fully. Time to move it to the curing chamber.

This is what the pancetta looks like as it comes out of the bag.

The spices get rinsed under cold running water, and then the belly gets patted dry.

Here is the rinsed pancetta. Really pretty uneventful, or uninteresting.
The meat looks darker and definitely feels firmer than it was when raw.

A spice mixtures is made up. For this one I mixed 2 teaspoons of very coarse black pepper, 5 crushed bay leaves, and 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper.

Here is the cured pork belly rubbed with the spice mixture. Really press the pepper and spices into the meat. Put a string through it to hang and that's it. Easy.

Now, for people who don't have a curing fridge, the drying is also very easy. Put the pancetta on a cake rack, and then on a plate, and put it in the fridge for about 3-4 weeks. The cake rack on the plate will allow the air to circulate around it reaching all sides of the meat. If you just put it on a plate, the surface touching the plate will stay wet.

If you do have a curing fridge, put it in there. I put mine in, at about 54 deg. F and about 60% humidity.

Humidity for pancetta isn't super critical since it is quite thin and has a lot of surface area, which will allow it to dry pretty evenly even if the ambient is too dry for other cured meats (like in a fridge).

Pancetta - The easiest cured meat of all!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:12:00 +0000

If bacon makes everything better, then pancetta makes everything better still! It's similar to bacon, in that they are both made with pork belly, but that's where the similarities end. Pancetta is normally unsmoked and dry cured and can be made flat or rolled into a pinwheel, whereas bacon is smoked and not left to dry and always sold flat.
Pancetta is really very similar to guanciale, and the spices and herbs used could be used on either one. This particular pork product is probably the easiest and most accessible cured meat that can be made at home. So, why didn't I show this one first on this blog? Because I already had some in my fridge at the time! I still don't really need any, but I had a defrosted piece of Tamworth pork belly that had to be used, so I figured I'd make pancetta. After all, is it really possible to have too much cured pork belly? I think not!

The reason I say that it is the most accessible cured meat is that it can be made without a curing chamber. I've done it. It works. I even did a side by side comparison of 2 pieces of pork belly one cured in my chamber, and one in the fridge, and they were almost identical. So...if you're looking to get into cured meats, dive in with pancetta!

Pancetta
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork belly	420	100
Salt	10	2.4%
Black Pepper	7.8	1.9%
Brown Sugar	4.8	1.1%
Cure #2	1.1	0.26%
Juniper	1.8	0.43%
Bay Leaves	0.3	0.07%
Nutmeg	0.8	0.19%
Dry Thyme	0.5	0.12%
Garlic	1 clove

I had a pretty small piece of pork belly, so that's what i used. It's preferable to have it skin on, but if you can only find it without skin...so be it.

All the spices, salts, sugar and herbs are mixed together. The small piece of pork didn't require much cure.

The cure is rubbed all over the pork belly and massaged into the meat. The meat is then put into a zip bag and into the fridge to cure. Allowing the salts and herbs to penetrate the meat.

In about 7-10 days the meat will be rinsed, and hung in the curing chamber for as long as one might choose to wait. 2 weeks minimum though.

Lonzino

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:09:00 +0000

Lonzino is a pretty simple salume. It is a salted and then dry cured pork loin. I guess it could be the equivalent of a pork bresaola. It's lean, tasty and easy to make with easily available ingredients.

The first time I made it, I let it cure in the salt too long. If I remember (it was a number of years ago), I left it for about 20 days. I never re-made it because i thought it wasn't that great. Last month someone commented on this blog that I should make a lonzino, so here it is.

This post contains the formula as well as the outcome. I just didn't have a chance to post as it was curing.

Lonzino
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork loin	965	100
Salt	32	3.3
White Pepper	9.3	1%
Clove	1 clove
Cure #2	2.4	0.25%
Juniper	2	0.2%
Fennel Seed	5	0.5%
Cinnamon	0.7	0.07%

Start by procuring yourself a nice pork loin. One with some fat attached wouldn't hurt. You can see mine here on the left. Pretty standard stuff. I got this one from Publix.

The spices are ground and mixed with the rest of the ingredients. Shake shake shake to combine well.

Cake the mixture onto the pork loin and rub it in nicely. Put it in a zip lock bag, making sure to put even the cure that fell onto the plate into the bag. You want to make sure you get all the curing salts in with the meat to maintain safety.

This is the pork loin after 10 days in the fridge with the cure, and a quick rinse. Looks about the same, just slightly darker and it feels firmer.

All I had was 100mm casings. 90mm would have worked better, but I made do. Tighten well with kitchen twine, and pop any air pockets in the casing with a clean toothpick or a sterile needle. Squeeze well to get the air out.

As an experiment I took about 3 sq. in. of moldy casing from a salame i had in the fridge from my last batch, mixed it with 133g of distilled water and 1g of dextrose, and used that as a mold spray.

