Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Back on the horse


Here's proof that it doesn't always go the way you want. After making that N'duja with which I was so happy, I committed N'dujacide. Having skipped a starter, I figured I would ferment at a little higher temperature than usual. So, I thought 90 was a good number, I'd fermented other salami at this temperature and it's been fine. Well, I have never made a salami from all jowl meat. I'm not 100% sure, but I'll go out on a limb and say jowl melts at around 90. I woke up and found the temperature in the oven to be 93 degrees. I removed the N'duja from it's container in the oven to find it a sack full of red liquid. After conferring with Larbo, we concluded it was indeed a bag full of hot melted lard and was toast. I hit it with the pricker and got most of the liquid out. I will hang and dry as normal, hopefully I can at least use it in pasta and pizza. So, I bought a couple more pounds of jowl and went right back at it. Same exact thing........3.5lbs. of jowl meat, 1 lb. hot pepper paste half pound of hot pepper powder Products, 3.5% salt and .25% cure #2.......that's it. Ferment for a couple days, cold smoke for a couple days(just got my cold smoke generator), and dry for a couple months. This is being gently fermented at 70 degrees.

7 comments:

  1. Try, try again...Sounds like it will be good on pasta, so not a total loss.

    Your store looks great. Once some of my supplies dwindle, I be sure to stop by. I've got my eye on the wild fennel seeds.

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  2. Glad you like it, John. This N'duja, I have a feeling, I'm going to have to make about a dozen more times until I get it right. Fennel seeds are for real. Go check out Larbo's post about his finocchiona.

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  4. This looks wonderful! Ive never tried it so I want to make some with the things I baught on your ebay store. Do you have any posts with step by step instructions on how to prepare this? I see your recipe but im not sure if the process is any diferent than making normal salami.

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  5. Process is the same, more or less. Since I used jowl, I was only able to run it once through the larger die of the KA grinder. Added the paste and powder, along with salt and cure #2. Mixed it up and stuffed it in the beef bung.

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  6. Ok Scott thanks for the help, i ended up passing the mixture through the grinder a second time using the small die to get a smoother texture. I cooked up the extra stuck in the grinder and your pepper paste and calabrese pepper powder give it an unbeleavable flavor! Im so exited to see how this comes out. Once they are done how do you store your n'duja?

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  7. Scott,
    Are you familiar with Sobrasada (soft chorizo?)?

    http://www.tienda.com/food/products/cz-58.html?CMP=EMC-071210UPD

    It appears to be a N'duja like sausage from Spain. Just curious if you knew anything about it.

    David

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