Culatello

December 30, 2018 by AOG 2 Comments

“And if you don’t know, now you know.” -The Notorious B.I.G.

Culatello and Fiocco di Prosciutto (…plus the Rumpetto)

While most people like prosciutto, only those who really know, know of and enjoy culatello. Culatello is often referred to as the heart of the Prosciutto. It is created when you take the freshly cut rear leg of a pig and you remove the leg bones from it. In doing this, you create two whole muscle bundles of meat. The larger of these is the prized culatello di prosciutto while the smaller of the two is the fiocco di prosciutto, often passed off as the ugly step sibling of the culatello, but quite wrongly so. The culatello, while made from the same part of the pig as the prosciutto, has a much different flavor; earthy and sweet, a delicate balance of fat and meat that dissolves on your tongue.

The Meat

In order to butcher out the culatello and fiocco, you are going to need to understand a bit of the anatomy of the rear leg. Usually, you will receive a leg primal with part of the hip bone still attached. At the face of the meat, the hip bone articulates with the proximal end of the femur. The femur bone runs through the upper portion of the pig rear leg, the distal end of which articulates with the tibia and the patella to form the knee joint. Then, the tibia and the fibula run through the lower portion of the leg. It’s important to understand how these bones lie in the meat, in order to understand how we will need to remove them to get at the culatello and fiocco cleanly.

Once you have situated yourself, the first step is to skin the leg. You can either do this now, or wait until you have removed the aitch bone. Either way is fine. Do this carefully, making sure to leave on as much fat as possible. I’m still working on my skinning skills, so it takes me some time and effort to do this, but experts can do this in a few quick knife strokes.

Next, you want to remove the portion of the hip bone that articulates with the proximal end of the femur, commonly referred to as the aitch bone. You want to gently remove the aitch bone from the head of the femur, cutting any connective tissue between the two that you come across. This will become easier with practice, as you familiarize yourself with the shape of the bone and the way it protrudes into the meat. It is important to do this carefully, and not cut unnecessarily into the meat. Feel free to use your hands to feel around the bone and inform your cuts. Free the aitch bone entirely, and remove it from the leg.

When the aitch bone is removed from the leg, it should have as little meat on it as possible, meaning that your cuts were clean and efficient. Mine is not quite there, but with practice, makes perfect.

After you have removed the aitch bone, you should have what looks like an Italian style prosciutto leg, with the exposed ball joint at the face of the meat.

Similarly to making a prosciutto, what you want to do at this point is start to milk the femoral vein. After death, blood can pool in the venous system, even if the blood was drained during the slaughtering process. We want to eliminate all the blood from this piece of meat before we start curing, or it could negatively impact our end results. There are a number of videos and descriptions online of how to do this, but briefly, I attempt to trace the femoral vein through its course in the leg, starting at the distal end and working my way to the proximal face. I apply as much pressure as possible, and attempt to force blood out of the vein in this manner. It’s also important to note, this isn’t a process you can do only once. If you receive a leg that has been frozen, sometimes the blood will be frozen as well, and won’t drain on the day you are cutting. Its important to do this multiple times throughout the process, to make sure all the blood is really drained.

Finally, it’s time to do the thing that, if you’re experienced making prosciutto, seems sacrilegious; cutting into the leg. There are traditional ways to do this, but I’ve found a method that I prefer and that works for me. I prefer to cut straight down on top of the bone, and carefully extract it. As someone with less experience, this method helps me to make sure that I don’t commit any grievous errors. If you are more experienced, you can simply “know” where the bone runs, and cut the culatello off by feel.

Once I have exposed the bone and freed it from its attachments to the bundles of meat that are the culatello and fiocco, you have a few options for how you want to cut them out. I like this method, because by leaving both the culatello and fiocco attached, you gain a triangular shaped whole muscle at the face of the prosciutto.

I like to make the first cut across the leg, to trim up the faces of the culatello and fiocco, while simultaneously freeing this meat that I call the rumpetto. I like to cure this with spices and cold smoke it, in a modified version of speck. If you don’t save this muscle whole, you can use this extra meat for salami.

Once the face of the meat is trimmed, you can cut out the entire culatello and fiocco.

You want to trim the culatello into its characteristic teardrop shape. Once you have trimmed it up, you want to tie it using tight slip knots, to help it maintain its shape and make sure there are no air pockets created during the butchering process. And that’s it! You’ve shaped your culatello and fiocco.

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

For the salting of culatello, I like to keep it simple. I do an equilibrium cure with salt, black pepper, and cure #2. Some people don’t use cure #2 for whole muscles like this, but I do. I generally cure both the culatello and fiocco in this simple cure, although sometimes I will experiment a bit with the fiocco. I keep them curing in a vacuum sealed bag in the fridge. 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.

