Duck Prosciutto

February 10, 2023 by AOG Leave a Comment

…without a curing chamber.

Name: Duck Prosciutto

This post will detail how you can get started making your very own duck prosciutto without using a curing chamber. This is a good entry level project, since in most places you can easily buy a duck breast from the grocery store and its relatively small size means it will be done sooner than most other projects. In order to do this, we are going to be using UMAI dry bags and the regular fridge. If you haven’t read the Beginner’s Guide yet, now would be a good time to do that. Let’s get started!

The meat:

To make duck prosciutto, all you need is a single duck breast. You can usually find this at a larger grocery store or at your local butcher shop.

Curing (4C/40F, 2+ weeks):

Once you have the duck breast, it’s time to weigh it. I almost always use an equilibrium cure, which allows me some flexibility with the timing of my projects. I suggest using it, to avoid projects that end up under/over salted. For more information on equilibrium curing vs excess curing, refer back to the Beginner’s Guide.

Once you have the weight, you can enter it into the interactive spreadsheet below, just fill the weight of your meat in the appropriate white cell in the spreadsheet and hit enter. There is no need to make any other changes to the spreadsheet.

* Note: Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Weigh all the spices and mix all them together.

Then, cover the meat with them.

Vacuum seal it all together.

Casing:

After the meat has been cured for 2+ weeks, it’s time to take it out, rinse it, and pat it dry.

Grab an UMAI dry bag and VacMouse channel vacuum adapter.

Place the duck breast in the bag. Vacuum seal it with the VacMouse adapter at the mouth of the bag to help it seal. The company says that it doesn’t need to fully seal to work, but the only time I had a bad result was when the bag wasn’t fully sealed, so I would do my best to achieve as tight a vacuum seal as possible.

**Drying (4C/40F, any RH*, 1-2 months)**:

The nice thing about using the UMAI dry bags, is that you no longer need to control the humidity of the atmosphere where it will be drying. This means you don’t need a special curing chamber, and can use the regular fridge. That being said, I’ve had a few projects dry out too fast and get some case hardening. Now, when I do an UMAI dry bag project in the regular fridge, I save one of the vegetable drawers for it. I put a drying rack in the drawer to allow for air movement around the piece of meat, and I turn the tab to “high” humidity. Using this method I’ve had great results using these bags in the regular fridge.

So, once you’ve sealed the duck breast in the UMAI dry bag, place it on a rack in the fridge. As mentioned above, if you can spare a vegetable drawer for it, that would be best.

Once it has lost 30-45% of its original weight, according to your tastes, remove it from the fridge. This should take 1-2 months depending on your conditions.

Tasting:

Finally! When the right amount of time has passed, remove the duck breast from the fridge.

I like to do a red wine rinse at the end for any mold that may have accumulated, which can happen even in the regular fridge, but is less common than in the curing chamber where you usually have inoculated it with mold. After the red wine rinse, pat dry, slice, and enjoy!

The perfect addition to a charcuterie plate!

Disclaimer: Meat curing is a hobby that comes with inherent risks. We can all do things to limit this risk by educating ourselves about the process and the utilizing the safest known methods to create our products. This website is for educational purposes only, and all experimentation should be done at each individuals own risk.

Lamb Salami

January 15, 2022 by AOG Leave a Comment

For this project, I decided to make a 100% lamb salami using trim left over from butchering out the lamb culatello from a leg of lamb, discussed in a previous post. A lot of times, lamb salami uses pork fat due to its mild flavor and low slip melting point which helps it to “melt on your tongue”. However, there is no reason not to use the lamb fat itself, one just needs to be aware that when enjoying this salami, you want to let it warm to room temperature+ before eating it for the most enjoyable mouth feel experience.

The Meat

As mentioned, the meat for this salami came from the leg of lamb butchered for lamb culatello.

The meat/fat ratio for this was based on what I butchered from the leg, which was closer to 80/20 than my usual ratio of 70/30. I par-froze the meat at this point, to make sure it was cold for the next steps.

The Spices

Weigh the lean and fat separately if possible, shooting for 15-30% fat relative to lean, and insert them into the appropriate spaces below on the spreadsheet and it will calculate the necessary amounts of the cure ingredients. (If you have eyeballed the fat/lean ratio, then just insert the total weight into the Meat+Fat cell.)

*Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Grinding

Both the lean meat and the fat that were pre-mixed with the spices were ground on the medium-fine die.

Mixing

After you have ground the meat, keeping everything cold, you should have some next particle definition. Make sure to keep everything cold during mixing to maintain this.

Make sure to mix this all well.

Stuffing

After you are done, it’s time to stuff! Get the farce loaded into the stuffer, and pick a casing that you like. For this I used a sewn hog after end which is a nice and wide casing.

Tying

After the salami has been stuffed, you can tie it up to get it a nice shape and get it ready to hang in the curing chamber.

