‘Nduja

August 24, 2017 by AOG 5 Comments

‘Nduja (en-DOO-yah) wanna do something fun today? Make ‘nduja! If you’re looking for something that is the opposite of subtle, that will kick you in the face and leave you smiling, look no further. ‘Ndjua is a fatty, fiery hot, smoked, spreadable salami that is perfect on some crusty Italian bread or as base for pasta sauce. The combination of spice, smoke, and fat will leave you constantly craving more.

Planning Phase:

The process of making ‘nduja may seem odd to you if you’re used to making traditional salami. The ratios you need to use may seem completely ridiculous. Don’t worry. If it seems excessive, it is. That’s the point. You’re going to want 70% meat and 30% pepper.

In the 70% meat fraction, you want 85% fat and 15% lean meat. No, that’s not a typo. This salami is mostly fat. There are a number of ways to get to this. You can use straight belly or jowls, which tend to have this ratio naturally. Or, you can use backfat and mix it with lean meat.

In the 30% pepper fraction, you can vary the ratios based on tastes. I used 50% sweet pepper and 50% hot pepper. (Just a note: There are a number of ways to make the pepper fraction for ‘nduja. Some people use dried whole peppers, others use dry pepper powder, and still others use paste. If you are using dried whole peppers, you will need to put them through your grinder first. Once they are ground, you can reconstitute them into a paste.) For mine, I used a combination of dry pepper powder and pepper paste to get to my 30% total pepper.

Cubing and Mixing Phase:

Once you have weighed all of your ingredients, you can put them aside while you deal with the meat. First, you want to cube the meat into smaller chunks that will fit in your grinder. I par-freeze my meat, and keep it in the freezer while I am working to ensure that it stays cold and therefore grinds more easily. After the meat is cut, I mix it with the spice cure that I previously had measured out. Some people wait until the meat is ground to mix in the spices, which is also an option, but I feel as though I get a better mixing process achieved by mixing them before grinding (however, it makes my grinder a lot messier this way).

Grinding and Stuffing Phase:

After the meat and spices are mixed, I ran it through the grinder on a fine grind. After the meat was ground, I mixed it in a stand mixer on a low speed to promote adhesion. Then I added the mixture to my vertical stuffer and stuffed the meat into hog middles, a traditional casing for ‘nduja.

Fermentation Phase:

~70F/80-90%RH (starter culture dependent)

After stuffing, I allowed the meat to ferment for 48 hours in my fermentation chamber (aka my oven with the light on, a pan of water at the bottom, and the occasional water spray bottle service).

Cold Smoking Phase:

After the fermentation stage was done (and boy was I glad when this time was up, hog middles stink like no other casing I have worked with before), I put the meat into my cold smoking set up, and cold smoked them with beech wood for 4+ hours.

Drying Phase:

~55F/70%RH

After cold smoking, I tied and weighed each of them.

Then I hung them up in the curing chamber to dry.

‘Nduja has such a high fat content that it’s not expected to lose much weight in the drying phase (10-20%), but importantly it experiences a maturation of flavor in this time. Most people hang their ‘nduja by time instead of weight loss for this reason, and I picked a time point of 2 months.

Tasting Phase:

After 2 months, my ‘nduja had each lost about 20% of their initial weight, more than I expected.

I cut it open and was excited by how beautiful it looked. So, I dove right in. I took a knife and spread some onto a nice piece of toasted sourdough.

WOW. I was blown away; an instant favorite. I knew that I had better start a second batch immediately, because I was going to find a way to sneak this into every dish I made, as well as eat it as a snack as often as possible.

It’s a great way to start a sauce for pasta.

Really, just great all around.

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.

Pancetta Arrotolata

August 24, 2017 by AOG 4 Comments

Previously, I have discussed the different types of pancetta that are commonly made. You can read more about it in my post here. The take away points are that pancetta can either be semi-dried or fully-dried, made either flat (Tesa) or rolled (arrotolata). I prefer the fully dried version of pancetta, so here I made the fully-dried version of pancetta arrotolata.

Pancetta arrotolata is what many people traditionally think of when they think of pancetta. Beautiful streaks of meat and fat, winding in and out, creating a circle of perfection.

Planning Phase:

In order to make pancetta arrotolata, you will need to start with a flat pork belly. You can either use a pork belly that has skin on or skin off. Skin on is traditional, and ensures that you will have a slower, steadier weight loss. The downsides are that it can take a lot of time to lose the weight you need and it is a bit trickier to manipulate. I used skin on for mine, but if I were to do it again, I might choose to do skin off and save the skin for another purpose.

First, weigh the pork belly, and put the weight of the meat into your spice cure spreadsheet to get the values that you need to use for your spice cure mixture. Pancetta is generally made with aromatic spices, so that is what I did here.

Curing Phase (3+ weeks):

After the spice cure is weighed, mix it, and add it to the meat, making sure cover the meat thoroughly.

Add it to a vacuum sealed or ziplock bag, and leave it to penetrate the meat for 3+ weeks in the fridge.