For the rumpetto, I used an alpine spice mix generally used for making speck.

*Notes:

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

2- I like to use equilibrium curing. It allows me some flexibility in when I process the meat after curing, since the time left in the cure doesn’t matter, it is the percentages that are used that do. However, some people don’t do this type of curing and use excess curing instead. In excess curing, it is the time that the meat is left in the cure that matters. If you would rather do excess curing for culatello, cure the culatello in excess sea salt for 1 day per kg of meat. (For example, for a prosciutto that weights 14 kg, this means it would stay in excess sea salt for 14 days).

Casing

Once the culatello and fiocco have been allowed to cure for the appropriate amount of time, you need to rinse them and case them. The culatello is traditionally cased in a hog bladder, since it is one of the few things that will expand to the necessary size. Depending on where you live, you may be able to find hog bladders for sale online. I like the ones that have been packed in salt, not the ones that have been pre-dried that you need to rehydrate. However, it’s really whatever works for you.

You will need to soak the bladder first, to allow it to relax and expand.

When you’re ready to go, you cut open the mouth of the bladder, and stuff the rinsed and dried culatello inside. It may seem like it won’t fit, but chances are it will. Once its in, you need to sew the bladder back to together. You can do this using any type of needle and thread that works, or even surgical sutures! I treat the fiocco the same way as the culatello, so by the end I have two pieces of meat encased in bladders.

Once the meat is cased in the bladder, it’s time to tie it. Experts can do this process in the matter of 10 minutes or less. The rest of us can be happy just to have it done. It’s hard to explain the tying of the culatello, because you really need to watch it being done. There are a number of videos online for it, so I suggest searching google for videos on how to do the tying. The traditional culatello di Zibello type of tying is what we’re going for here. Of course, at this point the tying is mostly aesthetic, but it’s nice to learn the tradition and can actually be quite fun.

On the other hand, the rumpetto was easily cased in a beef bung, and was hand tied more simply. After tying, it was cold smoked for 4 hours using beechwood.

Drying (13C/55F, 70%RH, 9-12 months):

After you have tied your culatello, fiocco, and rumpetto, you are ready to let them hang.

Here, the hard part is the waiting. You are shooting for ~30% loss, but you also want to allow it to hang for enough time to develop a good flavor. I try to leave my fiocco hanging for at least 6 months and the culatello for at least 9 months, a year if I can handle it.

First, I pulled the rumpetto, or baby speck.

After the rumpetto, I pulled the fiocco.

Finally, it was time to pull the culatello.

Tasting

The nice part about curing the all 3 cuts (the rumpetto, the fiocco, and the culatello), is that the rumpetto is done after a short 3 months and the fiocco is done after 6 months, which allows you to satisfy your taste bud curiously about how the process went.

The rumpetto was cut into first.

The smoky fat combined really well with the alpine spices in this baby speck.

The first time I cut into the fiocco I was shocked.

After hearing about how it was the poor step sibling of the culatello, I wasn’t expecting too much. It was great. A nice strong flavor, and well balanced meat to fat ratio.

Cut forward 6 months to the culatello. When I cut open the culatello I think my jaw dropped. Jaw dropping beauty and flavor to match.

It was only then when I realized why the fiocco was called the ugly step sibling of the culatello. Not because the fiocco isn’t great, but because the culatello is SO fantastic. It’s hard to describe the flavor, but the balance of earthy sweetness with salty funk and smooth fat is the ultimate experience.

It’s great served by itself, with some crusty bread, or with some melon. Just make sure you have another one in the making, because it won’t last long!

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.

Prosciutto

September 16, 2018 by AOG 12 Comments

“This is it. The big one. The one we’ve all been waiting for.” -Oliver Wood

When I was a kid, I begged my parents to buy me lunchables; instead, they stocked my brown paper bag with prosciutto, mortadella, and crackers. In high school, prosciutto and arugula sandwiches became my daily lunch and pre-sports snack. When I studied abroad in Pisa, I alternated between caprese sandwiches and the wide range of salumi available to me, always finding a way back to the prosciutto. When I traveled to Spain and discovered the Spanish sister of prosciutto, jamón, I made my sister eat so much of it with me that she became a vegetarian for a bit when we came back home. So, it seemed only natural to me when I started along my meat curing journey, that making prosciutto would be on the list.

It took me a while. Making prosciutto, or jamón, is an intimidating undertaking. I read and read and read. I found books, blogs, online groups, and research articles. Finally, I traveled to Emilia-Romagna with my sister, and we visited two different prosciuttifici, one in Parma and one in Modena. It was these visits that finally gave me the confidence to go forward with curing my own prosciutto. (NOTE: All of this preparation was probably overkill, if you’re considering taking the plunge, go for it!)