Fermentation

(Done in the oven (off) with the light on… using a spray bottle to add in humidity. Conditions are around 21C/70F and high relative humidity for 48 hours)

Drying

(Drying conditions in the curing chamber: 13C/55F and 70% RH, Drying conditions with UMAI bag 4C/40F and variable humidity)

At this point, you’re ready to move this into your chamber. I ran into some issues and wasn’t able to this as expected, so instead, I cased it in an UMAI bag.

Using a metal rack, I set up a nice micro-environment for it in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. It can stay here until it loses 30-45% of its initial weight, or I can move it to the curing chamber at any point.

Tasting

To be continued!

Lamb Culatello

January 15, 2022 by AOG Leave a Comment

In this post, I will go through the basic process of making lamb culatello. Similar to a pork culatello, this is made by taking the rear leg of the animal, carefully deboning it, and carving out the culatello cut. This is then dry cured and aged until it has lost at least 30% of its initial weight.

The Meat

Ideally you will buy a bone-in leg of lamb and cut out the culatello yourself. If all you can find is bone-out leg of lamb, you can still make it work as long as it wasn’t all hacked about in the de-boning process.

You want to cut the meat into the three pieces of the culatello (bottom), the fiocco (top), and the rumpetto (right). Make sure to do this with clean cuts, not slicing into the muscles. You want to avoid creating air pockets were bad bacteria can propagate.

You can also cure the rumpetto and fiocco as whole pieces if you’ve been able to butcher them well. Here, I bought a bone-out leg of lamb and it was already a bit hacked apart, so I decided to save them for some lamb salami.

Curing

(stored at 4C/40F for 3+ weeks)

Here, instead of a simple cure as is usually done for pork culatello, I decided to use a spice cure that would complement the flavor of the lamb. You can insert the weight of your butchered lamb culatello into the spreadsheet and it will calculate the weights for the spices for you.

*Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

The spices measured out smell incredible…

After you have measured out all of the spices, mix it with the lamb culatello that you have butchered out.

Let it sit for 3+ weeks in the regular refrigerator curing, I like to do this under vacuum to get an even cure.

Casing

After dry curing for 3+ weeks, the lamb prosciutto will be rinsed off and cased in a large beef bung. This will be strung up and ready to hang in the curing chamber.

Drying

(dried in the curing chamber at 13C/55F and 70% RH for ~3 months)

After the lamb culatello is cased and tied, you can hang it in the curing chamber to dry. It needs to hit at least 30% loss of its original weight, at least. I will probably let it go closer to 40%

Tasting

After it’s done, comes the best part. Tasting! This is too be added when the process is complete for the most recent project.

American Breakfast Sausage

November 6, 2021 by AOG Leave a Comment

Is anything more American than starting a weekend morning with some breakfast sausage? This is just a simple straightforward “better than Jimmy Dean” American Breakfast Sausage recipe you can make for a breakfast on a crisp fall day.

First Step: Get yourself a nice piece of pork and cut it into cubes. I like to use the trimmings from pork shoulder or pork leg projects. Generally you want to use the 3rd tier trimmings for a project like this. First tier is for prized dry cured whole muscle like culatello or coppa. Second tier is for dry cured salami that will never touch heat. Third tier is for projects like this that will be cooked, and therefore the heat will help it break down. After you have the meat cubed, par freeze it to prepare for grinding.

Second Step: Grind the meat on a medium/fine die.

Third Step: Weight out the salt and spices that you will be using. Once you have the weight, you can enter it into the interactive spreadsheet below, just fill the weight of your meat in the appropriate white cell in the spreadsheet and hit enter. There is no need to make any other changes to the spreadsheet.

** Please use common sense and make sure the spreadsheet is working correctly for you.

Fourth Step: Mix the meat and the spices, taking care to keep the mixture cold to avoid fat smearing. Mix it well to create a tacky mixture.

Fifth Step: Create links or patties depending on your preference. Here we made patties.

Sixth Step: Cook and enjoy for breakfast!

Freeze any leftovers to enjoy in the future.

Ficazza

July 17, 2021 by AOG Leave a Comment

Name: Ficazza or Sazinella or Salame di Tonno

Region: Sicily, particularly the Trapani region, in places such as the island of Favignana

History:

Sicily has a long history of tuna fishing… particularly on the west coast by the city of Trapani. The city of Trapani, originally founded by the Phoenicians, has a long history as a port town where fishing and trading played an important role in the daily life of its people.

Said of the city in 1154 by Idrisi, an Arab geographer and traveler, Trapani was… “a city of ancient origins, situated on the sea and surrounded on each side….here fish is in abundance and more than needed; they fish large tuna with great nets and a high-quality coral: and a salt-pan is adjacent to the city’s port.”

Given the relative abundance of both tuna and salt, it’s no wonder that one of the results was the creation of a salame made with tuna… a perfect way to make sure nothing went to waste, and to preserve the haul over time.

How it’s made:

The meat:

Ficazza is traditionally made with the parts of the tuna that are less desirable, those that are not sold to customers to eat. Importantly, it is made with parts of the tuna that in dialect are referred to as “busunagghia”. They come from the parts of the tuna around the central bone, and tend to be dark red/brown due to their contact with blood. These give the distinctive color to the ficazza. In addition, other less desirable parts are used, including fatty parts from around the belly and internal organs that are not sold for other products.

