www.sausagemaking.org

Hi

This is my first post here (be gentle )

I am new to making sausages and I saw this recipe from the Saturday Kitchen website which I quite fancy trying and was wondering if anyone else had made these.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/homemade_chorizo_98579

Also "Hang in a cool dry place for at least one month, preferably up to three months. " seems a little bit vague to me. Does this mean in a fridge or would my shed in the garden do? Above what sort of temperature could these go off?

Are there any websites you can recommend me to look at that might answer these questions?

TIA

Piers

From my rather brief existence on this forum, I think that is what would be termed 'a can of worms' post. There have been a few similar recipes appearing on here recently, and a number of the more experienced curers baulk at the notion of not using at least one of either a curing salt (Cure 2) or a fermentation starter...if not both.

I think, without checking, that this is probably a similar recipe to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's chorizo...which used neither curing salts or a culture.

I guess, if you source your pork very carefully, and are extremely hygenic in your production methods, then the salt (as in NaCl) might be enough, but you'll find loads of people here saying its not worth the risk.

Regarding your question about hanging...it seems strange that he would suggest a 'dry place' as most hanging requires a bit of humidity. Most people on here will have at least a little monitor for measuring temp and humidity (about 5 quid from ebay). You probably want to aim for around 15 degrees C, humidity between 70 and 80 percent. But there are far more experienced people on this forum, so I would listen to them more than me!

Welcome to this brilliant forum by the way...there's so much useful stuff on here.

Thanks Manfran for the info.

I think I will hold off on attempting these until I have more information about air dried sausages.

P

I would not follow this recipe - that said the first Chorizo I ever made didn't have any cure in it either, but that is not why I would not follow it!

If you make chorizo and place in pig casings (standard banger casings) and leave them for 3 months you will have something more akin to biltong than a cured sausage or else a dry outside with a mushy putrid, rotten middle , I think the last lot I made took around 3 wks to lose 20 odd percent of the weight (I think thats what I aimed for), this was in a fridge set at 15C with a humidifier to maintain humidity.

I amsuire there were discussions on here some years back about the fact that there is also a risk from fresh garlic that it might contain botulism, if you dry the saausage in the wrong conditions it might be a very bad sausage indeed.

If you want to make some home cured stuff of your own then I would say go for it with the Chorizo, far easier than messing with whole muscles etc I am sure someone could post a link to a good recipe - I followed Ruhlman and Polcyns recipe from their book charcuterie.

HTH

Rich