Salasiccia di Calabria is a DOP salame from Calabria. This is one I had eaten while in Calabria in between chasing and consuming 'nduja. In typical Calabrese fashion, it is laden with hot pepper that leaves quite an impact.......perfect. Having ample hot pepper powder and flakes from Calabria, seemed like a home run. I have also re-committed myself to austerity. No more random, silly ingredients and trying to reinvent the wheel. I think I should do a couple simple salame and do them well. This definitely qualifies as austere......Pork butt, backfat, salt, hot pepper powder, crushed red pepper flakes, cure and F-lc starter, that's it. All the literature I have read about this particular salame reads that it is cased in a small hog casing. I think next time I would opt for a hog casing a bit larger than this, which is your run of the mill sausage casing. I fermented for about 72 hours and hung them to dry. After about 3 weeks, I weighed them. They had the requisite weight loss, yet still seemed soft, which is very strange for these size casings. So, at 45%, I pulled one down. Still just a touch soft for my liking. Puzzled, I went to review my notes. I noticed I wrote f-lc, but not distilled water. I usually write distilled water as I write out the formula, so as not to forget to use it. That tiny little omission, combined with soft salame lead me to believe I used tap water to mix my starter, which most of you who do this at home will know, I murdered my starter. I had 4 of them, so, I ate 1 and vacu-sealed 3. The one I ate had wonderful flavor, super hot and tasty. A week after I vacu-sealed the other 3, I removed 2 to be served on my Christmas Eve salumi platter. When I peeled back the casing and cut into it, I was amazed. I had read about others employing this as a means of equilibrating moisture throughout the salame, but, I was under the impression it was more for case hardened items. The texture was perfect all the way through. Just how I like it. Needless to say, I was quite happy with this result. Point of this story is don't kill your starter. Keep reading, several more ready or almost ready, including salame di Mugnano made just yesterday with hog middles, AKA crespone.
I use well water to mix the starter which works fine. However, I'd not recommend it to anyone who has not had their well water assayed and found it to be soft and not loaded with minerals.
ReplyDeleteI can't be 100% that I used tap water. But, based on the fact that the starter was brand new and I didn't write down distilled water, I have to assume it.
ReplyDeletelovely stuff mate! I wish I had taste-o-vision. Next time I have something with iffy texture, I might well try the vac-pac technique.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, that I just cannot explain, sometimes even when I use distilled water and new culture, I get almost no pH drop after 72 hours. I have often wondered how well they are stored at the places we order from...
the blog is great. I vac pack all my salume before consumption for at least 5days for small sausages, longer for larger and whole muscles. it really does make a world of difference!!
ReplyDeletecheers!
JG
Interesting, I'll keep this in mind, thanks.
ReplyDeleteMaking mortadella today!
Matt: I've had similar issue with F-LC. I have to read the Marianski book again, I think there's more to it.
ReplyDeleteJG: I read about it, but never used it until now. Honestly, I only vac sealed it to stop it from drying further, what serendipity!
Meatball: Have fun making mortadella, I swore it off about a year ago when I left "meat prints" all over the kitchen.
Had to abort the mort. Crew staged a mutiny on the Meatball and so we made sausage instead.
ReplyDeleteBest move you could have made, meatball. My kitchen looked like someone put a stick of dynamite inside a meat balloon.
ReplyDeleteLooks good.. I'm getting ready to make my first salume next week.. just waiting on an order of cultures from butcherpacker.
ReplyDeleteone Q.. I have an envelope of something like 600 bactoferm.. it says it's for mold development.. I'm assuming that's in addition to the fermenting bacteria right?
I'm telling you... Proscuitto is much easier!!
Wow, Todd. Never made a salame? I thought you bought the equipment a while back. The mold is made into a solution with distilled water. That is sprayed on to the case salame, it does not go into the meat mix. I'm trying to work into doing prosciutto, but, room is an issue right now. Which culture did you go with?
ReplyDelete