The spices:

Only sea salt and black pepper are used in making this salame.

Processing:

The tuna is ground fine, and then mixed with only sea salt and black pepper. The mixture is stuffed into a pig intestine casing. The salame is then pressed using specific wood boards made for the process.

The ficazza undergoes a double salting, first during the mixing stage, and second during the pressing stage. After pressing, they are air dried for 20-40 days. Traditionally this was done using natural ventilation, the combination of relatively humid sea air and the strong winds of Trapani providing exactly what was needed to dry cure this unique salame.

After the ventilation stage, the ficazza is ready to be sold. These days, they are stored under vacuum and kept refrigerated to extend their shelf life.

Timing:

The ficazza is traditionally processed in the months of May and June, in accordance with the traditional tuna season in Trapani. For example, the tuna fishing nets were usually placed in April, allowing the fishing to start in May and go on until the end of June.

How it’s eaten:

Ficazza can be eaten a number of ways. It can be enjoyed thinly sliced, topped with olive oil and lemon, with bread on the side. It can also be used in pasta dishes, for example making carbonara di mare, using the ficazza to replace the guanciale.

How I learnt about it:

After a long weekend away in Trapani, I finally had the chance to try the real thing! After learning about it through my research and working on my own modern DIY version, I was excited to see the place where the traditional ficazza was born.

Seeing Trapani with my own eyes really highlighted how important the terroir was for this product to come to be. From the waters around the island of Favignana, (previously) replete with tuna…

To the salt flats of Trapani and Marsala, where sea salt was ingeniously extracted from sea water by early Phoenicians…

Not to mention, the winds of Trapani, which made the city an ideal port for the seafaring traders in the first place.

The DIY:

My version of ficazza is a modern adaptation of the traditional one. I don’t spend my days fishing for tuna, nor do I live in a place like Trapani where the fish market is a short walk away, and therefore I don’t have access to the parts of the tuna, such as the busunagghia, which give the ficazza its traditional color and flavor. While this is certainly on my to-do list, for now, I make my modern version of ficazza.

The meat:

To make the ficazza, because I know it will be dry cured and never cooked, I make sure to buy high quality sushi-grade tuna.

Planning:

While the traditional ficazza only uses sea salt and black pepper, for my version I added a few more things, listed in the table below. To make it more traditional, you would leave out everything except the sea salt and black pepper.

In addition to the tuna, I used pork fat for this as well for the fat content. This is not traditional, so you can skip this if you want. Once you have the weight of your tuna and pork fat, you can enter it into the interactive spreadsheet below, just fill the weight of your meat in the appropriate white cells in the spreadsheet and hit enter. If you don’t use pork fat, just insert “0” into the appropriate cell. There is no need to make any other changes to the spreadsheet.

Mix all the spices together.

*Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Grinding and mixing:

I par-froze the tuna and hand diced it.

I took half the tuna that was hand diced and ground it on a coarse grind in my grinder.

I left the other half just hand diced and not ground. If you wanted a more traditional product, you would use the fine grind for all of it.

Because I wanted to make mine as similar to other salami as possible, I decided to use hand diced pork fat to stud the ground tuna meat. Again, if you want to make it as traditional as possible, you would skip this step and only use tuna.

Next, I mixed the hand diced tuna, the ground tuna, and the pork fat with the spices.

The next step is to mix the ground meat and spices well, creating a tacky paste. Make sure to keep everything as cold as possible.

Casing:

For this, I decided to try two ways to dry cure the ficazza. The first was the more traditional way, in a beef middle casing. The second, in an UMAI bag, which would let me dry cure it in a regular fridge at 4C.

Drying:

(Curing Chamber Method: 13C/55F, 65-70-% RH, 1-3 months)

(UMAI Method: 4C/40F, 50-65% RH, 1-3 months)

I cured my Ficazza in two ways, in the curing chamber and also in the regular fridge, since I was worried about curing fish at the relatively higher temperatures of the curing chamber.

To cure it in the curing chamber, I placed it among the other meats I was curing at the time. I learned that the conditions of a traditional curing chamber should be fine for this product. If you have a fan in your chamber, you can turn it on for this process if you’d like, but it’s not 100% necessary.

Because I wasn’t sure this would be the case, I also decided to dry cure some using the UMAI method. These special vacuum bags let out moisture, while still protecting the meat from oxidation. I don’t love them for everything, but they do tend to work if you use them correctly. Using this method, I cured the ficazza on a rack (for air flow around the meat) in a vegetable drawer (to increase humidity) in the regular fridge, opening the drawer occasionally for ventilation.

However, in the end, I found that the ficazza cured in the curing chamber had more flavor than that cured in the regular fridge using the UMAI method. I would venture the guess that the curing chamber allows for flavor development that isn’t there in the regular fridge, while the dry curing process still keeps any spoilage or overly fishy flavor at bay.

