www.sausagemaking.org

I feel like this is a rookie question, so you can feel free to laugh, but does anyone do a cured and dried chicken sausage? Is it possible to just replace pork with chicken and go through the same process? Do the curing salts or beneficial bacterias have the same effect on chicken as beef, pork, etc.?

I was trying to find something online and there seems to be little to no recipes for anything like this. I did find the abstract to an article titled "Changes in the microbial picture during the production of poultry salami", but I don't know how the numbers would compare to some other meat since they don't seem to do a comparison.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9182395

I could understand if commercially farmed chicken, processed mechanically or in a plant, would have a lot of bacteria present, but what if I were to use poultry that was raised and slaughtered locally, by someone I knew or by myself?

I'm just curious if chicken's just gotten a bad reputation over the years and no one's really done much with it because of that, and whether or not it's something that we could actually handle with the curing salts and other additives we have available.

Given that it can obviously be done with turkey:

http://www.recipetips.com/glossary-term ... salami.asp

Presumably it can with chicken.

Phil

To be honest with you i fail to understand why....however, i make a chicken boudin blanc when rabbit unavailable, which is cured with cure 1#
Also a chicken bratwurst cured also......failing that i would brine with aromatics cold smoke and once matured cut into dice and add into a salami mix with pork and fat.

Nothings impossible...

I would think twice before eating unsterilized chicken (Campylobacter, Salmonella). I'm not sure if an ordinary curing process would eliminate those bacteria.

I wouldn't want to do it myself - but the question wasn't whether I would do it. Big Onion asked whether anyone had done it, and in not so many words, whether it can be done. Hence my reply.

I share both your concerns.

(I'm assuming that the product I linked to is a dried salami? The text certainly infers that it is. I also assume it to be so as there is a Cotto version listed separately.)

Phil

FYI, this company sell a sliced dry turkey salami:

http://www.damasgate.uk.com

Here's a recipe for a 'hot smoked then dried' one:

http://www.microblast.com/recipes/r652.htm

...and the link below confirms that it can be done - at least commercially with turkey:

http://www.recipetips.com/glossary-term ... salami.asp

A sausage produced from ground dark turkey meat, flavored with garlic and other seasonings, and cured to make it safe for eating. The meat is processed, cured, air-dried, and wrapped in a casing. It is course and dry in texture and varies in size and shape. It is generally sliced and eaten as is or served with crackers or bread. Turkey salami contains approximately 50 percent less fat than regular salami.

It would need more research to see whether turkey is safer than chicken for the reasons that Grisell has already given.

HTH

Phil

A survey made by the Swedish National Food Administration in 2002 ( http://www.slv.se/upload/dokument/rappo ... apport.pdf - in Swedish) of prevalence of Campylobacter in 4,463 samples taken from commercial meat and poultry showed the following results with a 95% statistical confidence interval:

Pork 0.3%
Beef and veal: <0.5% (nil positive)
Lamb 1%
Deer, reindeer, elk, wild boar, horse: Total 21 samples, nil positive.
Turkey 3.6%
Chicken 12%

However, the report also states that Campylobacter prevalence in chicken varies substantially with origin, season and whether the chicken is refrigerated or frozen. In the period of June-October it was 21% for fresh Swedish chicken meat whereas it was only 5% in frozen chicken meat. Dutch frozen chicken showed 28.6% prevalence, whereas no infected samples were found in frozen chicken from e.g. Thailand and Finland.

Considering the above figures, the fact that at least Swedish and Dutch chicken meat has a 40-95 times higher prevalence of Campylobacter than pork, makes me conclude that I wouldn't use uncooked chicken in sausages. Campylobacter is very virulent even in minute amounts. I got it some 20 years ago from tasting a raw chicken liver paté (very stupid!). I ate far less than a gram of the paté but it kept me very close to a toilet for three weeks...

big_onion wrote:[---]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9182395

I could understand if commercially farmed chicken, processed mechanically or in a plant, would have a lot of bacteria present, but what if I were to use poultry that was raised and slaughtered locally, by someone I knew or by myself?

I'm just curious if chicken's just gotten a bad reputation over the years and no one's really done much with it because of that, and whether or not it's something that we could actually handle with the curing salts and other additives we have available.

The title of the report is "Changes in the microbial picture during the production of poultry salami". Thus it has to do with bacteria during production and not consumption of the product. As a matter of fact, if you read the last sentences of that abstract, you can see that the sausage is clearly heat treated and the bacteria eliminated. "No pathogenic or potentially pathogenic bacteria were detected in any sample of fine poultry salami."

