Italian Style Dry Cured Salami

March 7, 2017 by AOG 1 Comment

If you’re looking for a nice, easy salami to make that evokes the sensory experiences of traveling to Italy, look no further than to this salami. This is a good jumping off point to make salami because it uses a moderate amount of traditional, Italian spices. After making this salami, you can decide if you want to use more fennel, make a spicy variety, or throw in some crazy spice that’s a favorite of yours.

Planning Phase:

The first step is to weigh your meat and input it into your spreadsheet. A good ratio of lean meat to fat is generally around 70% to 30%. This can be achieved if you get a nice fatty shoulder, although I like mixing meat from the shoulder and the belly. Based on the weight of the meat, you will be given how much of each spice you want to use.

Then you want to weigh out all the spices that you will be using.

To prepare for the next steps, I like to freeze my meat for a few hours before starting. This helps to keep the meat cold during the grinding process, and makes things go more smoothly.

Cubing Phase:

Next, you want to take the cold meat and cube it into pieces that will fit into your grinder, usually about an inch by an inch by an inch.

I separate the meat from the fat, since I may end up grinding them with different size grinds.

You can cube both the meat and the fat, unless you are planning to hand dice the fat instead of grinding it. If you are planning to hand dice the fat, cut it into pieces that are the size you want in the salami, usually about ¼ of an inch on each side.

Mixing Phase Part 1:

Once the meat and fat is cubed, you want to mix it with the cure spices and the starter culture dissolved either in the wine or if you prefer, water.

Grinding Phase:

Now that you have the meat and fat all mixed with the cure and ready to go, it’s time to grind that meat! I like to use 3/16” grinder plates for the meat and 3/8” grinder plate for the fat (if I decide not to hand dice the fat).

Run the meat through the grinder, making sure to keep everything as cold as possible, and return to the fridge or freezer when not in use.

Mixing Phase Part 2:

When you have finished the grinding phase, you should have a nice mixture of ground meat with the cure mixture and the starter culture thoroughly mixed in. The next step is to mix the meat and the fat together. This can be a tricky part. Ideally, you want to mix the meat and fat so that the mixture becomes tacky and sticks together, but not so much that the fat starts to smear. You can usually accomplish this if you keep the meat cold and work fast. This is either done using a stand mixer or by hand. One you have mixed everything together, you can leave the mixture to chill overnight in the fridge (which can help to increase the cohesion of the meat), or you can move on to the next phase.

Stuffing Phase:

Finally, we’re ready to stuff the meat. There are many options for casings, from the variety of natural casings that are available, to artificial collagen casings. The casings you choose will help determine the final diameter of your product as well as its final shape. Collagen casings are fine, and might be preferred by beginners since they are easy to store and use, don’t have an odor, and are relatively difficult to burst. For the traditional Italian style salami made here, I prefer using beef middles.

In order to stuff salami, you can use the stuffing horn that comes with many grinders, or you can use a dedicated stuffer. I have a dedicated hand crank stuffer, which I prefer to using the grinder to stuff the salami.

The first step is to tie off the end of the casing, and slide it down the stuffing horn.

With one hand on the casing, and one hand working the stuffer, start to stuff the salami at a constant rate. Ideally, you want to allow the meat to fill up the casing without having room for air gaps. This will put pressure on the casing walls, hopefully without bursting the casing. This is easier in certain types of casings compared to others, and over time you’ll find the right balance of pressure to apply to the casings that you use. When you get to the end of the casing, tie it off, and start again with a new casing until you finish stuffing all of the meat that you have prepared.

Fermentation Phase:
Temperature: 75ᵒF/23-24C
Humidity: 80-90% RH (strain dependent)
Time: 48-72 hours (until pH drops to at least 5.3)

At this point, you’ve finished all the heavy lifting! You want to put your salami in a fermentation chamber in order to jump start the beneficial starter culture that was added to the meat, which will make it both safer and tastier over time. People have come up with very clever ways to do this, from dedicated chambers to DIY hacks. The temperature and humidity you want will vary based on the starter culture that you use. For B-LC-007, I aim for 64-75 ⁰F and 80-90% humidity. In order to achieve this, I use my oven with the light on and an open pan with water in it. I also spray the meat with a bactoferm mold-600 solution to encourage the growth of the beneficial penicillium nalgiovense.

