Duck Prosciutto

February 10, 2023 by AOG Leave a Comment

…without a curing chamber.

Name: Duck Prosciutto

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

The meat:

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

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

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

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

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

Weigh all the spices and mix all them together.

Then, cover the meat with them.

Vacuum seal it all together.

Casing:

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

Grab an UMAI dry bag and VacMouse channel vacuum adapter.

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

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

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

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

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

Tasting:

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

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

The perfect addition to a charcuterie plate!

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

American Breakfast Sausage

November 6, 2021 by AOG Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sixth Step: Cook and enjoy for breakfast!

Freeze any leftovers to enjoy in the future.

Ficazza

July 17, 2021 by AOG Leave a Comment

Name: Ficazza or Sazinella or Salame di Tonno

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

History:

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

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

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

How it’s made:

The meat:

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

The spices:

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

Processing:

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

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

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

Timing:

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

How it’s eaten:

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

How I learnt about it:

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

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

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

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

The DIY:

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

The meat:

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

Planning:

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

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

Mix all the spices together.

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

Grinding and mixing:

I par-froze the tuna and hand diced it.

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

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

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

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

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

Casing:

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

Drying:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tasting

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

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

References:

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

Coppa Calabrese

June 13, 2021 by AOG 2 Comments

Name: Coppa Calabrese

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

The meat:

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

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

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

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

Weigh all the spices and mix all the spices together.

Then, cover the meat with them.

Vacuum seal it all together.

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

Casing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tasting

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

Appenzeller Mostbröckli

April 8, 2021 by AOG Leave a Comment

Name: Mostbröckli

Region: Appenzell

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

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

How it’s made:

The meat:

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

Runder Mocken
Eckstück
Vorschlag
Nierstück
Huft

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

The spices:

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

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

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

Optimal Liquids: Wine or “most”.

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

The Processing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Curing:

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

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

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

Casing:

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

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

Smoking and Drying:

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

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

Tasting:

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

References:

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

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

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

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

The Official St. Galler Bratwurst IGP

March 3, 2020 by AOG Leave a Comment

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

Region: St. Gallen/Appenzell

History:

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

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

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

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

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

How it’s made:

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

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

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

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

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

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

How it’s eaten:

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

How I learnt about it:

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

Video:

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

The DIY

Coming soon.

Sources:

Strolghino

November 21, 2019 by AOG Leave a Comment

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

Planning

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

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

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

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

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

Cubing

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

Grinding and Mixing

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

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

Stuffing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tasting

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

Served well on bread.

Saucisse Aux Choux

October 10, 2019 by AOG 2 Comments

The Official Saucisse Aux Choux Vaudoise IGP

Name: Saucisse aux choux vaudoise

Region: Vaud

History: The origin story of the saucisse aux choux vaudoise has its roots in legend. It’s said that the saucisse owes its invention to the town of Orbe during the middle ages, around the year 879. The Emperor Charles the Fat was supposedly in town overstaying his welcome, and eating the town out of house and home. As meat became rare, an innovative townsperson had the brilliant idea to use cabbage to make their sausage in order to stretch the meat. Now, it could just be that this was a commonplace thing, to stretch meat with whatever was around, but who doesn’t like a compelling story? It became a regional specialty, made to this day, and protected under PGI identification.

How it’s made:

Meat: A 60% lean pork meat to 40% pork fat ratio. Boiled pork skin (~25%), blanched and pressed white cabbage(~5%). Optional: Pork liver (~5%).

Note: The meat is a combination of pork 1 and pork 2 with minimal membranes, sinews, or tendons. See Charcutier, Salumiere, Wurstmeister by Francois Vecchio to get a better understanding of the pork 1 and pork 2 breakdown.

Spices: Salt, black pepper. Optional Spices: Garlic, coriander, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and anise. Other optional components: White wine, sugar, nitrates, starter culture.

