Dry cure sausages

[kajady]

The gentleman that I am working under has a little issue with dry cured sausages. He always freezes the meat for a month before he uses it. I know its necessary to freeze the meat hard to get rid of trichinosis but still a whole month?!!!!

Anyways I love the lemony flavour of the old dry cured sausages and was wondering if anyone out there had a number of good dry cured sausage recipes.

I know that a lot of the italian salamis are supposed to be dry cured. But today gdl is used comercially.

Also how long should they age for

[dougal]

The gentleman that I am working under has a little issue with dry cured sausages. He always freezes the meat for a month before he uses it. I know its necessary to freeze the meat hard to get rid of trichinosis but still a whole month?!!!!

Medical advice for length of time to freeze depends on how thick the meat is, and how cold the freezer is.
At 5F (-15C) its 20 days for meat less than 6" thick. At -4F (-20C) the recommendation comes down to just 3 days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis#Prevention

Its a nasty parasite, but thankfully it is almost unknown in the UK. In Europe, there is a bit of a risk with wild boar. It seems to be a significant risk with wild venison in North America.

Cooking to 62C internal deals with the problem, so freezing is only required to deal with the problem in meats that are to be eaten uncooked.

I know that a lot of the italian salamis are supposed to be dry cured. ...
Also how long should they age for

That's a worryingly basic question!
One similarly worryingly basic and general answer might be "Long enough to get an approximately 30% weight loss, spread uniformly throughout the piece." How long that might turn out to be, will depend on your drying conditions, the thickness of the piece, and the recipe...

[kajady]

So if i was to do a say 3 inch salami dry cured how long do you think it would take.

But that is a good point you raise with the thickness of the chunks of meat. I think that a thicker piece of meat would freeze a lot slower that a small peice. But that all depends.

We also have a lot of bear up here and that is supposed to be frozen for a month to kill that as you said it nasty parasite.

One time we had a two hundred pound bear come in the meat shop and it had two inches of fat on it, but the fat was purple. Thats what you call premarinated meat. The bear ate so many berries that the fat turned purple.

Next question I would like to ask is what is gdl and what exactly does it do?

[TJ Buffalo]

Hi Kajady
GDL (gluono delta lactone) is one of several 'cure accelerators' used in dry-cured meat production. As I found in a document on the web, ' "Cure Accelerator" means compounds such as ascorbic acid or erythorbic acid or their derivatives, sodium ascorbate and sodium erythorbate as defined for use in 9 CFR 424.21, which shorten the time required for the distinctive pink color to develop in cured meat and poultry products.'

[georgebaker]

Hi kajady
where are you that you have Bear? What is it like to eat?

Is it sustainable to hunt bear where you are? Last I heard they only had one in Germany and they shot that last month

George

[kajady]

hi Actually I live up in Canada in a little town called duncan. But where I grew up was in houston british colombia canada. The bears are so numerous up there we are actually allowed 2 bears a year one in the spring and one in the fall. The ones in the spring are best for saving the hides but the ones in the fall are best for eating. They make excellent smokies as well as bratwurst.

[Big Guy]

Here are some of my dried sausage recipes.

OPA�S HUNTER SAUSAGE �Smokies�


15 lb. meat (90% game + 10% pork fat)

5 tbsp. coarse salt

3 tsp. Prauge powder

8 tbsp. cracked black pepper

2 tbsp. cayenne pepper

2 tbsp. ground caraway

whole mustard seed, enough to cover meat surface

4 tbsp. granulated garlic

2 tbsp. onion powder

1 tsp. Ascorbic acid.

1 quart ice water with 3 tbsp. beef Bovril

Grind pork fat through a medium plate. Mix fat with semi frozen meat chunks and ground spices then grind through medium plate. Add whole spices and ice water/Bovril and mix. Stuff into hog casings, hang to dry overnight, Cold Smoke to an internal temp of 110 F. Place on drying rack until dried @ 1-5 degrees C. (4-5 weeks). Vacuum pack and freeze. Let thaw in fridge before eating.

Note: you can dry it further in your fridge after thawing.



Pepperoni

7 Lbs. Pork
3 Lbs. Beef or Venison
3 Tbs. Tender Quick
3 Tbs. Sweet Paprika
2 Tbs. Cayenne pepper
2 Tbs. Red pepper flakes
1 Tbs. Anise seed
1 Tbs. Sugar
� tsp. Ascorbic acid
� tsp. Fennel seed
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 cup red wine.

