Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 12 2007, 07:29 PM

I am not an expert and I dont know that much about salami processing etc but I have been making my own salami at home over the last couple of years without killing myself, kids, wife or friends. What follows is my process of making salami which I learned from talking to my local butcher, reading some of a book or three and chatting to friendly grocery check out ladies - you know the old Italian types at specialty grocery stores.

The recipe I will take you through is one that I have never made before today and one that I put together after consulting a couple of books and getting in the mood to get creative. So here goes....

Oh THIS IS IMPORTANT - making your own salami and hanging them in the garage is climate specific. You can only really do it mid to end of June and into July. You also need a good flow of cold air through your garage. Making your own salami is a bit like brewing your own Lambic the old way - it is climate/time specific. So if you were thinking of making your own you should make it this weekend whilst the weather is still cold. If you live in QLD and the temp is up around the 15 I would do some research to see if that is okay - I would think maybe not. Humidity also plays a part in how your salami dry's but as I said I am not an expert so you should look into that your self.

So on to my version of a pepperoni or sopressata which is what I have made today.

The ingredients


1.7k pork neck
1.3 girello (beef)
95g of fine crystal Iblea sea salt - 30g per 1 kilo of meat is the rule of thumb for salami
8g roasted chillie powder
8g smokey paprika
8g of fennel powder
9g freshly crushed black pepper 8 cloves of garlic pound into paste in mortar and pestle
1/2 cup of conseria Peperone dolce - capsican paste...basically boiled down red capsicans
1 cup of red wine

Cut the meat into cubes that are easy to place itno the feeder of your mincer or porketta.



note the run of fat in the pork neck. You can also use pork shoulder as it also has a good meat to fat ratio.





make sure as you place the meat into the mincer that you put some beef followed by some pork and then followed by beef etc so that you get the two meats well and truly combined. When you have finished the first pass flatten the meat out in a large tray and check for fat content.



I am pretty happy with the look of the balance so I wont add any of the pork fat I had on hand. It will go in the freezer for another day. If you think you need to add some pork fat just chop it up real fine and mix it through the meat.

Now it is time to add our spice mix, salt and garlic. I sprinkly half of each spice evenly over the meat and then give it a really good mix. I then flatten the meat out again and repeat the process with the remaining spice ingredients.

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 12 2007, 07:50 PM

Below is a picture of me delicately adding the spice and salt mix and getting my hands in there!



Once this has been done put the mixture back through the mincer. I use the same sized cutting blade for all of this as there is no need to go down to a smaller size, you could if want but I dont see the need. Once you have finished pushing through the second mincing round I flatten out the meat and now add the wet ingredients. The capsican paste or sauce is basically boiled down red capsicans - this is used for colour, sweetness and it's preservative affect. In my all pork salami I use two cups to 4 kilo's of meat but for this recipe I only want a hint of it.



Once you add the wine you have a slightly wet meat mixture and now comes the all important secret to making a good salami - or so I am told by those lovely Grocery grannies and my butchers - you must give the meat a really really really good mix! The meat goes from a thin feeling wet mixture to a sticky gluey kind of consistency.

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 12 2007, 08:01 PM

Sorry I am doing this in bits but for some reason it wont let me post anymore pictures so I have to reply to myself. Hmmm not all that uncommon me replying to me!!

All done. Take a couple of small pinches of the meat, shape them into little patties and fry them in some olive oil to check for seasoning.



It was perfect but you could always add some seasoning and give it another mix if you feel the need. All that is left is to cover the tray with glad wrap and stick in the fridge for two days for all those flavors to really meld. Beware the smell is strong and enticing unless your my wife or one of my three kids. Thankfully I can put it in my brew fridge in the garage.


Notice the colour now that it has been really well mixed.

Clean up - we all know what that is like! Have a beer.

I will stuff these on Saturday or Sunday and I will be sure to take pictures of that process and then hang them in my garage next to my pork salami's that I made last week.

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 12 2007, 08:20 PM

QUOTE(Franko @ Jul 12 2007, 08:10 PM)

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 12 2007, 08:49 PM

QUOTE(Duff @ Jul 12 2007, 08:34 PM)

Nice stuff Merc.

I recently convened with a local family for their annual salami get together. At a secret garage at 6am on a cold Sunday morning we chopped up 2 and a half pigs. Lots o' salami, sausages, procuitto, et al.

Can't beat those gatherings. One of the sons (a police officer) suggested a break for drinks. Break out the scotch and coke at 8.30am Quickly followed by a second round, then breakfast with red wine at 9.00am Then lunch at 12.00pm. Needless to say, when my wife picked me up I was a little chatty.

Glad most of the chopping was done by then.