Tasting

Overall, this was one of my favorite things I’ve made. A unique cured product, with a delicate flavor profile. Not at all overwhelming fishy or salty, just a well-balanced and complex product.

There are pros and cons to each method. I still plan to make the traditional Ficazza one of these days (which is an important example of how charcuterie can be utilized to make sure nothing goes to waste), but this more modern one uses the basis of tradition for inspiration, while relying on modern methods to experiment. By using less salt, by playing with flavors, we can create something unique from the ancient traditions.

References:

1- https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/favignana-tuna-bottarga/ 2- https://www.selectsicilyvillas.com/places-in-sicily/trapani 3- https://blog.giallozafferano.it/toniaincucina/tradizione-tonnara-di-nino-castiglione/ 4- https://www.agrodolce.it/2020/02/10/ficazza-di-tonno/ 5-https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzonaglia 6- https://www.braciamiancora.com/ficazza-di-trapani-e-salumi-mare-siciliani/

Coppa Calabrese

June 13, 2021 by AOG 2 Comments

Name: Coppa Calabrese

This is going to be a simple post, detailing how to make what is probably my favorite cured meat, coppa, in the calabrese style.

The meat:

To make a coppa, you need to either purchase or butcher the collar roast for a pig. Some butchers/farms can sell you the “collar roast” that you can use as is. Otherwise, you can buy either a full pork shoulder (shown below) or a “Boston Butt” shoulder cut.

From the whole shoulder, follow the seams outlined here to cut out the coppa.

Salting (4C/40F, 3 weeks+)

Once you have the meat butchered and ready, it’s time to weigh it.

Weigh all the spices and mix all the spices together.

Then, cover the meat with them.

Vacuum seal it all together.

* Note: Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Casing

After the meat has been cured for 3+ weeks, it’s time to take it out, rinse it, and pat it dry.

Soak a large beef bung in water for as long as it takes to become relaxed and expanded (anywhere from 30 minutes to overnight).

Stuff the meat into the beef bung and tie it up, to prepare for the drying stage.

Drying (13C/55F, 70-%RH, 3-6 months)

Once your coppa is ready, hang it in the curing chamber where it should stay for 3-6 months.

Once it has lost 30-45% of its original weight, according to your tastes, remove it from the chamber

Tasting

The last is the best part of the whole process. When the right amount of time has passed, pull the coppa from the chamber, and enjoy!

Appenzeller Mostbröckli

April 8, 2021 by AOG Leave a Comment

Name: Mostbröckli

Region: Appenzell

History: Mostbröckli is a smoked and dry cured meat product made from beef in the Appenzeller region of Switzerland. Historically, the Appenzeller farmers were very active in the dairy industry, which accounts for the use for beef to make this product as opposed to the more expensive (at the time) pork. It is thought that it name comes from the fact that it is either cured with or enjoyed with “most”, fermented apple wine commonly called cider in English, Suure Moscht in Swiss German, or Apfelwein in high German.

It is one of three famous beef cured products in Switzerland. The other two are Bündnerfleisch from Graubünden and Viande séchée (also known as Trockenfleisch in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland) du Valais. However, Mostbröckli is the only one of the three that is smoked. And while Bündnerfleisch is characteristically always pressed into a rectangular shape, as is Viande séchée, Mostbröckli can be netted and shaped but does not need to be. This is due to regional differences where these cured meat products were developed. Graubünden and Valais both are mountainous regions and air-drying can naturally be carried out in the alpine air from 800-1300 meters above sea level. Appenzell is a more humid low-lying valley, where the traditional drying relied upon smoking in order to preserve meat. The process for drying Mostbröckli takes on average 5 weeks, while for Viande séchée it takes 5-16 weeks, and for Bündnerfleisch it takes 12-24 weeks…of course all dependent on size and environmental conditions. So now that we have a bit of an understanding of the geographic conditions that shaped the process of curing, drying, and smoking Mostbröckli in Switzerland, how is it made?

How it’s made:

The meat:

These days, Mostbröckli is made with beef (although it was traditionally also made from horse and dog meat) from one of the following cuts:

Runder Mocken
Eckstück
Vorschlag
Nierstück
Huft

I personally like to use the same cut I would use for bresaola, the eye round cut, which is easy enough to find from butchers in the US.

The spices:

Mandatory Spices: Sea salt, sugar, black pepper, bay leaf, juniper, and garlic.

Additives: Nitrates and anti-oxidants (to prevent against oxidation of fat, especially in projects with beef, there is the traditional industry use of ascorbic acid or sodium ascorbate. For personal projects, I haven’t found them to be much use.)

Optional Spices: Other spices such as allspice can be added as long as they do not overpower the mandatory ones.

Optimal Liquids: Wine or “most”.

Optional Additions: MSG, potassium sorbate, and whole muscle starter cultures such as Lactobacillus species, food-grade Staphylococcus species, or Micrococcus species.

The Processing:

Similar to bresaola, because this is beef and beef fat tends to oxidize faster than pork fat, the raw meat is stripped of fat and tendons. (This is done traditionally in the industry for beef products, but I’ve done some very nice projects with fatty cuts of beef with no issues, so we’ll do it here for traditions sake, but know that it’s not as hard and fast rule as some would lead you to believe.)

