www.sausagemaking.org

Hi all,

been browsing here for a while and, having made my a few batches of regular sausages, I'm going to be having a go at salami, chorizo and boudin with a spare pork shoulder from the pigs we raised last year. I've been reading around here and in the various books and, naturally, there's a great deal of variation in recipes and the thorny old subject of using nitrates or various cultures etc. I decided I would use the nitrates, for safety, and also to use a culture, T-SPX which I think will work for the type of italian salami I'm aiming to make.

I have an old larder fridge in the barn with a temperature controller that i use for brewing and for chilling/hanging game, so that should be fine if the humidity can be reasonably controlled.

I've now decided on a recipe and would just like to check if there's anything obviously amiss before I commit several kilos of prime pork to the venture.

I'll be making three times this quantity

3 kg pork shoulder
600g back fat
90g salt
2.5g cure #2 per kg (need to weight everything once it's prepped)
3 clove garlic, minced
7.5g cracked black pepper
7.5g fennel seed
6g Bactoferm T-SPX (1/4 packet as suggested on the shop page here)

Plus ox runners and string

I would suggest that you add some dextrose to feed the culture, I'd use about 0.3%. Good luck!

Thanks Paul, I'll add that to the mix.

Another quick question, I see some people use hog casings and some beef runners, what would be the size difference between the two? As I'm making chorizo as well, would you use hog casings for both or would salami be better in the larger casing?

Thanks.

That's a matter of style and taste. Hog casings will dry in 4-6 weeks and beef middles 5-7. With hog casings the tendency is to have them dry too quickly. I like doing chorizo in 60 mm synthetic casings.

thank you.

Another quick question as there's variation in the recipes I'm seeing, some just say hang in a shed, some are more specific. As I live in damp Devon, hanging in the barn or shed isn't a good idea hence using the larder fridge where I can control the temperatures. Once made, the salami's need to be hung somewhere warm (25º) for a day or two then somewhere cool (12º-18º) for the rest of the curing time. Do those figures sound about right?

Yes, they're fine. 24-25° ish to ferment the cultures and drop the pH followed by 12° - 15.6° to dry. - I'd stay below 15.6° as this is said to be the temp where Staph Aureus [sp] starts to develop rapidly.

Aim for a reducing RH - it'll be high after you put the meat into the chamber; don't worry about that. As it dries you want it to reduce to around 72% RH.

Personally, I'd keep the temp to around 12°C - this seems to work for most of us. The RH may seem high at this temp - but that's the nature of Relative Humidity - as temp drops it increases.

Whatever you do, ignore all the idiots that hang stuff in a tree or a shed - they're trying for Darwin awards!

Phil

Thanks Phil, that's great to know. I can set the fridge to 12ºC easily.

Yeah, after reading River Cottage, which tends to be my go-to book for most things like this, and then doing some reading on the forums, it seems as though you're asking for trouble, particularly in warm (ish) and damp Devon.