If you have a pH meter, you want to monitor the pH during this phase. Ideally, the pH will drop below 5.3 during the fermentation phase. If you don’t have a fermentation meter, you can do this stage by time and smell. I generally let my salami ferment for 48-72 hours before moving on to the next phase.

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

After you’ve allowed your salami to ferment for the appropriate amount of time, it’s time to let it dry. This is best done in a curing chamber with a temperature around 55F and a humidity of 70% RH.

Overtime, you will see beneficial mold growth on the salami in your curing chamber.

I track the salami weight loss over time, and pull them from the chamber at 40% loss of the original weight.

Tasting Phase:

And now, to the best phase of making salami! The taste testing. When the salami have reached 40% weight loss, I pull them from the chamber.

I remove the casing, rinse the down with red wine or vinegar, and slice them on a bias.

These Italian style salami make a nice addition to a home cured meat platter.

Or packaged up to give to friends and family.

Isn’t it just beautiful?

Smile!

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.

Lardo Ibérico de Bellota

February 7, 2017 by AOG 8 Comments

Lardo. Aka FAT. Or, as a friend of mine described this upon tasting it, “The most delicious rosemary fat ever.” Yeah. I like that description. There are a number of ways to make lardo. Some traditional lardo is made in Italy by soaking the backfat in an aromatic brine inside marble vats for months to years. Others use a dry cure, either excess or equilibrium. How it is cured doesn’t matter, but the important thing is to get a nice thick slab of back fat to cure, which is usually best acquired from a farmer who has raised pigs to have a great fat profile. Some people allow lardo to cure and then serve it. Others cure it, let it hang to dry, and then serve it. Because lardo is 100% fat, it won’t lose much moisture when hung, and many people don’t find it necessary to hang to dry. Fat, spices, and time. That’s all it takes.

Curing (6 months+):

For my lardo, I obtained a nice piece of ibérico de bellota backfat.

I used an aromatic equilibrium cure.

I covered the fat from light during the curing phase to prevent oxidation which can lead to discoloration. I allowed the lardo to cure for 6 months. Spices migrate slower in fat than they do in meat, and this allows them to migrate and equalize over time, and to develop flavor.

Tasting:

I decided not to hang this lardo. After it was done curing, I rinsed it off and sliced it with a few other home cured meats.

Wow. Rosemary fat is right. Decadent and delicious. Perfect served on a piece of toasted bread.

Pancetta Tesa Ibérico de Bellota

February 2, 2017 by AOG 2 Comments

Pancetta is a cured meat product made from pork belly. There are two major different types, which are then done in different styles based on regional differences. The two major types are semi-dried and fully-dried. The semi-dried is more similar to bacon. It is cured, and hung to dry for maybe a week or two. It is then stored in the fridge or freezer, sliced, and cooked before eating. The fully dried is cured, and hung to dry until it loses about 30% of its starting weight, which usually takes a few months. The fully-dried doesn’t need to be cooked to be eaten, but it can be if desired. The semi-dried uses Cure #1 like bacon does, and the fully dried uses Cure #2 like other dry cured meats.

Now, these are the two major types, but they are both done in many different styles in different regions. The most recognizable style is probably pancetta arrotolata, which is where the pork belly rolled to create a long round cured meat that is then hung to dry. When it is sliced, you get pretty circular slices. Another type that is made is pancetta tesa. This is the pork belly cured, allowed to stay flat, and hung. When it is sliced, you get long thin slices.

In this post, I will be talking about making pancetta tesa from an iberico de bellota pork belly.

Curing (2 weeks +):

The pork belly is put into an aromatic cure. It is allowed to cure for 2+ weeks.

Casing (1 hour+):

The meat is taken out of the cure, rinsed and dried, is cased in a beef bung, and netted to hang.

Drying (1 month+):

The meat is allowed to hang until it has lost 20-30% of its initial weight. Because this is a fattier cut, it’s won’t too surprising if it doesn’t lose the full 30%.

Tasting: When the meat is out of the curing chamber, slice it thin, and enjoy!

And don’t forget, you can always take some with you as a nice to-go snack!

Capocollo Ibérico de Bellota

January 30, 2017 by AOG Leave a Comment

Capocollo ibérico de bellota. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes. My previous post on making capocollo used a bit of a fancier cure. Here I had such a fantastic piece of ibérico de bellota meat that I used as simple a cure as possible.

Curing (2 weeks+): I weighed the meat for this project, and calculated the simple cure that would be used.