The cased loin was hung at 68-70 deg. F for 38 hours.

It cured in the curing fridge at 54 deg. F and about 68% RH, until it lost about 35-36% of its weight. This took just about 1 month.

As you can see the moldy spray worked pretty well

Look how beautiful the lonzino is. It has just a little bit of fat on the outer area, and nice fat flecking in the meat. It is soft and tender.

Here is the lonzino sliced thinly. It is VERY tasty. The salt level is just right. It is pretty strong on a certain spice, i can't quite put my finger on, but i think it is the juniper. It's very nice.

Next time i might put just a little less juniper. The weight loss of 36% is just right. It's still tender and soft, but nicely cured.

Guanciale - Ready to eat

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:47:00 +0000

The guanciale that was cured and put up to dry about a month and a half ago was ready to be eaten. How did I know it was ready, well, because I had a pasta I had to make with it!

I weighed it, but I forgot to write down what the finished weight was, oops. As you can see on the left, it doesn't look too different from what it looks like before drying, it is just firmer.

I used it for some pasta alla Gricia, and some amatriciana, and it was quite tasty. I think I prefer pancetta, as it seems more flavorful. I also noticed the fat on guanciale has a strange "soft/crunchy" texture if you don't render enough fat out of it...not really a texture I cared for much. The flavor was good, quite mild, porky and very very slightly herby.

If I were to remake this I would season more liberally with herbs and leave them on instead of rinsing them off before drying, like I did with this one.

Salame al Barolo

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:49:00 +0000

While making the salame tipo varzi I also made a salame al Barolo. I actually didn't use Barolo, I used a Cote du Rhone. Basically it is a simple salame mixture to which a relatively large quantity of wine is added. The alcohol and excess water evaporate leaving behind the flavors of the wine used. Since I've never tried this before, I figured I'd give it a shot. Unfortunately things didn't turn out quite as rosy as one might hope.

I'm not going to go into the detail that i've given in the past since I don't think there is much point in repeating stuff. Just know that the method is the same; grind, add seasoning, mix, case, spray with mold, ferment, and then dry.

Salame al "Barolo"
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork ham meat	750	75%
Fat back	250	25%
Salt	27	2.7%
Black Pepper (cracked)	2.5	0.25%
Cure #2	2.5	0.25%
Dextrose	5	0.5%
F-LC Starter	0.4	0.04%
Red wine (Cote du Rhone)	250	25%

Everything was ground and mixed, cased into natural beef middles, and sprayed with a solution (1.5g mold to 27g water) of M-EK-4 mold culture. It was fermented at 71-72 deg. F for 48 hours.
As you might immagine the mixture was quite wet after mixing in the wine which made for easy casing.

The salame was dried at about 54 deg. F / 70% RH for about 28 days, until it had lost 45% of its weight.

To the left here is a picture of the finished product, and where I can convey an important lesson.
You can clearly see a fairly sizable "air pocket" that somehow made it's way into the mix. Either there was an bubble in the mix that got pushed into the casing, or the wet mixture left air pockets upon evaporating. I'm not sure.
The problem with this is that it can allow bacteria to grow that could be dangerous. This is something that really needs to be avoided by making sure the mixture is properly compacted and massaged into the casings to force any air pockets out of the mix.

The flavor of the salame while first tasting it was OK. Too winey for my tastes, and just not very exciting. Interestingly, after about a month in the fridge, and retasting, it tasted not so great. It had a very oxidized flavor, which i think might have been caused by the air pockets..but I'm not sure. Either way, it was disposed of.

A month an no post?

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:11:00 +0000

I know it's been a month with no posts. Unfortunately time has been very tight lately, even on the weekends. I'm also trying to think of something new that i haven't made before as my next post.

Hopefully it won't be too long, so hang tight!

Salame Saturday! - Faceoff: farmer vs. commercial - rematch. - Results

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:41:00 +0000

I know, it's been a long time coming. I'm sure many of you have been wondering what the heck happened since the last farmer vs. commercial post a month and a half ago! Well, it took a good 30 days for the salami to lose about 40% of their weight, so that's where most of the time went. The rest was just my slowness in taking pictures to post!

You can see here on the left side of the picture is the farmer meat salame, on the right is the commercial meat one.

I made sure to remove them from the curing fridge after they had lost an equal amount of water weight. These were at about 43% loss. The farmer one took a good 7-10 longer to lose that weight than the commercial one. I attribute this to the difference in the intramuscular fat.

The commercial one has an obvious, common, defect. You can see that the meat paste wasn't properly bound before i put it into the casing, which has caused the small "cracks" in the salame, leaving small air pockets. This is a dangerous defect, since air inside the salame can cause problems. It doesn't seem to have affected this one though. I'll definitely mix the meat paste longer next time to get a better bind.

