Winter Cured Lamb Prosciutto

February 28, 2016 by AOG 8 Comments

As discussed previously, there are a number of ways to make lamb prosciutto. Because lamb prosciutto is made with the leg of a lamb, it has a bone running through it. You can cure the lamb prosciutto with the bone in, or take it out. If you take out the bone, you can either cure the lamb prosciutto in two separate pieces or tie it together tightly to try and get rid of any air pockets from where the bone used to be. I have tried both of these methods which you can see at the following links:

Lamb Prosciutto (cured in two separate pieces)

Lamb Prosciutto (tied together as a roast, and cured)

I personally liked curing the lamb prosciutto in two pieces. Therefore, I cured my most recent lamb prosciutto in two pieces with two different winter spice cures.

Curing (3 weeks):

I used two different spice cures for the two pieces of lamb prosciutto; a traditional lamb cure and a winter spice lamb cure.

I allowed the leg of lamb to cure in their spice cures for 3 weeks under vacuum seal.

Casing (1 hour):

I used beef bung casing to case the meat, and used butcher netting to tie it up and get it ready to hang. After this, I used a toothpick to puncture any air holes that may have been evident and could harbor the growth of bad bacteria.Th meat was weighed, and was ready to go into the curing chamber.

Drying (1 month+, until 30% of weight is lost):

Temperature: 54F/12C, Humidity: 70-80% RH

After being cased, the lamb prosciutto was put directly into the curing chamber to join the other meats that were hanging.

The meat was allowed to lose ~30% of its initial weight, and was pulled from the chamber.

Tasting:

Lamb prosciutto is one of my favorite cured meats. The traditional lamb prosciutto was done first. The first slices into it were heavenly.

Later, when both of these were ready, I did a taste test with what I had left of my Arthur Ave lamb prosciutto.

Great alone, or as I always like to say…meats that cure together, stay together.

Ahhhh….beef bresaola, lamb prosciutto, lamb salami, and duck salami. All out for a day of fun.

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.

Arthur Ave Lamb Prosciutto

February 27, 2016 by AOG 4 Comments

Lamb prosciutto, or prosciutto d’agnello can either be made with the bone in or bone out. If it is made with the bone in, it is slightly harder to deal with, and it is harder to slice on a commercial slicer. If it is made bone out, you have to deal with the air pockets that the removal of the bone creates. There are two ways to deal with this; you can cure it in two separate pieces with no potential for air pockets, or you can cure it in one piece by tying it together as tightly as possible to eliminate any air pockets (some people use meat glue to eliminate any chances of air pockets when following this procedure). Air pockets are dangerous because they create an anaerobic environment which can promote the growth of dangerous bacteria.

My first attempt at lamb prosciutto turned out remarkably well, even with as little as I knew at the time. I bought a bone out leg of lamb, and cured it in two separate pieces. You can see the details here: Lamb Prosciutto Attempt #1.

Since my initial attempt, I have made lamb prosciutto again:

The second time, emboldened my previous success, I decided I wanted to try to cure a bone out leg of lamb, tied tightly together in one piece. I bought a bone out leg of lamb from a specialty Italian butcher, who butchered it and tied it together like you would for a roast.

The third time, I decided to go back to my method of splitting the bone out leg of lamb into two pieces to cure, in order to experiment with two different spice cure.

In the future, I plan to cure a bone in leg of lamb, and hand slice it with my cuchillo jamonero, or my specialty jamón carving knife.

Here, I will detail the process that I followed for my second lamb prosciutto attempt. In a future post, I will discuss the lamb prosciutto that I cured most recently using two different winter spice cures.

I was able to buy a leg of lamb from an Italian butcher shop at Arthur Ave in the Bronx. I explained to the butcher there what I wanted, and he took the time to tightly tie the leg of lamb together into a roast.

Curing (3 weeks):

I have updated the curing ratios to reflect my most recently used values.

I allowed the leg of lamb to sit in the cure for 3 weeks under vacuum seal.

Casing (1 hour):

The meat was cased in a 100 mm collagen casing. After this, a toothpick was used to puncture any air holes that may have been evident and could harbor the growth of bad bacteria.

I then sprayed my meat with Bactoferm Mold 600, which is a single strain culture that contains freeze-dried form spores of Penicillium nalgiovense. This promotes beneficial mold growth and tends to keep any potentially dangerous mold growths at bay.

Drying (1 month+, until 30% of weight is lost):

Temperature: 54F/12C, Humidity: 70-80% RH

The lamb prosciutto was put directly into the curing chamber at this point. If you have read my first lamb prosciutto post, you know that I used to use a fermentation stage step. I have found this to be unnecessary for whole muscle cured products, and now move directly from the curing and casing stages to the drying stage.