The meat was allowed to stay in the cure for at least 2 weeks. In this case, it stayed in a few months because I got busy, one of the benefits of using an equilibrium cure.

Casing (1 hour+): The meat was taken out of the cure, rinsed and patted dry, cased in a beef bung, and netted.

Drying (3 months+): This meat was allowed to hang until it lost 30% of its weight.

Tasting: WOW. This was a fantastic piece of meat, with just basic prompting from me, it turned into a fantastic cured meat. This is a winner. I will be doing this one again.

Perfect to slice up and serve as a snack.

That’s some beautiful meat right there.

Love to see that great fat.

Capocollo

January 30, 2017 by AOG Leave a Comment

Coppa. Capocollo. Gabagool. I love how cured meats have so many different and interesting names. The general idea here is that the muscle that runs along the neck of the pork shoulder is dry cured. This cured meat product is generally called Coppa in northern Italy, and cured in a more northern manner with spices particular to the region. Capocollo is the name in southern Italy, and since “Capo” means the head in Italian, and “collo” means the neck, you can see that the name is descriptor of where the muscle lies. Personally, I find the history of the name gabagool to be the most fascinating. Called gabagool by Italian-Americans, primarily in the state of New Jersey, this is a very cool regionalism. The majority of the immigrants who came to America and settled in New Jersey were from southern Italy and Sicily. Italy has a number of regional dialects/languages, and in the south, there is a pattern of dropping of the last vowel in words and the pronunciation of “c” as “g” (see this fantastic article for more details: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained). With these linguistic changes, capocollo becomes gabagool. Just because these names are all different, doesn’t mean that any of them are wrong per se, just regional variations.

Curing (2 weeks+):

First, you will need to harvest the coppa from the shoulder, or have it butchered for you. In this post, I will be using a beautiful piece of meat from a Mangalitsa pig. These are an Old World breed pig that are indigenous to Hungary. They are well known for the quality and quantity of fat that they have, which makes them a perfect breed to use in meat curing.

First, I weighed the meat and put the value into my curing spreadsheet.

All of the cure ingredients were weighed.

They were then mixed, and spread onto the meat.

The meat was vacuum sealed with the cure ingredients and allowed to cure in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Casing (1 hour+):

After sitting in the cure for 2 weeks, the meat was rinsed off and patted dry. For this meat, I wanted to leave a coating of toasted fennel and peperoncini around the outside. I mixed these together in a bowl first.

Then, I coated the meat with the spices.

I cased this in a beef bung. In order to do this, I soaked the beef bung in warm water for about an hour before I started.

Then I slowly stuffed the meat into the beef bung casing.

This was finally netted and weighed.

Drying (3 months+): The meat was allowed to hang in the curing chamber for 3 months, and the weight loss was tracked over time.

Over time, there was increased beneficial mold growth and weight loss, avoiding areas with high concentration of peperoncini.

At around 3 months, it reached 30% weight loss, and was pulled from the chamber.

—

Tasting: When this meat was sliced it looked beautiful! The flavor was a bit over powering at first, but after it was allowed to equalize in the fridge under vacuum seal for a few more months, it was outstanding!

Lomo Ibérico de Bellota

January 25, 2017 by AOG 4 Comments

Lomo ibérico de bellota. The cousin cured meat to the world famous jamón ibérico de bellota. This was a real fun one to make. I was able to get some raw ibérico de bellota pork loin and cure it to make the Spanish style lomo ibérico de bellota. The quality of this meat was evident from the start; even the raw meat itself smelled amazing. After some time in the cure and curing chamber, the result was a fantastic quality cured meat product. If you can get your hands on some raw ibérico de bellota meat to cure, I definitely suggest it.

Curing (3+ weeks):

First, the ibérico de bellota pork loin was weighed and put into a simple cure.

Casing (1 hour):

After spending some time in the cure (3 months, whoops!), the meat was taken out, rinsed, patted dry, and cased in a beef bung, and netted.

Drying (6+weeks):

The lomo stayed in the curing chamber until it lost ~30% of its weight. It was pulled and sliced.

WOW. The taste of this lomo ibérico de bellota is fantastic. This one is definitely a keeper.

