My first salami...

Tips and tecniques on dryng drying, curing etc.

My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Sun Mar 20, 2016 3:02 pm

Some photos here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/139117223 ... 4421861441

All the sausages have salt, pepper, garlic and red wine. Added to which, 3 have whole black peppercorns and 5 have fennel seeds.

The fennel variety is particularly good, the fennel adding a wonderful sweet note.

The one thing I'm not happy with is the distribution of the fat. Everything was hand-cut (all of the meat coming from that shoulder with some addtional fat from the the butcher's fat trimmmings from the same carcase). I mixed the ingredients with my hands but was worried about warming the fat up too much so I didn't spend enough time separating the lumps of fat. Next time I'll combine the cure mixture with the meat by hand, and then add the fat and mix that in with a hand-held food mixer, so that there is nothing warm touching the fat.

List of ingredients to follow (it's on the other coomputer).

--
Steven

I hand-cut because I want a course cut and my little counter-top hand grinder makes a very fine texture.
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Sun Mar 20, 2016 3:04 pm

NB - the very last photo is the finocchiona
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Re: My first salami...

Postby BriCan » Sun Mar 20, 2016 7:20 pm

What is the meat to fat % (hand cut) ?
But what do I know
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Re: My first salami...

Postby wheels » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:03 pm

They look fantastic.

Phil
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Swing Swang » Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:54 pm

Very nice. I particularly like the sequence of photos showing mould development. I presume you inoculated as the growth is very uniform?
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:57 pm

BriCan wrote:What is the meat to fat % (hand cut) ?


23% fat, 77% muscle.

100% hand-cut.
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:58 pm

wheels wrote:They look fantastic.

Phil


Yeah, I'm very pleased.

Some thanks are also due to you for early advice on a few matters :D
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Sun Mar 20, 2016 10:01 pm

Swing Swang wrote:Very nice. I particularly like the sequence of photos showing mould development. I presume you inoculated as the growth is very uniform?


Yes, I sprayed the sausages with a mould culture made from a commercial saucisson sec.

I'm gald I persevered with the (almost) daily photos... it does make a nice record of the colonisation.
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Re: My first salami...

Postby etsolakis » Wed Feb 01, 2017 7:03 pm

Steven_B wrote:

List of ingredients to follow (it's on the other coomputer).




The ingredients please!!!
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Fri Feb 03, 2017 11:35 am

This is the original recipe, but it was far too fatty, so you will see below the recipe that I used for a second batch that features half the proportion of fat.


Image

You will also notice that the second batch has more fennel seeds.

The second batch turned out excellent. In both cases the meat was shoulder, the fat was back fat and the casings were a mix of ox middles and runners.

Weights are grams; the culture is Bactoferm TSPX; garlic was fresh, pasted; pepper was black, crushed; fennel seeds lightly crushed; wine was red from Italy.

Image
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Re: My first salami...

Postby etsolakis » Fri Feb 03, 2017 10:14 pm

Did you use a simple fridge?
Or you have construct a curing chamber?
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:36 am

Hi,

I built a curing chamber using a fridge, plus a temperature controller:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digital-STC-1 ... SwcUBYSQn-

and a heater:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ID7UF7A/ ... 71_TE_item


Are you planning some salami..?


Steven
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Re: My first salami...

Postby etsolakis » Wed Feb 08, 2017 2:48 pm

What about humidity?

I have already try to make some pastirma (or basturma) (absolutely delicious) and some sausages (traditional greek, chorizo and salsiccia).

I bought all the ingredients to make some salami... ;-)
The conditions now in Greece are great for making salami (5-15C and 60-75% RH)!!
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Re: My first salami...

Postby Steven_B » Wed Feb 22, 2017 11:09 am

Geia sou,


Apologies for the long delay in responding. I've been rather busy and forgot!

The humidity in my curing chamber seems to look after itself, to an extent anyway.

The ambient RH where I live (Devon, south west UK) is usually around 80% (less on a hot sunny day, but we don't get so may of those!).

When I put a load (e.g. 5 or 6Kg) fresh salami in the chamber, the RH jumps up to 90 and then slowly drops down to 75 as the sausages dry out.

In the beginning, when the RH is higher, I help out by flapping the chamber's door daily to help remove some moisture. Also the action of the fridge cooling mechanism removes some moisture (it's the kind of fridge where the back wall cools down and the condensed moisture then runs down the back wall into a little drainage hole).

But I need to be careful, if I put too many fresh things in (> 6Kg of moist product) then I think that the chamber stays too humid too long.

--

We like Greek sausages here at home... last year we bought a load from the village butcher during our trip to Lefkadha, froze them and once home in the UK had several BBQ sausage feasts.

From the flavour, I think that that butcher was adding some intestinal material (tripes) to the sausages and it gave a great flavour.


Best wishes
Steven
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Re: My first salami...

Postby etsolakis » Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:10 am

Geia sou Steven!

I want to use an old fridge (no no-frost) for curing my salami.
The temperature is about 10C but the moisture is very low, about 40%.
I read about a way for increasing moisture, putting a container inside the fridge, full of wet salt.
What do you think? Is this working?
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