Finally, I made contact with a farm in Michigan I found through online meat curing groups, Ham Sweet Farm. They raise great quality animals in a very conscientious manner, and their meat has been among the best I’ve used, if not the best. I got a rear leg from them to use for prosciutto, and the process was started.

The meat:

In Europe, animals are usually processed using seam butchery, meaning that individual muscles are kept intact. This is an intensive process that requires significant time and effort, so in America most animals are butchered by making cuts across the muscles, using technology such as the band saw. Both methods have their own pros and cons, but it’s important to know that if you receive the meat as a primal from an American processor, you will generally receive it with the ball and socket hip bone intact, and part of the hip bone just sawed through to create the cut of meat.

In order to cure prosciutto in the Italian way, as opposed to the Spanish way, you need to do some butchering to the leg primal. You will need to remove what is left of the hip bone, called the aitch bone in this context, and expose the ball part of the ball and socket hip joint. You can then clean up the surface, and this will give you the characteristic shape of the Italian prosciutto. If you prefer to cure the prosciutto the Spanish way, you can leave the aitch bone in place and simply clean up the surface of the meat as needed.

After the aitch bone is removed, the next important step is to milk the femoral vein. After death, blood can pool in the venous system. The processor will usually do their best to flush the system of all blood, but often they don’t get it all. You want to “milk” the vein by pressing firmly on the distal end of the vein and tracing its path through the leg until you get to the proximal, open end at the face of the leg. Blood should pour out of the open end. Repeat this until it doesn’t. If the meat you are using is still semi frozen (like mine was), you may not have a lot of luck with this process. You can try again after the “first salting”.

First Salting (4C/40F, 1 week):

For prosciutto, we add in a step we don’t usually use for other cured meats called the “first salting”. I learned about this method when visiting the prosciutto factories in Parma. It was explained to me that this is done to draw out excess blood and to limit bacteria growth early in the process.

To do the first salting, you take an excess of sea salt, and pack it onto the open face of the prosciutto, paying particular attention to the femoral head and the places where the veins are exposed. Use an extra-large ziplock bag in a plastic container (in case of leakage) and allow this process to take place in your regular fridge at 4C. After a week, you want to wash away the excess salt. Don’t be surprised if you see a bloody and salty liquid in the bottom of the bag… that just means the salt is doing its job of pulling out any excess blood. Try again to milk the femoral vein to get out any blood that may be left, and then move on to the second salting.

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

For the second salting, we do an equilibrium cure. The Italian method just uses sea salt, while the Spanish method also uses nitrates. Because I am a fan of using nitrates for safety reasons, I added them into my cure.

*Note: I like to use equilibrium curing. It allows me some flexibility in when I process the meat after curing, since the time left in the cure doesn’t matter, it is the percentages that are used that do. However, some people don’t do this type of curing and use excess curing instead. In excess curing, it is the time that the meat is left in the cure that matters. If you would rather do excess curing for prosciutto, cure the prosciutto in excess sea salt for 1 day per kg of meat. (For example, for a prosciutto that weights 14 kg, this means it would stay in excess sea salt for 14 days).

Drying (13C/55F, 65%RH, 12 months):

After the meat as been cured, it is time to move it to the curing chamber. Brush off any remaining cure and hang it in the chamber set around 55F and 65% RH.

Allow the prosciutto to hang for 12 months, tracking the weight loss over this time if possible. By the end of the year, it should have lost around 30% of its initial weight.

Applying a Sugna:

Following in the Italian tradition, a sugna is applied after the meat has reached its approximate final weight loss, to allow for continued aging for flavor development without drying out the meat.

Before applying the sugna, make sure to use white vinegar to clean off the surface of the prosciutto, removing any mold that has accumulated on the surface.

The sugna is made of lard, rice flour, and black pepper. For my sugna, I rendered leaf lard that I had from Ham Sweet Farm. However, you can use lard that is purchased from the store as well.

After the sugna is applied, the meat is either put back in the curing chamber, or more ideally in a wine cellar or aging room at a slighter higher temperature to allow for better flavor development. Not everyone uses this method, so if you’d prefer to skip it, that’s alright too. Instead of continuing to age the prosciutto after 12 months and around 30% weight loss, you can move straight to harvesting and tasting your prosciutto.

Aging (17C/62F, 50%RH, 6 months+):

The prosciutto with the sugna is allowed to age for another 6 months to a year to develop a more complex flavor profile.