Lonza

January 24, 2017 by AOG Leave a Comment

Lomo. Lonza. Lonzino. Not a magical spell or the conjugation of a foreign word, but some of the different names that cured pork loin goes by. In this post, I will discuss a basic lonza that I have cured with your regular, run of the mill pork loin from Costco. I used an interesting spice mix which I have used before and really come to like for this type of product. One of the cool things about meat curing is that fantastic starting products yield fantastic end products, but adequate starting predicts still yield great final products. I am a huge fan of buying great quality, responsibly raised meat from local farmers that you know. However, this isn’t always an option, and Costco still has pretty good quality meat that is great for meat curing experiments.

Curing (3+ weeks):

The pork loin was rinsed and dried before the cure was added. It was allowed to cure for 4 weeks in the fridge.

Casing (1 hour):

The cured pork loin was taken out of the cure after about a month. It was rinsed off and patted dry. It was then cased in a beef bung casing.

After netting, it was hung in the curing chamber and allowed to dry.

Drying (3+ months):

The lonza was allowed to hang in the curing chamber for around 3 months, losing 30% of its total weight.

At this point, it was removed from the chamber, the casing was removed, and it was sliced open to taste.

Tasting:

Ahh. Fantastic.

There is something about dry curing meat that really brings out the best flavors in the meat. Even this meat, from such a common source, is great after its time spent curing and drying. It looks like traditional lonza or lomo meat does, and tastes pretty good. I look forward to making many sandwiches and snacks with this meat.

Home-cured Bacon

January 19, 2017 by AOG Leave a Comment

Everybody loves bacon these days. Bacon is as hip and cool as mustaches and kale apparently are. There is bacon in Bloody Mary’s, bacon flavored chap-stick, even bacon made wallets. Now, I am all for the propagation of bacon love, but I do have a serious bone to pick with what a lot of these so called bacon lovers are eating; cardboard, bone-dry, lean strips of brown meat with a thin strip of fat. Sad, pathetic, little bacon strips. Not all pork belly is born equal, and not all bacon is the same. I believe that if you’re going to eat something as delicious and maybe not so healthy for you as bacon, you should do it in moderation, and go all in, eating the best, most delicious bacon you can get your hands on. And let’s face facts folks; well-smoked, thick cut, meaty flavor, marbled bacon is rare. And that’s why I’m writing this, and presumably, why you’re here. Making your own bacon is one way to make sure that you are really getting all the enjoyment that you can out of that sodium/fat bullet to your heart. Here, I will discuss my process of making bacon. One of the most important aspects of any meat curing process is obtaining good quality meat from animals that have been raised well. I was fortunate enough to pick up this meat from Ham Sweet Farm, a farm that is committed to raising quality, happy animals. The proof is in the bacon.

Curing (2+ weeks):

The first step is to take a pork belly and cure it in a cure mixture of salt and spices. A lot of people use excess curing for bacon, but I really suggest using equilibrium curing. It results in a much more controlled end product and allows for life to get in the way with no adverse effect on your product. Depending on the thickness of your bacon, it can usually take around 1-3 weeks for the cure to penetrate the meat. I usually put my meat in vacuum sealed bag with the cure in the fridge during this part of the process. There are no downsides to leaving the meat in the cure for a bit longer when you use an equilibrium cure, which is good for me, because I left this meat in the cure for almost 2 months.

I used two different cures for this bacon, a more traditional bacon cure and a maple syrup cure.

Smoking (4+hours)

After the pork belly has been in the cure for an appropriate amount of time, it’s time to smoke it. Some people hot smoke bacon, but I feel like that really ruins the complex flavors you can create in bacon, so I cold smoke my bacon. In cold smoking, you aim to keep the temperature below 90F/32C. This allows for the meat to take on a smoked flavor, without the meat actually cooking.

First, take the pork belly out of the cure, rinse it off in cold water, and dry it off.

Then, place it in a cold smoking set up.

You can leave it in the smoke for as long as you would like, depending on your flavor preferences. I like the 4-5 hour time span, which allows for a nice complex smoky flavor without being too overpowering.

Equalizing (Overnight):

After the pork belly has been smoked, it is now bacon! However, if you try to slice it and eat it right away, you may find that it isn’t exactly to your taste. You’ll want to let it rest and equalize overnight in the refrigerator so that the smoke flavor can spread throughout the meat.

The next day, you can take the bacon out of the fridge and start to fry it up!

After tasting some, I generally move the whole piece of bacon to the freezer and let it freeze, before using a meat slicer to thick slice it into pieces.

These are then stored in a vacuum sealed bag in the freezer. Great for Sunday morning breakfasts or gifts for family and friends!