Wheels: Are you sure that those turkey salamis are raw? They look to me as if tthey have had some kind of heat treatment. There are lots of "turkey salamis" of different kinds in muslim supermarkets where I live. They are all cooked.

Edit: I just looked at the nutritional values for the two turkey salamis Wheels linked to. The "turkey salami" and the "turkey salami cotto" both contain 71% water but only about 2% salt. That seems like an unreasonably high moisture and low salt for an air-dried uncooked product(?). At least it shows that there is no difference in processing between the two varieties.

I (obviously) don't know about the salami, but when you see two salami's from the same supplier, one labelled cotto and the other not, surely the assumption is that the one that's not labelled cotto isn't cooked?

I hear all that you're saying and share your concerns, but the experts in applying commercially scientific curing techniques to home curing, Stan and Adam Marianski, say in their book: 'Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausage':

p344 - Fermented sausages can be made of chicken... ...Using starter cultures and good manufacturing processes, a semi-dry chicken sausage can be successfully made at home.

They don't give a recipe though and have a caveat on the preceding page warning of the high pH and Aw of chicken, with a mention of Campylobacter jejuni.

The original post asked whether it can be done. I still maintain that the answer to that is 'Yes'. Whether you or I would do it is another matter.

Phil

p168-169 of the Marianski's 'The art of making fermented sausages' gives a recipe for a semi-dry, fermented chicken sausage. Clearly it is possible and a Thai friend of mine claims it is commonplace in Thailand. I, however, would be very wary of the health risks. I'm not saying not to do it, just be careful. If you'd like me to post the recipe and details then let me know. If I wasn't such a wimp then I'd love to try a chicken salami

Good luck

Ryan

Thanks Ryan, I must be going blind in my old age, I missed that one. To me making a 'raw' product out of chicken goes against everything I've been taught; there again so did doing it with pork until a few years ago.

There's even a sausage that uses fermented rice - now how's that for causing food safety apoplexy?

Maybe fermentation kills Campylobacter? BTW, the Swedish survey I refered to above found no Campylobacter in Thai chicken, so it maybe safe over there but not in Europe(?). Anyway, I'd never dare try, not after having had Campylobacter infection once.

I would assume it could be done, I was just thinking a lot of why it isn't done is mostly because of the taboo over raw chicken. Duck mean can be eaten somewhat raw, and duck prosciutto most definitely isn't cooked, so I don't see how it's impossible. And wheels, those links definitely implied that it's dried and not cooked.

I guess I'd have to poke around and see if anyone's done research on starter cultures and how they affect the normal kinds of bacteria found in chicken.

I'd be willing to try this out. I found this recipe for turkey prosciutto, using a turkey thigh and a pound of kosher salt:

http://www.cookbookwizard.com/recipes/r650.htm

I might just try something similar to that or duck prosciutto but with a chicken breast. Thinking it might be wise to add some curing salts.

big_onion wrote:[---] And wheels, those links definitely implied that it's dried and not cooked.
[---]

It seems that I'm not getting through here. Please check and compare the nutrition tables of different salamis here http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-sal ... 00000.html (yes, the Louis Rich Turkey Salami is there, too). For example:

Italian dried pork salami: 34% water, 1.9% sodium
Cooked turkey salami: 69% water, 1.0% sodium
Louis Rich Turkey Salami: 72% water, 1.0% sodium

Does it still seem to you that the Louis Rich Turkey Salami is uncooked?

big_onion wrote:... I was just thinking a lot of why it isn't done is mostly because of the taboo over raw chicken.

Do you think that that taboo might have something to do with the fact that most people get sick after eating raw chicken?

As for the rest in your post, you might want to read this first before experimenting with raw chicken: http://ezinearticles.com/?Food-Poisonin ... w&id=59156 . Especially read the section on Campylobacter.

However, it's up to you. I'm not going to stop you. I just pray that no newbies in sausagemaking read your posts on this matter and start experimenting with raw chicken themselves.

You don't give up, do you. It's like having a Jack Russell dog humping my leg!

I don't see the quote that you attribute to me repeated in Big Onion's post?

Andre, in any case, we've moved on from there, as you should know if you read the intervening posts. Whether those links I posted are dried sausage or not is irrelevant.

We know that experts in dried sausage making say it can be done.

The fact that you don't like that is of no consequence. I too wouldn't want to make a chicken salami, but the OP is quite capable of assessing the information and making his own decision.

Phil