Thursday, May 17, 2012

Mosefund Bauernschinken Südtirol


Also referred to as Prosciutto contadino in Italian, I stumbled across this salume while researching more sudtirol salumi.  The diversity of the salumi in that area is stunning.  I'm repeating myself at this point, but, damn, it really is amazing.  I was fortunate enough to have 2 mosefund speck hanging when I found this.  For all intents and purposes, this is speck cotto or cooked speck.  If you've made speck following techniques I've set forward, you should have no issue making this.  Here is my previous post on mosefund mangalitsa speck.  Same goes for this, cure 3 weeks, smoke 5 days using beech wood(in South Tyrol it's a more gentle smoke over the course of about 20 days), hang to age 2-3 weeks and steam, poach or sous vide to 155 degrees Fahrenheit.  I steamed it, took 3-4 hours to get up to temperature.  In corresponding with a gentleman from Val Pusteria in South Tyrol, I came to find out that their Bauernschinken recipe was a bit different than their typical speck recipe.  It seems they use quite a bit of fresh rosemary.  For my next effort, I will adjust accordingly.  As for this effort, once again, I am quite pleased. This particular leg weighed about 12lbs.  I quartered the finished product, leaving 4 pieces of roughly 3 lbs.  To show how good I thought it was, I demolished a quarter in a little over a week.  Additionally, I have 3 legs currently earmarked for this.