The meat is rubbed with the spices mentioned above and allowed to dry cure. They can either be cured in a traditional excess cured way, or using equilibrium curing under vacuum. Depending on the size and the method, the curing process can take anywhere 1-5 weeks. I will do this step using equilibrium curing under vacuum.

After curing, the meat can be hung in a cold place for 1-4 days. If using a preservative such as potassium sorbate to prevent unfavorable mold development, it can be added here. I will personally skip this step when making it at home.

The meat then hung in a smokehouse set up, where it is smoked over the time period of 1-3 weeks. In this stage, the temperature can reach up to 40C, which is higher than most other cold smoked products. This accelerates the weight loss for this particular type of cured meat product. The final weight loss should be between 30-45%, and will take 1-3 weeks. Various woods are allowed to be used to generate the smoke for this process.

Timing: Like most cured meat projects, it is traditionally cured throughout the wintertime after the fall harvest.

How it’s eaten: Appenzeller Mostbröckli should be enjoyed thinly sliced, served with a piece of dark bread, such as a Bürli. Given its name, it can be enjoyed with a nice Suure Moscht. Ideally suited for a summer apéro along the river with friends.

How I learnt about it: Traveling around Switzerland, I’ve run into Mostbröckli, Bündnerfleisch, and Trockenfleisch and wondered what set them apart. I made sure to buy all three to bring to a summer apéro with friends to determine the differences between them and pick my favorite.

(Un)fortunately, we ended up rafting down the Limmat river, and our apéro ended up being a picnic along the bank of the river until the sun set, with enough Swiss beer that while I know I had a favorite, for the life of me I can’t remember which it was. All it means is I need to re-try them all again soon!

The DIY: I haven’t made this one yet, but it is high on my list of next projects. Because of that, I’ve made a curing sheet recipe that is attached here. Just be aware, this is currently an untested recipe.

Curing:

Weigh your eye round of beef or whichever cut you have decided to use. You can use the following interactive spreadsheets to calculate the cure you will need for your own project; just fill in the weight of your meat in the appropriate white cell in the spreadsheet and hit enter. There is no need to make any other changes to the spreadsheet.

*Note: Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Mix the meat together with the spices, vacuum seal it together, and allow it to cure at 4C for 2-3 weeks.

Casing:

After this time, rinse off the cure. If you would like, rinse the meat in “most” aka cider for 30 minutes or so, to give it some extra flavor. You could continue this overnight if you wanted a stronger flavor from the cider.

I prefer to case my cured meat products, because I feel that it promotes more even drying and results in a better end product. This is optional, but if you would like to, now is the time to case the meat in a beef bung, tie it up, and hang it in a curing chamber at around 12C, 75% RH for 4 days.

Smoking and Drying:

If you have a smoke house, after 4 days move it to the smokehouse to be smoked and dry cured altogether in the more traditional manner. In this way, it should be ready at ~30-45% weight loss in about 1-3 weeks. Make sure that temperatures don’t exceed 40C.

Otherwise, we will do stepwise smoking. In this method, move the meat from your dry curing set up as frequently as possible to your cold smoking set up. This will be highly dependent on your set up and time availability. For example, you might move it to your cold smoking every set up every weekend to cold smoke it for 8 hours, and then return it to your dry curing chamber after the cold smoking is complete for another week. In this way, you can infuse the meat with smoke while still maintaining it at the safe temperature and humidity conditions it needs to lose weight over time. With this method it may take longer to meet the target weight loss of 30-45%. It won’t be the traditional method, but with some flexibility and by keeping an eye on it, you can approximate it pretty well at home.

Tasting:

After it has reached its target weight, you can clean off any mold with more “most” or cider. Make sure to slice it thin, and enjoy!

References:

https://www.aop-igp.ch/fileadmin/Dokumente/Pflichtenhefter/Appenzeller_Mostbr%C3%B6ckli_Pflichtenheft.pdf

https://www.patrimoineculinaire.ch/Produkt/Bundnerfleisch-GGAIGP-Pulpa/342

https://www.aop-igp.ch/appenzeller-mostbroeckli/

https://www.patrimoineculinaire.ch/Produit/Viande-sechee-du-Valais-IGP/120

Saucisse d’Ajoie

March 27, 2020 by AOG Leave a Comment

Name: Saucisse d’Ajoie IGP

Region: The district of Porrentruy

History:

The saucisse d’Ajoie is a particularly famous smoked pork saucisse spiced with garlic and cumin seeds. The IGP protected saucisse comes only from the Porrentruy district in the Jura, while others made in the Jura but not in the Porrentruy area are often referred to as “household” or “cumin” saucisse. It is uncertain how long this particular saucisse has been made this way; claims go back to the 15^th century, but the first evidence comes from written recipes and accounts in the 19^th century.