Casing and Tying Phase:

After the meat has cured, it’s rinsed and dried. Now, pancetta arrotolata has a few extra steps that pancetta tesa does not have. Anytime you introduce an exterior into the interior of a meat that will be cured, you increase the possibility of things going awry. When rolling the pancetta, you want to make sure that you roll it as tight as possible, so that you don’t introduce air pockets into the cured where undesirables can thrive. Toasted black peppercorns can be added to the meat to help protect against the growth of bad bacteria, as well as for flavor.

There are a few ways to roll pancetta arrotolata, but I chose to use a traditional method. For this method, a flap of skin is removed from the underlying belly, but remains attached to the test of the skin. With the meat side of the belly facing upwards, a cut is made in the center, and half of the belly is cut into two thinner pieces, still attached to the rest of the meat. The exposed meat is covered with black peppercorns, and rolled up from the thin side to the thick side. My butchering left a bit to be desired, but take a look at the pictures to get an idea of what I mean. If this sounds too complicated for you, you can just roll the belly up tightly, making sure to cut off the skin on the areas that will be rolled into the interior.

After the belly is rolled up tightly, you want to make sure it stays that way. Traditionally this is done by tying string around the meat and making sure it’s as tight as possible. Another way to do this is to use zip ties. Zip ties are less aesthetically pleasing, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get a ruined piece of meat at the end with a lot of air pockets and interior mold growth, so I used them.

The skin acts as a natural casing for this meat, so you don’t need to case it if you are doing it skin on. If you are doing it skin off, I would suggest using a natural casing to slow the weight loss and to maintain more even drying. After its all tied up tightly and cased, I added string to hang it.

Drying Phase (3+ months)

55F/70%RH

It was allowed to hang in the curing chamber at 55F/70%RH. My target weight loss was 30%, but I was happy to pull it when it reached 20% due to its high fat content.

After 3-4 months, I pulled the pancetta arrotolata at ~20% weight loss.

The outside looked gnarly.

But the inside looked beautiful.

Decadent and delicious.

Guanciale

March 9, 2017 by AOG 4 Comments

Sometimes, you need to undertake a multi-month process in order to make a great dish of pasta for dinner. In this case, that process starts with a pig jowl and ends in a delicious plate of pasta all’amatriciana. Yup, I’m talking about making guanciale, or a dry cured pig jowl.

Planning Phase:

This process starts with a nice piece of pig jowl, or pig cheek. In my case, I picked up a pig jowl from a local farmer’s market. I did some research into traditional cures that would give it good flavor without being too overpowering.

Curing Phase (2 weeks+):

I weighed the meat and the spices first.

Then, I vacuum sealed them and allowed it to cure in the fridge.

It should stay in the cure for a minimum of 2 weeks, although I left mine in for 4 months because I got distracted. That’s one of the major benefits of using an equilibrium cure, the meat can stay in it for while while life happens.

Drying Phase (2 months+):

After 4 months (whoops) I took the meat out of cure, rinsed it in cold water, patted it dry, and coated it with black pepper. I used a needle and thread to sew a hole through the meat in order to hang it up in the curing chamber.

The meat was hung in the curing chamber for 2 months, until its weight loss plateaued at 20%.

Tasting Phase:

I sliced this up thin to taste it, and boy does it have some good flavor.

Without being overpowering, this cure brought out the best of the flavor of the pork jowl.

Sliced thin, this is perfect for tasting.

I cut thicker stripes to use as a base for pasta sauce.

Pasta all’amatriciana and carbonara here I come!

Soppressata Piccante

March 7, 2017 by AOG 6 Comments

Perhaps the most well-known Italian dry cured salami – Soppressata Piccante. I had been dying to make this salami for a while, and finally decided to jump in when I had some help from my sister. You know what they say about meat curing; families that cure meat together, stay together. I designed this salami based on the Soppressata Piccante di Calabria, but I didn’t strictly adhere to D.O.P. guidelines. I think this may be one of the best salami I have ever made.

Planning Phase:

To make this salami, I put together a cure ratio based on what I have seen used for soppressata.

Cubing Phase:

Then, I cubed the meat and the fat and mixed them with the spice cure.

Grinding Phase:

After the meat was cubed and mixed with the spice cure, it was put through the grinder. After the meat and fat was ground, it was mixed together in stand mixer while COLD until the meat was tacky and sticking together, without the fat starting to smear.

Stuffing Phase:

The meat was then stuffed into beef bung casing, which are a larger diameter and perfect for soppressata, which can also be made with hog middles or crespone. I also used a beef middle for some leftovers that I had.

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

The soppressata was allowed to ferment for 72 hours at 75 F and 80% RH. This was done in my modified fermentation chamber (aka my oven with the light on and an open pan of water).

I didn’t press these, but I could have. In this case, gravity took care of it for me, and after the fermentation stage, they took on the characteristic soppressata shape.

Netting Phase:

After the fermentation, the soppressata was netted and prepared to move into the curing chamber.

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

After the soppressata was fermented and netted, it was moved into the curing chamber to dry.

It was allowed to stay in the chamber for 3 months, over which time it developed a nice beneficial mold growth.

It was pulled at the end of this time, at around 40% weight loss.

Tasting Phase:

Andddd the best part, the tasting. Look at that guy.

This one is awesome. Flavorful. Spicy without being overpowering. An overall winner.

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!

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.