There is an obvious difference in color, i'm not really sure why. The textures are also a little difference. The commercial one is a little tougher and chewier.

What about the flavor? The verdict is in! Let me preface this by saying BOTH are FANTASTIC. By FAR the best i've ever made. I attribute this to the F-LC starter i used this time, as well as the lower (72 deg.F), and longer (48 hrs) fermentation. The flavor of both is just outstanding. It is as good as any available, including the best artisinal ones.

So, which is better. I guess i'd have to give the edge to the FARMER one. It is a little richer and deeper in flavor. The texture is a bit better, but I could probably achieve the same texture by drying the commercial a little less.

Would I keep paying 4 times the cost for farmer instead of commercial based on flavor alone? (ignore the whole animal welfare for now). No. Not for salame. For roasts and grilled meats, hell yes, but I think much of the deliciousness of the pork is lost over the drying and spicing and curing. If I could get farmer pork for a small cost increase, I'd use it, but at current prices which are 3-4 times higher than commercial, I don't think i'll use farmer pork.

On a side note, I sort of accidentally removed one of the farmer salami at about 35% weight loss. It is considerably softer than the 43% loss, and also very good. Which do I prefer? I guess if i were making a sandwich, the softer, moister one, if eating out of hand or as an appetizer; the harder one.
I have one more of each type still drying, i expect them to be at about 50-55% loss right now. I'll take them out in the next week or 10 days, and see what they're like.

Guanciale - Cured; off to dry

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:31:00 +0000

Whoops! I meant to leave the guanciale in the salt cure for about 7-9 days, instead I left it 16. I hope it doesn't come out too salty... I just totally forgot about it!

Anyhow, today I took the 2 pieces out of the plastic bag, rinsed one off well, and the other not as well ( to see if it has an effect), and hung them.
Not much to this post. Now we wait. Will let one cure at least 30 days before using, the other at least 2-6 months.

Guanciale

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:04:00 +0000

Guanciale is magic. Imagine bacon, only better; porkier, tastier, richer. Guanciale is the cured jowl of the pig. It is cured in similar fashion to pancetta, which is unsmoked cured pork belly, but the location on the animal gives it a very different taste and texture. Since the cheeks/jowls of the pig see a lot of exercise the hunk of pork derived from them is tougher than the belly, and has much more intramuscular fat instead of layering as is seen on the belly.

I used a very simple formula to not hide the quality of this pork which i got from Niman Ranch. Unfortunately this piece of meat is very difficult to find, even in ethnic butchers. You can sub a piece of pork belly and get good results as well.

Guanciale
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork jowls	1257	100%
Salt - Kosher	44	3.5%
Black pepper crushed	9	0.7%
Sugar	22	1.75%
Cure #2	3.2	0.25%
Thyme (Dry)	1	0.08%

I mixed the cure well, trying to make certain the cure #2 was well dispersed in the sal

The cure mixture is rubbed onto the jowels, making sure to get into the "nooks and crannies".

The jowls are then put into a ziplock bag, and they'll be turned every few days.

Once cured, they'll be hung to dry for anywhere between 1 and 6 months.

Coppa V2 - Tasting notes

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:46:00 +0000

Last week I took the plain coppa that was made a few posts ago. I let coppa A, the plain one almost exactly 1 month, at about 52 deg. F and 72% RH. It lost about 35% of its weight through drying. The 2nd coppa, which was a fennel one stayed about 1 week longer in the chamber and lost about 2.3% more water, for a total of 37.3% weight loss.

You can see in these picture that for whatever reason the mold i sprayed on it did not fully cover the surface like it did for the bresaola.

On the right is the plain one sliced. It is beautiful. The flavor is fantastic, just perfectly salty, the spices come through (maybe still a tiny bit too much clove!), and it is wonderfully tender and soft without being mushy.

I would say this one is definitely the best coppa I've made. Really really good.

The fennel one that was just a touch drier and the flavor was also fantastic. The fennel was very light in the flavoring, and I would probably use a little more next time so it is a little more pronounced.

I don't think i could be more pleased with both of these coppe!

Salame Saturday - Slightly updated

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:04:00 +0000

Just a quick post to let people know that I added some more information about the fermentation and a picture of the fermented salame to the Salame Saturday post.

Salame Saturday! - Faceoff: farmer vs. commercial - rematch.

noreply@blogger.com (Jasonmolinari) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:46:00 +0000

You may remember a while back, I cured two identical salami, with the only difference being where the pork was purchased from. You may also remember that my results were unclear, but basically led to the conclusion that the flavor was essentially the same. Well, I wasn't satisfied with those results. Based on tasting pork chops, I knew the flavor of a farmer raised pig HAD to be better! I concluded that the quality of farmer pork I had used last time wasn't up to snuff, so I had to retry with pork I knew was good.