Today, the saucisse d’Ajoie is eaten year round, but particularly on St. Martin’s Day. The St. Martin’s festival is thrown every year around November 11^th, and in Porrentruy, this festival is dedicated to the pig. A popular variety of the saucisse d’Ajoie, the thinner croquante d’Ajoie, is toasted and served on bread.

Grilled croquante d’Ajoie, served on bread.

How it’s made:

Meat: The saucisse d’Ajoie is made using 66% lean pork and 33% fatty pork, such as pork belly or collar. Optional: There is also an allowance to use up to 10% ground beef if desired.

Spices: Salt (1.6-2.0%), whole cumin, ground white pepper, garlic, and nitrates. Optional: Nutmeg and red wine, as long as they don’t dominate the flavor of the saucisse.

Processing: The meat is allowed to be pre-salted before it is ground if it is desired. The meat is ground on a medium grind (5-8mm), traditionally done with a bowl cutter on slow speed. The seasonings are added, and then the mixture is kneaded so that the grain is still visible. The mixture is stuffed into hog casings with a diameter of 32-36 mm. If the coquante version is being made, they are stuffed into sheep casings with a diameter of 20-22 mm.

If the meat has not been pre-salted, it is allowed to hang for 2 hours after stuffing. After this point, the saucisse is smoked with soft wood with maximum temperature of 40 C for at least 24 hours.

The final product should have a pleasant smell of light smoke and be golden brown in outward appearance. Once cut into, it should be a pinkish red, homogenous, with a well-defined 5-8 mm grain.

Traditionally, when these saucisse were made they were kept in the family attic. They were eaten over time, so the first batches were cooked and eaten fresh; when they got down to the later batches, they had been dried over time, and so were eaten raw. The dried version is not included in the IGP protection, but is still being done by those who uphold the tradition and can be found in markets.

On the left, dried saucisse d’Ajoie. On the right, fresh saucisse d’Ajoie.

Timing: The saucisse d’Ajoie is enjoyed year round, but particularly on St. Martin’s Day, around the 11^th of November.

How it’s eaten:

The saucisse d’Ajoie is traditionally cooked in water around 80C, simmering but not quite boiling. It is served with sauerkraut, root vegetables, or green beans. Grilling the saucisse has become very popular with families who have decided to have a picnic during the nice weather of summer and fall. In recognition of this fact, butchers have developed the croquante version, which is thinner and easier to grill.

How I learnt about it:

The saucisse d’Ajoie in particular brings back really good memories for me, because my Dad came to visit me in Switzerland and we traveled to Porrentruy for the St. Martin’s Feast on my birthday.

This way to the Marché…first pig art spotting.

We had a blast catching up, walking through the market place, sampling all of cured meats and local foods, listening to the traditional music, looking t pig inspired art, and learning about local cooking methods.

Scenes from Porrentruy, more pig art sightings.

We shared a croquante d’Ajoie, saucisson sec and Tête de Moine, le gâteau aux patates, les marrons chauds, plenty of vin chaud, and had a fantastic time. It will be a birthday to remember for the ages.

The DIY

*Note: Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Sources:

https://www.aop-igp.ch/fileadmin/Dokumente/Pflichtenhefter/Saucisse_d_Ajoie_Cahier_des_charges.pdf

https://www.aop-igp.ch/fr/saucisse-dajoie-igp/

https://www.patrimoineculinaire.ch/Produit/Saucisse-dAjoie-IGP/21

http://www.boucherievallat.ch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=17

http://www.terroir-juraregion.ch/produits-du-terroir-jura-et-jura-bernois/aop-igp-fr/saucisse-d-ajoie-igp-fr

The Official St. Galler Bratwurst IGP

March 3, 2020 by AOG Leave a Comment

Name: St Galler Bratwurst aka St Galler Kalbsbratwurst aka OLMA Bratwurst

Region: St. Gallen/Appenzell

History:

First and foremost, the most vital thing to know about the St. Galler Bratwurst is that you do NOT eat it with mustard. Seriously, don’t. I did a lot of research about this one, and it appears as though this is one of the worst things that you could do to the heart of a person from St. Gallen. Seriously, google “bratwurst mit senf St. Gallen”, and you won’t be disappointed by gems such as this video. Requesting the St. Galler Bratwurst with mustard seems to be the eastern Switzerland version of asking for pineapple on pizza in Italy; there is no more sure fire way to offend your host and assure them you are a person of low culinary (and most likely therefore also moral) standards.

Whew. Now that we’ve gotten that important bit out of the way, we can focus on what makes the St. Galler Bratwurst so special. Growing up, my favorite of all the Bratwurst was always the veal-based weisswurst that we got from the local German butcher. When I started to explore the world of these white veal-based sausages, I began to realize that they were as unique as the regions they came from, and simply calling them all weisswurst would not do. I started to do some research into them, learning about the percentages of the main ingredients and the spices that were used. After some time doing this, I now feel prepared to make the controversial statement that the St. Galler Bratwurst is my favorite out of all of the ones that I have tried. Bold, I know. But seriously, try it.