Processing: Lean pork mixed with fat and skin is used for this saucisse. The meat is ground using a 5 mm plate, while the boiled pork skin is ground through a 3 mm plate. The meat is mixed with the spices until it has achieved a good bind. Then, this mixture is stuffed into beef casings with a diameter of 38-40 mm or 40-42 mm, looped, with a length of ~ 30 cm. The ends can be tied off with either string or clips. Each sausage should weight around 300-400 g. It is then hung and cold smoked (18-28 C) for 24 hours, usually using a mix of local hardwood and conifer. The cold smoke gives the exterior a golden brown exterior, while the inside remains a nice reddish pink color.

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

How it’s eaten:

After the meat has been smoked, it’s ready to be cooked and eaten. The saucisse is usually boiled for 35-40 minutes at ~ 75C, before being cut open and served on a bed of leeks and potatoes (called papet Vaudois). Some chefs prefer not to cook the sausage separately, but cook the sausages over low heat directly on the papet Vaudois. If you’ve made this sausage (or if you’ve bought it) and want to eat it in the traditional way, I suggest checking out this recipe by Helvetic Kitchen.

How I learnt about it:

This is arguably the least interesting for those out there who are reading this on order to create their own projects, but hopefully of some interest to those who (like me) are interested in traveling the world chasing cured meat. This wurst is an IGP product from the Vaud region of Switzerland, and in particular, its birthplace is said to be in the town of Orbe. Therefore, for a number of years now, the town of Orbe has held a three-day festival on the last weekend in September to celebrate this product. The festival is filled with local food, beer, music, and of course, a demonstration of the local butchers making the sausage itself!

This year, I took the time to travel to this festival, where I was able to see the sausage being made, communicate (in very broken French that was probably actually more Italian than French) with the butchers doing the demonstration about the process, and sample the sausage in the traditional manner.

The DIY Saucisse Aux Choux Vaudoise IGP

Now, it’s not really saucisse aux choux vaudoise unless it’s made in the region of Switzerland discussed above, in the manner discussed above, with Swiss ingredients. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make it at home and call it whatever you want. Here, I’ll post the recipe how I would make it at home.

Disclaimer: Unlike all my other recipes, I haven’t actually made this one at home yet, so there won’t be any process pictures to follow. Hopefully, I will find the time to make it myself soon, and then will update this page.

Planning:

The following spreadsheet gives an approximation of the ratios to use for this saucisse, of course amounts and spices can be altered for taste.

Grinding and Mixing:

Grind the meat, fat, blanched and pressed cabbage, and liver through a 5 mm plate. Grind boiled pig skins through a 3 mm plate. Mix them together with the white wine and spices until you create a paste that sticks together with a nice consistency. Keep it cool while you do this.

Stuffing:

Take the mixture and stuff it into casings, preferably Beef Rounds (40/43 mm). You can usually find these already cut and tied. Make sure to stuff the mixture in a steady and compact manner. Tie off the ends.

Fermentation/Cold Smoking:

Once the saucisse is stuffed, tie the two ends together, and hang it in a place where you have a cold smoking set up. Preferably, cold smoke using hard wood for around 24 hours. Keep the temperature below 82 F. At this point, you’re almost ready to go.

Enjoying:

To enjoy this saucisse, boil it for 35-40 minutes at ~ 75C, cut open, and served on a bed of leeks and potatoes or use the recipe from Helvetic Kitchen mentioned above.

Sources:

http://www.charcuterie-vaudoise.ch/sites/default/files/Saucisson_VD_2019.pdf

http://www.charcuterie-vaudoise.ch/fr

https://www.patrimoineculinaire.ch/Produit/Saucisse-aux-choux-vaudoise-IGP/78

https://www.aop-igp.ch/index.php?id=305&L=1

https://www.helvetickitchen.com/recipes/2016/3/3/papetvaudois

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!

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!

…without a curing chamber.

Name: Duck Prosciutto

The meat:

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

Casing:

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

Tasting:

The Official Saucisse Aux Choux Vaudoise IGP

How it’s made:

How it’s eaten:

How I learnt about it:

The DIY Saucisse Aux Choux Vaudoise IGP

Planning:

Grinding and Mixing:

Stuffing:

Fermentation/Cold Smoking:

Enjoying:

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