The meat was allowed to lose ~30% of its initial weight, and was pulled from the chamber.

It was taken out of its casing, rinsed off with white vinegar, and patted dry.

Tasting:

Ahhh the flavor of lamb prosciutto, one of my all time favorites.

This one looked a little gnarly, due to the butcher string that kept it together.

Sliced thin, the taste was great…

However, compared to my previous attempts, I didn’t love the aesthetics of this final product. That is why for my next attempt, I cured my lamb prosciutto in two pieces. I also will be trying a bone in lamb prosciutto in the future to avoid this problem. This product was stored under vacuum seal.

Lamb Prosciutto

June 9, 2014 by AOG Leave a Comment

This post is on the making of lamb prosciutto, or prosciutto d’agnello. The term prosciutto usually refers to the cured leg of an animal, whether it be pork or goat or lamb or what have you. Regardless of what you want to call it, it’s delicious, and is a fun project for anyone who is interested in meat curing.

Lamb is one of those meats that its often said you either like or you don’t. I lived my whole life disliking the flavor of lamb, until after a meal at an Indian restaurant it suddenly clicked and I fell in love with it. I think it has a lot to do with the way the lamb is prepared,so my advice to all who say they just “don’t like the flavor of lamb” is to keep trying it prepared in different ways. You’ll never know which one clicks with you.

After experimenting with different style bresaola, we decided it was time to move on to a different type of meat. Which better meat to try than lamb? Lamb prosciutto was one we had tried in restaurants before, and even though I hadn’t loved it, I thought there could be room for experimentation and improvement which turned out to be 100% correct.

The process started with a boneless lamb leg roast purchased from a local grocery store. Although it was actually butchered pretty cleanly, we separated the meat into two pieces to avoid creating troublesome air pockets within the meat and to let it dry faster, since I’m not the most patient of all meat curers.

Curing (3 weeks):

By this time, I’d gotten so familiar with the usual ratios of spices that I did a good amount of ad libbing with the cure. I added some spices that are usually paired with lamb to complement the meat. The basic ratios that I used are in the following chart:

*I have since changed the ratios I use for salt and cure #2. See my most recent posts for the most up to date ratios that I use.

The lamb was mixed with the spices, massaged, and vacuum sealed. It was put in the refrigerator for 3 weeks to cure.

After 3 weeks, the cure was washed away from the lamb using cold water and lamb was dried off. We packaged it usually the available casings that we had, 100 mm collagen casings. After using beef bung, I would probably prefer this method in the future, but collagen was what we had so collagen is what we used. The two pieces of lamb were oddly shaped, and so my barely adequate butcher string technique led to some interesting looking hanging lamb, but hey if it hangs it hangs right?

Fermentation (48 hours):

Temperature: 69F/20C

Humidity: 80-90% RH

*I have since stopped doing a fermentation stage in my whole muscle cures. See my more recent posts for information on this.

There is some debate on the usefulness of a fermentation stage in whole muscle meat curing. We left the lamb hanging in the curing chamber for 48 hours during this stage, after spraying the meat with a 0.5% solution of Penicillium nalgiovense to induce beneficial mold growth.

Ideally at the end of the fermentation stage, you would see a decrease in pH to less than 5.1, letting you know the meat was becoming acidic due to beneficial bacterial activity. Since I don’t currently have a pH meter, and pH strips are moderately useful at best, I’ve gone forward after 48 hours regardless. This drop in pH is much more necessary to check in ground meat salami preparations such as sausage making.

Drying (6-8 weeks):

Temperature: 54F/12C

Humidity: 70% RH

The waiting is the hardest part. At this point, all you can do is wait and monitor weight loss. Keep a careful eye on the temperature and humidity, and when weight loss reaches 30% you are ready! Some may like more weight loss, some may like less, but I’ve settled on 30%. At a weight loss of 30% your meat is definitely not the same meat you put into the curing chamber, but it’s still moist and delicious and when sliced thin is heavenly.

This lamb took somewhere between 6-8 weeks to be ready, the smaller one was ready sooner. This slightly longer time was probably due to the fact that our humidity was on the higher side, but I prefer it that way. Higher humidity means it will take longer for your meat to dry out, and you might need to combat some enemy molds, but you won’t have case hardening or end up with jerky like meat instead of the succulent treasure that is slowly cured and dried charcuterie.

Slice it up and pair it with cheese and other fermented treats and enjoy!