The St. Galler Bratwurst is a white sausage that is usually made of both veal and pork, with the veal consisting of at least 50% of the meat proportion, and with the addition of skim cow’s milk accounting for around 1/3 of the entire mixture. Since whole fat milk is a luxury and has been traditionally used to make butter, the left over low fat milk was used for other purposes such as sausage making. Historically from the region of eastern Switzerland, there are written sources that talk about the St. Gallen Bratwurst that go back to the 14^th century; although interestingly, the original were made with pure pork and no veal was added. By the 15^th century, the St. Gallen Butcher’s Guild had laid out the requirements for making the Bratwurst that form the basis for what is still used today. These laid out the use of pork and veal (the young cattle being necessary for its tender meat), spices, the percentage of fat used, and the addition of fresh cow’s milk. If you are interested in reading it for yourself, the requirements are listed as follows:

“Die Satzung der St. Galler Metzgerzunft aus dem Jahr 1438 hält erste Grundsteine zu Rezept und Qualität der St. Galler Bratwurst fest: “Item die Bratwürst söllend sy machen von schwinignenn Braten, unnd darunter hacken gut Kalbelen und jung Ochsen mit Kalber Zenen. Unnd namlich under drü Pfund Bratten ain Pfund Speck tun unnd nit minder. Si sonnd och kain Nieren, Hertz noch Halsflaisch darzu nehmen.”

“Item die Bratwürst soellend sy machen von schwininenn Braten unnd darunder hacken guot kalbelen unnd jung Ochsen mit Kalber Zenen unnd das am minsten umm dry Pfening geschetzt sye, unnd namlich unnder acht Pfund Praten ain Pfund Speck tuon unnd nit minder. Sy soellend och kain Nieren, Hertz noch Halsflaisch darin hacken. Sy soellend och kain Flaisch dartzuo nemen, es sye denn vor geschetzt. Wenn sy aber zuo Ziten, so sy des bedörffend, Kalbeln oder Ochsen Flaisch mitt Kalber Zenen nit finden moegend, so sollend sy kain annder Flaisch dann by der obristen Schatzung dartzuo nemen, ze Buosß an 10 ß von yedem Mal.”

How it’s made:

Meat: The St. Gallen Bratwurst is made using pork and veal, but the percentages can get a bit confusing. An easy way to think about it is that it is a 1:1 mixture of veal and pork, which is then 70% of the total mixture, with milk accounting for the other 30%. To get into the details, when thinking about the entire mixture the percentages are as follows (with allowances for variation between 2-6%): Veal Meat= 37%, Pork meat = 10%, Pork fat =26%, and Milk=27%. Up to 10% Schwartenblock, is allowed to be added as well. (Schwartenblock, also called skin-block, is made from boiling skins, grinding them, and emulsifying them with ice. The mixture is then refrigerated and allowed to form a very rubbery block. This is frequently used in German sausages to give them more juiciness. To read more about this, take a look at Charcutier, Salumiere, and Wurstmeister by Francois Vecchio.)

Spices: Salt (1.5-2.0%), white pepper, and mace. Optional Spices: Lemon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, onion, leeks, celery, parsnips, and coriander.

Processing: The meat is ground and then added to a bowl chopper in order to make an emulsion. At home, this can be done with a food processor. The milk is generally frozen into milk-ice chips, and slowly added into meat mixture as it is in the bowl chopper, in order to create a stable emulsion. The addition of the milk in the frozen form helps to keep the temperature down, which is an important part of the process. The fat is also ground, and then added into the bowl chopper. The spice cure is typically added in at this stage. Creating the emulsion properly can be difficult, and once obtained, needs to be carefully maintained. For more information on this, I encourage reading about emulsions and the chemistry behind this process here.

The emulsified mixture is then put into a stuffer, and stuffed into pig intestines with a diameter of 26-42mm. The final weight varies between 100-300 grams, depending on which type of St. Galler Bratwurst is being made (ranging in size from small to large for the classic, the OLMA, and the Kinderfest versions).

The Bratwurst are cooked in water that is below boiling, around 70 C, until they reach an internal temperature of 68C. Then, they are put directly into cold water to stop to cooking process. They should be bright and white in appearance, tender and homogeneous, with a well-rounded and mildly aromatic flavor, and a pleasant firm bite. In order to eat them, they are best cooked slowly over a charcoal fire for 10-20 minutes at 120-150C, allowed to get golden brown and crispy, but not black. If a fire isn’t possible, they can be cooked in a pan, however in order to maintain the juiciness of the Bratwurst, they should not be pre-cut, which would allow the moisture to escape during the cooking process. Instead, the natural break of the casing along the hull of the sausage indicates that the person cooking the Bratwurst knows what they are doing.

Timing: Like most cured meat products, this one is made during the colder months, traditionally between September and April.

How it’s eaten:

The St. Galler Bratwurst is traditionally eaten after being grilled over a fire, and served with a traditional bread called a Burli. Again, never with mustard unless you are safely inside your own home and vow never to speak of it.