Tasting:

That’s it! When the prosciutto has been aged for at least 18 months, it’s ready! You can either hand cut the prosciutto or remove the bone and slice it on a deli slicer. To hand slice it, place the prosciutto on its side and cut away the skin and outer fat first. Then, carefully cut slices off the prosciutto using a thin, long knife. When you reach the bone, cut around it as much as possible. Then, flip the prosciutto over and cut from the other side. You can keep hand slicing around the bones until all the meat is gone!

Spanish Style Chorizo

August 29, 2017 by AOG Leave a Comment

Chorizo! Chorizo! Chorizo! There are so many different kinds of chorizo that it can be hard to know where to begin when talking about chorizo. Some chorizo, such as Mexican style chorizo, is a fresh sausage that is great to crumble and cook with eggs for breakfast. Fresh sausage chorizo are great and can liven up any dish that they are added to. But for me, the real magic is in the Spanish style, dry cured chorizo. Spanish style chorizo is made using a combination of Spanish spices, prominently both dulce and picante pimentón de la Vera. Like any other dry cured salami, it is allowed to hang after it has been mixed and stuffed, until it loses ~30-40% of its initial weight, and is ready to eat at that point. Unlike the fresh style chorizo, the Spanish style chorizo does not need to be cooked to be eaten. The combination of spices in this Spanish style chorizo are fantastic, and it is one of my all time favorite salami. Packed full of flavor, its great however you want to eat it.

Planning

For this salami, you want to use pimentón de la Vera, not just any old paprika. Good quality flavor makes all the difference. Other than that, it’s a pretty simple recipe, so the other spices are ones you probably will have on hand. The ratio of meat/fat is the usual 70/30 percent. I tend to use meat from the shoulder for the meat and belly fat for the fat (because I love the flavor/texture of belly fat) but it is more traditional to use the more firm back fat for this. Whatever you choose to use, just make sure your fat is at least 30% of the total meat weight. Once you’ve weighed your meat, put the value into your spreadsheet, and calculate how much of each spice that you will need. I used a 50/50 sweet to spicy pimentón de la Vera, but if you prefer more spice, you can up the percentage (just make sure to keep the total percentage of the pimentón de la Vera at 2.5% of the weight of the meat). My ratios are below.

Cubing

After you have planned the ratios for your meat, it’s time to get started. Making sure you keep everything cold (I par freeze my meat before hand and return it to the freezer when I am done working with it), cube the meat into 1 inch pieces that will fit into your grinder. For this salami, I really prefer to have my fat hand diced, so I cut it into ¼ inch pieces. If you want to grind it, cut it into 1 inch pieces like the meat, and grind it through a coarse die.

Grinding and Mixing

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

After grinding the meat, making sure to keep it cold throughout the entire process, you want to 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.

Stuffing

After the meat has been mixed together, it’s time to stuff it. I used two different diameter casings for this, smaller diameter beef middles and larger diameter beef bungs. The smaller diameter ones are more traditional for Spanish style chorizo, but I like a larger diameter salami, so I made one for fun.

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

After the chorizo has been stuffed, it’s time to allow it to ferment. The conditions for the fermentation will be strain dependent. I use B-LC-007, which is a starter culture that requires temperatures of ~70F and a relative humidity ~80-90%. I let the chorizo ferment for ~48 hours, which is about the time it should take to allow the pH to drop into the ideal range. 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.

Cold Smoking

It is not traditional to cold smoke chorizo, but you can if you want to. For an experiment, I cold smoked one link of this chorizo that I made to compare it to the others during the tasting phase. Make sure you smoke with a complimentary wood (I used beech for this) and that you keep your temperatures in the actual cold smoking range (<90F).

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

After the meat has undergone fermentation, it’s time to let it dry. I hang it in my curing chamber in the usual conditions, ~55F/70%RH, until its lost ~40% if its initial weight. If you want it to be more firm, you can let it go even longer than 40%, but I like mine to be a little on the softer side.

Tasting

The best part is always the tasting! After the meat has lost the appropriate amount of weight for your tastes, you can pull it from the curing chamber. For this, I pulled the smaller diameter chorizo first.

I compared the flavor of the smoked chorizo to the non-smoked chorizo.

I personally preferred the non-smoked, but others who tried it preferred the smoked. I think it’s one of those things that is up to personal tastes.

After the larger diameter salami lost the appropriate amount of weight, I pulled it as well. This one was great!

Nothing was different in this one except for the diameter of the casing, but I liked it a lot more. Maybe just because I could slice it thin and really taste it, but WOW; this is an all-time favorite.

This chorizo is great served in a platter with other meats, on bread, or with wine.

‘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.

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!