Grind meats through a fine plate. Grind spices together and mix into meat. Stuff into hog casings. Hang to dry for 6-8 weeks @ 1-5 degrees C.



Landjaeger

10 lbs. pork
10 lbs. beef
9 Tbs. Salt
3 Tbs. Liquid smoke
6 Tbs. Dextrose
7 Tbs. White Pepper
1 � Tbs. Cure #2
4 Tbs. Caraway seeds
1 � tsp. Coriander ground
1 Tbs. Garlic powder
1 Tbs. Mace
� tsp. starter culture.

Grind meats through fine plate. Add spices and mix. Add starter culture to � cup water dissolve them mix into meat. Stuff into hog casings. Put sausages between cutting boards and weigh them down to flatten. Keep in mold for 2 days at 80 F. remove from molds and hang to dry at room temp for another day. Cold smoke with two loads of wood. Keep internal temp below 105 F. Air dry at 60 F for about 10 days at 50 % relative humidity. They are done when quite hard and have lost 45% in weight.


Pepperetts


8 Lbs. Pork shoulder
7 Lbs. Lean ground beef
6 Tbs. Salt
9 Tbs. Paprika
1 Tbs. Chile powder
1.5 Tbs. Cayenne pepper
1 Tbs. Crushed red Chile flakes
1.5 Tbs. Black pepper
1 Tbs. White pepper
1 Tbs. Prague powder #2
1 Tbs. Mace
1.5 Tbs. Sugar
3 Tbs. Ground Mustard
3 Tbs. Ground Coriander
6 Tbs. Milk powder
� tsp. starter culture
1 liter cold water

Grind meats through a fine plate, re grind to mix. Add spices and water, mix well. Dissolve starter culture in � cup of water and mix into meat. Stuff into 22mm collagen casings. Link into 10 � lengths. Incubate for 48 hrs at room temp. Hang in smoker and dry for about 1 hr. at 130 F, apply a heavy smoke for about 3 hrs. Cold smoke to 140 internal. Allow to cool. Then hang to dry @ 1-5 degrees C. to desired texture usually 2-3 days.

[deb]

Hi kajady, I'm really interested in your pepperoni recipe.
I don't have facilities for maintaining the correct temp etc for most cured sausages but looking at your recipe I see it needs a temp of 1-5C which I assume means it can be cured in a 'fridge (please correct me if I'm wrong), which is something I could easily manage.
Just one point though I see the recipe has tenderquick in it. I'm not really sure what this is but as there is no cure #1or2 I assume it is some sort of curing agent, am I right?

Thanks for any help.

[Big Guy]

In my pepperoni recipe I dry it in my garage. That is the temp inside of my garage from late Nov to mid January and again mid March to Mid April. That's when I make most of my dried sausage. Simple just move here to Canada and your problems are solved. LOL

Yes Tenderquick is a cure made by Morton's Salt Company. You can use whar ever cure you want just follow the proper dosing of cure to meat weight.

[deb]

Appologies Big Guy I seem to have mixed you up with kajady.

Thanks for the reply. I think I might give this a go in the fridge, I don't have a garage or anywhere else to dry sausages, if I don't make too much nothing lost (or at least not much).

I've got a feeling I'd like to live in Canada.

[Big Guy]

The hardest part of making dried sausage is the waiting. If the batch is a small sample batch by the time its ready it has been sampled away. LOL anyone else have this problem?

[tristar]

Hi Deb,

The only thing to be careful with whilst drying sausages in the fridge is the humidity, if the humidity is too low, for instance less than 60% RH the sausages may dry too quickly on the outside casing casehardening, this prevents the inside of the sausage drying and will cause spoilage!

I have an old refrigerator which I use solely for drying, the thermostat is set to the least cold setting about 8 degrees C in my case. During the initial stages of the drying process the fridge maintains the correct humidity 60-70% RH because of the moisture being released from the drying sausages, however during the later stages the humidity falls too much, this is corrected by using a tray of saturated salt solution in the bottom of the fridge, I am lucky enough to be able to by salt in bricks, and I stand some of these in the saturated salt water and they help to transfer the moisture to the atmosphere in the fridge, if you are unable to buy salt in this form just find the largest tray you can which will fit in your fridge, it doesn't need to be very deep, it just needs a large surface area.

Another thing which assists is the use of smaller casings, I use lamb casings for peperone and these dry very uniformly and within 7 days!

Regards,
Richard