How I learnt about it:

I had the great opportunity to attend the OLMA festival this year in St. Gallen. It is the most well-known agricultural festival in Switzerland, with over 300,000 visitors every year. It has a pig race, a parade, and tons and tons of great local food. I was able to try the OLMA bratwurst here, while I have been able to enjoy the regular St Galler Kalbsbratwurst on a normal day in Switzerland. If you have the opportunity to make it to OLMA, I suggest you don’t miss it.

Video:

Watch a video of it being made by the experts here.

The DIY

Coming soon.

Sources:

Strolghino

November 21, 2019 by AOG Leave a Comment

As Halloween has come and passed, the most witchy of all the salami has been on my mind. Strolghino is usually a thin salami that is made using trimmings from the culatello, and eaten after only a few weeks of aging. Its name is thought to derive from the dialect word “strolga” which translates to a word like “witch”. The strolghino is named so for its power of prediction – it is the first indication of how the prized culatello will turn out a year later.

Planning

For this salami, to make it right, you really want to be doing it alongside of making a culatello and fiocco (as discussed here).

Ideally, you will take the trim left over from the leg in the culatello butchering process and use it to make the strolghino. Separate out the trim into pork 1, pork 2, and fat. For the stronghino, you will use the pork 1 (best quality lean meat with no tendons or fascia) and fat. The pork 2 can be used in any saucisson or sausage that will be cooked.

The flavor of meat from this part of the leg can be incredible, so the salami itself doesn’t need much more. Depending on the breed/age/diet of the pig, the leg you are using may have more or less fat. Generally, strolghino is a more lean salami, so you can aim for 15-30% fat for this salami, which is generally achievable just from the trim you will have.

*Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Cubing

After you have planned the ratios for your meat, it’s time to get started. If you’re breaking down a leg, you may have already done this part. If not, it’s time to prepare the meat to be ground. Making sure you keep everything cold (I par freeze my meat beforehand and return it to the freezer when I am done working with it), cube the meat and fat into 1 inch pieces that will fit into your grinder. You can also hand cut your fat if you prefer, if so aim for ¼ inch pieces.

Grinding and Mixing

After grinding the meat, making sure to keep it cold throughout the entire process, mix the meat, fat, and spices together to get a nice bind. I used a stand mixer on the slowest setting for this, although you can also do this step by hand. You want to mix it enough to get a good bind, but not so much that it becomes mush.

Grind your meat (and your fat if you are not choosing to hand cut it) while it is still partially frozen to make the process go as smoothly as possible. I ground the meat using a coarse die here, and hand cut the fat. You can mix the spice cure with the cubed meat before you grind it, or with the ground meat afterwards. I generally mix it before hand to get better spice cure distribution.

Stuffing

After the meat has been mixed together, it’s time to stuff it. Strolghino generally uses small diameter casings, since those were the ones that were traditionally ready first, and will result in the quickest drying. Here, I used wider diameter casings because I had them on hand. Feel free to use what you have available, but the smaller diameter casings will be more authentic for this.

After stuffing the salami, you can either tie it up by hand, or use netting to secure it.

Fermentation
Temperature: 70ᵒF/21C (strain dependent)
Humidity: 80-90% RH
Time: 48-72 hours (until pH drops to at least 5.3)

After you have stuffed the strolghino into the casings, it’s time for fermentation. The conditions you use for fermentation will depend upon the starter culture strain that you have used. Look it up on the packaging or the website if you’re not sure.

I use B-LC-007, which is a starter culture that requires temperatures of ~70F and a relative humidity ~80-90%. I let the strolghino ferment for ~48 hours, which is about the time it should take to allow the pH to drop into the ideal range. My fermentation chamber is my oven, off, with the light on. This generally gives me the conditions I need.

I don’t currently use a pH meter (they’re relatively expensive), but if you have one, now is the time to use it. Ideally, you want to see the pH drop to around 5.3. In this step, you need to balance the safety concerns (ideally a fast pH drop with American style fast acidifying starter culture) and flavor concerns (ideally a gradual pH drop with European style starter culture). I find the traditional European methods work well for me, but everyone should take into consideration their own concerns when doing this.

Drying
Temperature: 54F/12C
Humidity: 70% RH

After the meat has undergone fermentation, it’s time to let it dry. The strolghino is traditionally only dried around 20 days when in is cased in the traditional small diameter casings. Because I used wider diameter casings, I knew it would not achieve the same level of water loss in that time. So, I hung it in my curing chamber in the usual conditions, ~55F/70%RH, until it lost ~25-30% if its initial weight, which took ~2 months.

Tasting

Ahh. The best part. The tasting. The key to a good strolghino is to use good quality meat and let the quality of the meat shine through by using a simple spice cure. I made this with trimmings from a sow leg from Ham Sweet Farm, and the quality pork flavor shines through. One of my all-time favorites.

Served well on bread.

…without a curing chamber.

Name: Duck Prosciutto

The meat:

Curing (4C/40F, 2+ weeks):

Casing:

Drying (4C/40F, any RH*, 1-2 months):

Tasting:

**Drying (4C/40F, any RH*, 1-2 months)**: