Salami
Salami is a thing of beauty! Its so much more satisfying when you do it yourself. There are quite a few aspects to it and also quite a few places where you can get help, so I'll try to mention everything I can.Salami is a fermented, cured, then dried sausage. It is more commonly found in Italy, France and Germany. In the UK we dont have so much of a heritage, and this is probably down to the climate.
The most difficult part is the drying, and in Southern Europe the air quality (and I mean temperature and humidity, not purity) lends itself better to drying salami. All will be revealed as we go on.
So we need some meat....now pork is the usual first choice, but lamb, or beef also lend themselves to this process, and sometimes a mixture of two meats.
For this exercise we are just using pork, and will make two flavours of salami in different size skins. By the way, everyone seems to be doing this now, and some of the info available is so good, that I will skip some of the details as they are already well covered on other sites, so google: cured meat blogspot, Len poli, and some of the forums at sausagemaker.org.
I tend to use leg meat as there is much less trimming to do. Its important to remove all the sinew and silverskin, as it doesn't break down and when you eat it, that's what sticks in your teeth. Shoulder is the more traditional cut as the fat to meat content is about right, however leg is much more lean, so I use about 2/3 leg and 1/3 fat belly.
On that subject, if you go to the butchers and ask for belly, nowadays you will be given something which is very lean, you will need to search to get a piece which has a good centimetre of fat, at least. The best place is to find someone raising their own pigs! If they do and they are not doing it commercially, they will be inundated with chunks of fat belly (cos they keep the pigs longer than commercial farmers so its fatter) and they won't know what to do with all the pork they have grown. Trust me this gets you the best meat at the lowest cost, and if you offer to give them some salami in exchange, you may well end up with a kilo or two for nothing.
So the recipes for the two we are doing are:
Garlic and Wine Salami
2 kg meat (1.3kg leg 700g belly)
2.5% curing salt
0.25% cure number two
0.50% garlic granules
250ml red wine (I did have a percentage, but in the end we sploshed a bit more in)
Starter culture (as directed)
Pepper and fennel Salami
2 kg meat (1.3kg leg 700g belly)
2.5% curing salt
0.25% cure number two
15g fennel seeds ( once again were going to use 1% but it looked too much)
1% 20g whole black pepper
Starter culture (as directed)
The method for both is really very similar. Cube up your meat to about one inch squares, then put them in the freezer to get a crust on. This point is absolutely vital! By doing this when you mince the meat the fat and flesh remains discreet and separate. If you don't do it, then there is a real danger that you will smear the fat into the meat, and this will effectively seal it, and prevent the meat drying properly. If the meat doesn't dry, then you wont be making salami!
Soak your skins!!
While its freezing down, put together and weigh out your curing ingredients, so salt and cure number 2, in one bowl, and the flavourings in another. Then in put a little warm water in a cup and add the starter culture. Its always best to add half a packet even though this will be overkill, but it helps guarantee that its mixed into the blend properly. Fiddling about with half a gram of the stuff could leave the mixture untreated. The warm water helps wake it up, and it needs between 10 mins and half an hour.
Once your meat is nice and crispy, add the cure, give it a good mix, and then mince it. I normally use a coarse plate, but do whatever you fancy. This helps mix the cure in to everything. Now you should have a bowl of meat where the meat and fat are fairly seperate!
Next in a bowl (and use one thats big enough) add your flavourings, and the starter culture, and give it a good mix by hand. The mixing helps to make the proteins stick to each other giving a better end result. Mix for a while till it gets sticky, but keep it cold. This can be done with another trip to the freezer, or by putting your bowl on a bed of ice (in the sink, or like a bain marie).
Excellent...I can smell the garlic....
Take your skins, you decide which size is best, but if its your first time go for smaller ones (hog casings) as they dry quicker and there is less chance of spoilage. (plus you'll be eating them sooner). Beef middles are bigger and make a nice 'slice' but are best used once you've done a few.
Rinse the skins through to remove any salt traces. Put then on your sausage stuffer nozzle, and fill away.
You can see in the photo one hour old salami. The smaller ones at the back are the red wine and garlic (the wine has made them darker) while the larger ones are the fennel and black pepper. You need to weigh them now, either individually or in bunches so you can monitor the weight loss.
I have done these in strings because they hang ok and tieing off 14 or 15 salami with string takes ages. We basically left some skin between each sausage and then tied both ends but didn't separate them. On a previous occasion, we made big salamis and tied the ends with sting, and as they dried in the first week, they shrank and kept slipping the knots and ending on the floor.. I got mad so we did it this way this time. You've just got to remember to move them around so they aren't touching all the time. (I Check them every day)
The starter culture is there to kick start the fermentation and generate lactic acid. The bad bacteria don't like salt, nitrate, acidity, and a lack of moisture. Therefore we add cure 2 which is nitrite which slowly changes to nitrate, obviously the salt, the starter culture , and hanging them up to dry is the last part.
After 36 to 48 hours at 24 degrees c the culture has started its work. You can see the dramatic change in colour, the larger ones are deep pink, and the smaller ones are almost red. (I really am a great photographer! I could win prizes with shots like that.......not!)
So its into the drying box, at 12 degrees and 70% humidity until they have lost about a third of their weight.
