by netop » Fri Jan 11, 2013 5:10 pm
I haven't made any soupy for a few years and I'm planning on giving it a go this month. Previous to my hiatus, I did it for about five years. So, I'm no expert, but I can offer a couple thoughts regarding your question.
First, we never used anything but salt, hot pepper, black pepper, sweet paprika and (occasionally) a bit of wine. Also, we did not press the sausage. The lack of pressing may disqualify it from being true sopressatta, but whatever, it was always better than even the expensive gourmet store bought items. The casings were cleaned in lemon juice as opposed to vinegar. Meat was pre-ground from a local butcher who provides a blend and grind specifically for soupy production, so I cannot say what the exact fat percentage was. Sausage making took place at normal room temp (starting with cold meat).
Soupy day was usually superbowl sunday for the right weather here in southern New England. That said, we were never terribly precise about conditions. We hung them in the unheated back stairs of multifamily three story houses. We hung them in attached and unheated garages. We hung them in basements. The wisdom we were handed from people who had been doing this for decades was this:
"Try to keep them below 50 degrees or so, but don't let them freeze. If it drops below freezing for a little bit at night, you should be okay. And if it gets a little warm, no big deal, as long as it's only for a little while. If they are a bit warm, be good about checking them for mold every day. If you get a little surface mold, just wipe them down with olive oil. It'll smother the mold, but might slow the drying a bit. It's really the first couple of weeks you have to worry about them"
So, within these very inexact parameters, we met with repeated success. Some years were warmer, some years were cooler. Some years I would crack the window in the unheated stairwell if it was sunny. Some years, I think one of the guys put a space heater in his garage for cold nights. I only ever had a couple with hollows, but even then the sausage was dry and good to eat. Edible in 8 to 10 weeks. By Christmas, the last of the batch from January would be getting eaten. They were quite hard by this time and would be cut paper thin (had to ration the last of it).
A couple of times, the sausage seemed to get drier and harder more quickly. Seven month old sausage was as dry as eleven month old sausage. In this case, some of the folks who liked a softer soupy would pack them in olive oil and leave them in the fridge. Wouldn't soften up the sausage, but would stop it from getting any harder.
Sometimes, as the sausages got drier, the casing would become a real pain to remove. Run it under warm water for a couple of minutes and let sit for a couple more minutes before slicing.
Regarding color: We always got a nice deep red that would get darker as the year went by. One factor might be your paprika. Some paprika maintains its nice red color in cooking. Some paprika turns brown when cooked. I know these aren't cooked, but there might be something there. If I recall, the Californian paprika has the tendency to brown. Try to stick to Hungarian. Check Penzey's spices website if you have trouble finding a local cheap source. They also have a great price on Spanish Smoked Paprika, which I might try on part of the batch.