With that in mind, I participated in splitting a 1/2 of a Tamworth hog raised by a local farmer. Apart from the complete hackjob on the butchering, the pork is good, at least judging from the pork chop I grilled. So this weekend I decided to rerun my experiment. This time i made an even simpler salame, a Varzi style. I also changed the starter culture to see how it affects flavor. I used F-LC bioprotective culture.

So let's get to it! So far I've only made the salami, and put them into fermentation, so there are no pictures of the meat cured or tasting, there are only a few pictures of ground meat and salami.
As I said above, I made a Varzi style salame. Varzi is a small town south of Milan, and its salame is highly regarded as one of the top salami in Italy. True salame di Varzi has to follow the DOP disciplinary, which is why mine is only a Varzi "style".

Salame tipo Varzi
Ingredient	Quantity(g)	% of Meat+Fat
Pork ham meat	1190	70%
Fat (back for farmer belly for commercial)	510	30%
Salt	46	2.7%
Black Pepper (whole kernel)	1.7	0.1%
Cure #2	4.25	0.25%
Dextrose	8.5	0.5%
Garlic powder	0.5	0.029%
F-LC Starter	0.6	0.035%
Red wine (Cote du Rhone)	10	0.5%

I'm only going to show "1 side" of the operation. I don't think there is any need to show pictures of both types of meat and fat cubed, and both ground etc. So i'll just show the farmer meat pictures. Also note that for the commercial salame i used the fattiest pork belly i could find, whereas the farmer salame used fatback from the same hog that the meat came from.

Here is a picture of the two meats side by side. I used ham slices because it is a lot easier than trimming meat from the shoulder and removing the excess fat and sinew.
Just like on the last comparison you can see that the farmer pork is lighter in color, and seems to have the fat more finely distributed instead of having it in larger globs.

As usual, the meat is cubed up into 3/4 inch cubes, and put into the coldest part of the fridge. It's nice using the ham, as the meat is relatively sinew free, and doesn't have much fat in it, which makes adding the exact amount of fat easier than when using shoulder, and makes trimming and cubing much faster.

The fat is also cubed up and put into the fridge.

The fat and meat are mixed in cube form and then ground. In this case I used my custom made 11mm Kitchenaid grinder plate. I really liked the size of this plate. The fat and meat are very distinct, and quite large, but not huge. I'm looking forward to trying the salame to see how the mouth feel changes with the grain size.

I then added all the ingredients and mixed in the Kitchenaid mixer for about 30 seconds, then added the starter dissolved in about 20ml of distilled water, and mixed for another 30 seconds.

For reference, this is the maximum amount of meat I would try to mix in the KA bowl. It may even have been a touch too much...so i'm taking this note in case I forget!:) 1500g is really the maximum salame batch that can be be effectively mixed in the KA mixer bowl.

You can see in the picture of the mixed meat that the myosin in meat has come out and bound the mixture well. A good indicator of this is the whitish film that forms on the sides of the mixing bowl. You can also see that in the video in the Cacciatorino post.

I repeated the process with the commercial pork and pork belly, and then stuffed the salame mixture. I normally use collagen casings, but I bought some natural beef middled, and I figured now would be a good time to try them. I've read that some people think they make the salame taste better than when using collagen casings. In hindsight I should have made some of the salame with natural and some with collagen to see if there is a difference in flavor or mold growth. Oh well, that'll have to be for another post.

Casing the salame was quite easy. What WASN'T easy was being able to tie a knot at the end of the salame that would hold the slippery, slimy casing! When I hung them in the fermentation box 3 of them just slipped right out of the knot! There is a special kind of knot called a butterfly knot which is supposed to be used with natural casings, but I've never had the problem with collagen, so I figured it wouldn't really matter. WRONG! If you use natural casings make sure you really tie them tight!

So now the salami are in the fermentation box at 72 deg. F. They've been sprayed with a solution made from 1.5g of M-EK-4 mold culture which was bloomed in 27g of water for 3 hours and then added to 400g of additional water. The salami were sprayed when they were put into the box then 1.5 hours afterwards, and then 15 hours later the next morning. (I really want to make sure i get mold cultures on there!).

About 18 hours after I put the salami into the fermentation box, i could see that the ones closer to the bulb were drier than the ones in the back row, so I rotated them back row to front row. I'm planning on leaving them at 72F for 48 hours, then into the curing chamber.

After about 28 hours I noticed that the humidity in the fermentation box was really really high. I propped open the lid, on the side away from the bulb, about 1" with a book. The next morning, after about 8 hours, I closed the box back up.

After 48 hours I took the salami out of the fermentation box and put them into the curing chamber at 55 deg. F and ~70% RH.

You can already see the mold forming on the surface of the salame.

Hope they turn out well, and I hope there is a tasteable difference between farmer and commercial!