So after a particular mixed bit of weather, meaning my drying cabinet didn't know if it was hot, cold, dry, wet etc, the small salamis took 5 weeks to lose 35%, but i think i may have had some anomolies as after 4 weeks they had only lost 28% and so they seemed to speed up again after a slow start. Whatever, I should have used my trusted squeeze test, because its pretty accurate......Squeeze your salami...does it feel like it might have a nice texture, once its cut, and you are eating it? If yes its ready. I measured these small ones but they felt too hard (too dry)...and they were! It needs to give a bit, and probably be a tad softer than you think.
The thing is that meat and fat contain hugely different percentages of water and so to say 'lose a third of their weight' is guidance only as if the fat to meat is 20:80, or 30:70 that percentage will be different. ( roughly in the first case it loses 50% of its water while in the second its 55% resulting in a different hardness).
Also I do find that the thinner salami comes out harder, whatever the measurement says. Anyway they were very palatable, not too salty but the red wine and garlic flavour was 'subtle', in other words too mild.
For the larger salami, fennel and black pepper, I used the measurement and the squeeze (took them out at 32%, so not much different). They were (are) lovely, great texture, lovely colour, nice bite of pepper and a fennel perfume, from using whole seeds and corns, you get a bit of texture, and a slightly different flavour balance in every slice.
The picture above is one of the larger ones, and they really do eat nicely.
Well thats a quick guide, but as with all things you will need to do it a few times to get the hang of it. You'll soon get a 'feel' for what works, and when they are ready, plus how tightly packed they are etc, none of which can be learned without experience!
Starter culture (as directed)
The method for both is really very similar. Cube up your meat to about one inch squares, then put them in the freezer to get a crust on. This point is absolutely vital! By doing this when you mince the meat the fat and flesh remains discreet and separate. If you don't do it, then there is a real danger that you will smear the fat into the meat, and this will effectively seal it, and prevent the meat drying properly. If the meat doesn't dry, then you wont be making salami!
 |
| Diced leg and belly ready for the freezer |
Soak your skins!!
While its freezing down, put together and weigh out your curing ingredients, so salt and cure number 2, in one bowl, and the flavourings in another. Then in put a little warm water in a cup and add the starter culture. Its always best to add half a packet even though this will be overkill, but it helps guarantee that its mixed into the blend properly. Fiddling about with half a gram of the stuff could leave the mixture untreated. The warm water helps wake it up, and it needs between 10 mins and half an hour.
Once your meat is nice and crispy, add the cure, give it a good mix, and then mince it. I normally use a coarse plate, but do whatever you fancy. This helps mix the cure in to everything. Now you should have a bowl of meat where the meat and fat are fairly seperate!
Next in a bowl (and use one thats big enough) add your flavourings, and the starter culture, and give it a good mix by hand. The mixing helps to make the proteins stick to each other giving a better end result. Mix for a while till it gets sticky, but keep it cold. This can be done with another trip to the freezer, or by putting your bowl on a bed of ice (in the sink, or like a bain marie).
Excellent...I can smell the garlic....
Rinse the skins through to remove any salt traces. Put then on your sausage stuffer nozzle, and fill away.
 |
| Freshly made salami hanging in the drying cabinet |
You can see in the photo one hour old salami. The smaller ones at the back are the red wine and garlic (the wine has made them darker) while the larger ones are the fennel and black pepper. You need to weigh them now, either individually or in bunches so you can monitor the weight loss.
I have done these in strings because they hang ok and tieing off 14 or 15 salami with string takes ages. We basically left some skin between each sausage and then tied both ends but didn't separate them. On a previous occasion, we made big salamis and tied the ends with sting, and as they dried in the first week, they shrank and kept slipping the knots and ending on the floor.. I got mad so we did it this way this time. You've just got to remember to move them around so they aren't touching all the time. (I Check them every day)
The starter culture is there to kick start the fermentation and generate lactic acid. The bad bacteria don't like salt, nitrate, acidity, and a lack of moisture. Therefore we add cure 2 which is nitrite which slowly changes to nitrate, obviously the salt, the starter culture , and hanging them up to dry is the last part.
After 36 to 48 hours at 24 degrees c the culture has started its work. You can see the dramatic change in colour, the larger ones are deep pink, and the smaller ones are almost red. (I really am a great photographer! I could win prizes with shots like that.......not!)
So its into the drying box, at 12 degrees and 70% humidity until they have lost about a third of their weight.
 |
| Salami after the culture has kicked in |
The thing is that meat and fat contain hugely different percentages of water and so to say 'lose a third of their weight' is guidance only as if the fat to meat is 20:80, or 30:70 that percentage will be different. ( roughly in the first case it loses 50% of its water while in the second its 55% resulting in a different hardness).
Also I do find that the thinner salami comes out harder, whatever the measurement says. Anyway they were very palatable, not too salty but the red wine and garlic flavour was 'subtle', in other words too mild.
 |
| Fennel and black pepper salami |
The picture above is one of the larger ones, and they really do eat nicely.
Well thats a quick guide, but as with all things you will need to do it a few times to get the hang of it. You'll soon get a 'feel' for what works, and when they are ready, plus how tightly packed they are etc, none of which can be learned without experience!
