Andrew is a great charcuterie fan, particularly salamis and saucisson. Last year I bought him a copy of Jane Grigson's classic 'Charcuterie & French Pork Cookery' which is heaven for a meat lover. He had a chat with our butcher about supplies for sausage and salami making and was recommended Weschenfelder . So for Christmas I ordered a salami making kit and waited for the creativity to begin.
This Saturday Andrew deemed to be the right day for salami making and bought the meat for a basic Italian salami. His preference is for chunky saucisson, bold flavoured with peepers but sensibly decided to follow a simple recipe for a Milanese style salami before venturing into his own flavourings.
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| Weighed ingredients |
It was recommended that the meat be partially frozen before going through the mincer to stop too much 'smearing'.
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| First pass |
The meat is then mixed with salt, seasoning and the all important nitrite/nitraite mix. This is where salami making gets a bit technical. Bacteria has to be introduced to cure the meat but it has to be the right type of bacteria or things could turn a bit, say, nasty...
Once all mixed up then the salamis get made and Andrew was using natural casings. I had been observing most of this process from a distance anyway, but when the skins came out I nearly vacated the house. They are really not pleasant!
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| Casings |
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| Self appointed sous-chef |
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| Looks so wrong! |
So now the maturation phase starts. For the first 24-36 hours they have to incubate somewhere warm so we used the boiler cupboard.
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| Incubating |
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| After 24 hours |
They now hang for around six weeks and will probably lose about 30% of their original weight. We chose the back of the understairs cupboard, possibly an unfortunate choice as it does not have a catch. But it does have a guard dog!
We'll let you know how the salami project progresses.