Salmon and Tuna Lox with Capers

June 2, 2016 by AOG Leave a Comment

Everyone knows that lox is generally made with salmon. However, after doing some experimenting with mosciame/mojama/tuna prosciutto as discussed in detail in previous posts, I started to wonder why no one ever made tuna lox. People eat raw tuna, they eat cured and aged tuna, but I haven’t ever seen anyone eating just cured tuna, or tuna lox. So, I decided to give it a go.

In addition to generally being made with salmon, lox tends to be adorned with capers after it has been cured, but it is not generally cured with capers. This means the caper flavor never really permeated the flavor of the lox. I decided to experiment with this as well, to see if a caper cure added a beneficial flavor to the lox.

This post will detail my 4 condition lox experiment: control salmon lox, control tuna lox, caper salmon lox, and caper tuna lox.

The Fish:

For this experiment, I bought pieces of salmon and sushi grade ahi tuna.

The Cure:

For the control cure, I used my normal 1:1 ratio of brown sugar:salt. For the caper cure, I blended salt cured capers and added it to a 1:1 cure of brown sugar:salt.

Curing (24 hour):

I let the fish cure for 24 hours in this excess cure in order to maximize the effect of adding the capers. Ideally, it would cure longer to let the caper flavor to permeate the fish better. However, when using an excess cure this is not an option. In the future, I plan to try this with an equilibrium cure to allow for longer curing times.

Tasting:

The tasting for these experiments was very interesting! The control tuna really took on the sweetness of the cure more than the salmon did. I didn’t expect the control tuna to taste too much different than raw tuna does, but the cure really added a level of complexity. It was really cool to see how the flavor of the salmon and tuna both changed from the simple addition of a cure. In the future, I will be curing more tuna lox as an alternative to the traditional salmon lox!

The caper tuna and salmon was a pretty cool experiment as well. The fish really took on a green tinge from the cure which may be a discouraging factor from a restaurant point of view, but from a home curer’s point is more of a point of fascination. The flavor was not as strong as I would have liked, and in the future I think I will repeat this experiment with an equilibrium cure with a longer cure time. Overall though, it had a subtle caper taste that really complimented both the flavor of the tuna and salmon lox. A perfect way to pair the flavor of capers with lox, without the strong flavor that accompanies biting into a caper itself.

So, was curing tuna a good idea? Was adding capers to the cure a good idea? YES! Both of these experiments yielded promising results that I was able to enjoy, as well as to confuse friends and family with. Tuna lox, the new food craze of the year. You heard it here first!

Disclaimer: Curing fish 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.

Quick Lox

June 1, 2016 by AOG Leave a Comment

I have previously written about making Nova lox utilizing a 3 step process: a dry cure (12 hr), a brine (12 hr), and cold smoking (4 hr). You can find the details here: “3 Step Lox”. While I have found that this longer 3 step process yields the best overall final product, it tends to take a good amount of time and effort, and sometimes you just want lox right here, right now. This is my quick and dirty method for making lox. It is one simple step, and results in a pretty delicious final product.

The Fish:

Buy (or catch) the freshest, highest quality grade salmon that you can find. I generally buy a large fillet from a local Asian supermarket that is known for their high quality seafood.

The Cure:

This method utilizes a simple, excess cure. It is a 1:1 mixture of brown sugar/salt, and you just need enough to simply cover the salmon. I like to use sea salt, but you can use whatever you have on hand. Sometimes, I will add dill to the cure as well.

The Curing Process (12-24 hr):

Let the salmon sit in the cure for 12-24 hours. It is important that the brown sugar/salt mixture is in close contact with the fish in this time.

I like to vacuum seal the salmon in with the cure to ensure as much contact with as little mess as possible. However, there are many other methods you can use. For example, using plastic wrap to cover the fish and the cure, and placing the cure covered salmon in a Tupperware container with a weight on top works as well.

Just be aware that as the curing progresses, the cure will pull water out of the salmon. This can make for a bit of a mess, so make sure you are curing in a deep dish if you are not vacuum sealing your salmon in with the cure.

Post-Cure:

After 12-24 hours, remove the salmon from the cure and rinse it off in cold water.

Pat dry, and top with cracked pepper and dill.

Tasting:

The salmon can be eaten immediately after it is removed from the cure, but it will get better if it is given some time (2-12 hours) to equalize. Slice thin, and enjoy!

Storage:

The lox is best eaten fresh, but can be stored in the refrigerator (preferably under vacuum seal) or in the freezer.