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 12 2007, 09:46 PM

QUOTE(Trent @ Jul 12 2007, 09:25 PM)

Hey Merc
This is a great thread, but ya shoulda posted it a few weeks ago so lazy bums like me could get everything ready before it warms up too much Anyway, keep it all coming, next june and july is only 11 months or so away, plenty of time for me to get organised. In the meantime I will just bust out the food dehydrator and make some hickory smoked beef jerky (using liquid smoke from the states). How many does that mound make? Is it something that will last the year, or do you have to do it weekly through the "salami season"?
Trent

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 23 2007, 03:04 PM

Devo the snags look great!

Okay time to finish off my salami's. The meat mix has been in the fridge for three days and the flavours are certainly well combined. So first off is to attatch the stuffing tube to the mincer



and then give the natural casings a bit of a wash and a soak in some water with a squeeze of lemon in it. Then I cut the length of casing I want to start with and give it a rinse through with cold water.




Then thread it on to the stuffing tube and tie a knot in the end of the casing. When you first run your meat mix into the casing it will likely have a lot of air in it so have a sterilised pin handy and prick the casing several times so the air can escape. You should prick the sausage when ever you see air pockets as it helps in filling the casing properly and air in the sausage will allow the meat to go rancid and there fore spoil all your hard work.



okay it might not look all that appetising right now but keep reading.

Once you have a sausage about 20cm long stop the machine and carefully twist the sausage around several times so as to create a break before the next sausage. Also as it is important that your salami's do not touch each other as they are hanging to dry - if they do touch they will not dry correctly at that point which is not a good thing - so I pull some of the casing off the feeder tube before making my next sausage.




Now just repeat the process - fill, twist, space, fill, twist space - oh and admire your handiwork!



When the casing you threaded is used up cut another length give it a rinse and thread on to the filler tube and continue until you have a heap of sausages. I basically thread as much casing on as I can so I dont have to fiddle around with it. I made 17 sausages out of this batch and threaded casing onto the feeder only twice. If you get greedy and over stuff a sausage it will split, with practise you will get the hang of feeding the mixture in - but if it splits just pinch and twist the sausage a couple of centermeters before the split and tie a knot in the casing and you will end up with a short salami.

When you get down to your last bit of mix and last sausage peel a potato and cut it into small cubes and feed that through your mincer. This will push the remaining meat in the mixer through and into your last sausage. Make sure you dont get any potato into the sausage as this is not a good thing for your salami. If you do then tie it off and fry that sausage up for lunch it's actually quite nice as the potato cooks in the casing with the meat and it is yum!



Now it is time to string the sausages so that you can hang them. Use cooking twine but not the waxy version as that tends to slip and you will find your future salami's lying on the garage floor in the morning. I tie the string as close the the end of the sausage so as to avoid air pockets being created when you hang the sausage also this is a good time to prick the sausages to get rid of any air pockets. Occassionally the knots will slip off the ends of the sausages so check your knots.



Just to clarify - depending on the size of the sausages I group them into lots of two or three so I can hang them easily. I will cut the piece of skin between them so as to create these groups and I will, if need be tie the sausage ends I have cut so that they remain compact. I cut them in the middle of the extra casing I left between each sausage so I can use the casing ends to tie knots and tie them off. I will then use a longer piece of string and tie it to one end of the group - this becomes the hanging end. At the end of this process I have nine groups to hang with a total of 17 salami's in all.



Note the darker Salami's are the ones a made and hung the week before so they are drying along quite nicely.

Below are some pictures of the salami's after they have been hanging for one week after taking the pictures above of the making of them. The darker ones are the pork and beef, the redder looking ones have been hanging for two weeks and are pure pork.



That is it for now. I will post a picture or two when I take them down and enjoy the fruits of my labour

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 23 2007, 04:12 PM

Wildschwien, here is a link to the mincer I have. I used to do all this with a hand cranked porketta and I have to say the electric mincer and filler is great - at least three times as fast and easy. Having help is good too, someone putting the meat mix in as some one else fills and twists.

http://www.sunbeam.com.au/products/product_details.cfm?rec_id=562&sec_id=11

Steve, the time taken to hang and therefore dry varies according to size, weather and humidity. Basically I hang them until I judge that they are ready to be eaten. Last years lot dried too quickly so I oiled the outside to stop it going too hard whilst I was waiting for the middle to dry. You want the salami's to be firm to hard to the touch, if you let them hang longer after this they will become very hard to rock hard. They will still be edible (sliced real thin). Once I think they are ready I will take them down and off to my friendly butcher who cryovacs them for me in lots of two. I then can leave them in the fridge for months - but they never last!

Devo thanks for the comment. I certainly wouldnt mind you divulging some recipe information regarding the salami you made or is it a long held family secret? Come on cough it up

Oh and BTW the beer in the shots from the mincing day was a Becks - imported of course!

