Tuesday, March 30, 2010

New Salame


It's been quite a while since I made a salame. I mean a salame that didn't contain enough hot pepper to sear your lips. So, I felt like making a regular old salame. But, I didn't feel like making something I've already made. That in mind, I opted for something just slightly unusual, sounded good in my head, anyway. This would be a salame with aniseed, garlic, black pepper and vermouth. Made the usual way, of course. Here's what it looked like:
1863 grams lean pork butt
615 grams pork backfat
86.7 grams salt(3.5%)
24.7 grams black pepper(1%)
19.8 grams aniseeds(.8%)
6.2 grams cure #2(.25%)
11.9 grams dextrose(.48%)
2.2 grams F-RM-52 starter culture(.09%)
3 large cloves garlic
1 cup dry vermouth
All the dry ingredients were combined into a mini chopper and beat up. I added a healthy tablespoon of whole black peppercorns at the end, for appearance's sake. This, incidentally, was my first effort using F-RM-52 starter culture. I think my F-LC has run it's course as I've mentioned in previous posts. These salami were stuffed into beef middles. So, nothing real exciting, but, at least it's something new to look at! Oh, the picture is deceiving, sorry. I hung them in the chamber just to take the pic. They will ferment at 70 degrees for 48-72 hours after being sprayed with M-EK-4 mold spray. Hopefully we'll be ready to cut them down in a month, just as I'm pulling my N'duje.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Mangalitsa part 2...Lardo



This is the gigantic piece of Mangalitsa Lardo that's been curing for 3 weeks. I've never cured anything for this long. Then again, I've never had anything this thick to cure before. As a gauge to it's thickness, I inserted a toothpick(far right). You can see the thickness is actually as thick as the toothpick. You can also see that is not even the thickest part of the Lardo! I hope that the 3 week cure was enough, but, it did feel pretty well cured. The cure consisted of juniper, rosemary and bay, along with salt, pepper, sugar and cure #2. All that's left now is to let it sit there for 2 months. I'm looking forward to this one. This may be my best work yet.