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 24 2007, 09:42 AM

Darren, you got me there! I dont use a sterilised needle but I thought I would suggest that anyway as it seems safer.

The salt cures and preserves the meat. It is as simple as that. Cant really explain any more than that but you would be able to find heaps of info on the net regarding this. You do need to be aware when you eat the salami checking that it is okay and that it has cured properly. If you have a bit of an air pocket in the meat it can go rancid etc which means ditching that salami. If I am unsure about a salami I ditch it - better that than risking the alternative.

As for worms etc all that is possible but there are ways to avoid it. Keeping your work area, utensils and hands clean, keeping the meat cold and working fast so the meat does not get to warm is the go. Buy good meat - I must ask my butcher about the quality of the pork we get now as pigs that are fed bad things ie uncooked bits of other pigs that have the worm, can have worms. My butcher recently carved up two 180kilo pigs with a group of mates and family and made salami, procuitto hams etc so I dont think he is too concerned about the possibility of worms or bacteria. But if you are worried the best thing is to freeze the meat you are going to use for salami for a week or more before using it - this kills any worms that may be there - again do you own research on this as I am paraphrasing.

Posted by: Mercs Own Jul 24 2007, 12:13 PM

Oh, if you do freeze your pork to kill off any nasties it is best if you cut the meat up in to 2.5cm dice or so as this aids in the freezing and killing of any possible bugs - Trichinella spiralis there called. I dont know if they are the same as heart worm but they are a tiny round worm and fairly nasty if you get a lot of them. You should also freeze the meat for about 21 days.

Posted by: Mercs Own Aug 1 2007, 02:12 PM

Update: My first lot of salami has been hanging for three weeks and certainly seemed hard enough to have finished drying and ready to eat. I cut one done and cut the end off it to find that unfortunately whilost the outside was very firm the inside still had a little way to go before the drying out process was finsihed. It was okay to eat but I would have prefered it to be a little dryer. When cut open you see a darker red/greyish circle around the outside and the centre of the salami is still a fresh red kind of colour. It was dry but it needed a little more. The issue is if I leave them hanging as is the outside would dry even more trapping the moisture inside and therefore they would not dry out properly.

I had read somewhere that you could spray them with water to moisten and slow done the outside drying but I was a little worried about mold. A quick chat to my salami making butcher and he told me that he heard the Italians would use left over wine to wipe down the outside of the salami and slow the drying down so the inside could continue to dry out. So I bought a good bottle of Australian made Spanish style wine to spray onto my italian style salami. I gave them a good spritz so they were quite wet and have done so for the last couple of days - the outside is in good condition and the inside is feeling firmer so I reckon it has worked and they are almost done.

I'll post pics of the finished product.

Posted by: Mercs Own Aug 2 2007, 09:16 AM

Tony M I am reading that book also and I agree reading it does seem to add kilo's to your waist!

The River Cottage Meat book is also a good read. I am currently looking to get a copy the River Cottage Cookbook as it has (apparently) a good small goods section.

http://shop.rivercottage.net/rcv2/shop/books.jsp?shop=bookRc&filter=hugh

A good website too!

Posted by: Mercs Own Today, 02:42 PM

Well the salami are all done and being eaten as I type. The first lot hang for just over 5 weeks and the beef and pork lot for just over 4 weeks. Spritsing them down with wine worked quite well

I could have started to spritz them a lttle sooner or perhaps because it was so cold they did dry a little quicker on the outside than I would have liked - they are very tasty though and the only problem I am having with them is going to be able to keep them long enough.



Out of the 31 salami I made I only had to discard one. It had dried too fast and the meat in the middle dried and split leaving a small space running right through the length of the salami. When I squeezed this salami it was hard on the outside but felt hollow in the inside. This can be rancid and also have BAD bacteria so straight to the bin.

Here is a picture of the bad one held next to good examples of the straight pork (more red) and the pork and beef.



Below is an example of how you can see the drying ring around the cured and dried meat.



I took all the salami's to my butcher and for a fee - a couple of salami he cryovaced the rest in packs of two. Started out two weeks ago with about 32 packs and am now down to about 25 - too many too fast and too long to wait until next winter so as I can make my next batches.



BTW the pork and beef with garlic and red wine which I never made before came out great!

Posted by: Mercs Own Today, 06:53 PM

QUOTE(chillamacgilla73 @ Aug 16 2007, 06:36 PM)

Fantastic work Merc. I am drooling just thinking about those salamis!

I am a fresh sausage maker and have been closely following this thread for some time and feel very much inspired to have a crack next year. I have thought about home salami making for years but your step by step quide with pics make me feel a lot more comfortable. And I also now have a fathers day prezzy lined up...the Charcuterie book..