Salami Rocks – But How Do I Get Started?
Salami seems to me to be one of those perfect foods, it’s just pure meat goodness. Clearly people have been making salami for thousands of years and almost every society in the world has some kind of salami in their cuisine.
Today if you ask most people, they don’t even know how salami is made. I don’t have an exact number but just based on the people I know, almost none of them realize that salami is a fermented and dried meat product, and more important they don’t realize it is NOT cooked.
I can go on and on about the lack of home made foods and the “advanced society” we live in with fast food, packaged food products in the grocery store… yada yada yada. There’s even a commercial on TV now scolds a home cook for “what… do you churn your own butter too”. Well yeah, bacon, salami, sauces from scratch… we need to continue the tradition of creating our own food and not relying on large corporations to do it for us.
Enough of a rant for now…
Here are my top three things to focus on to get started making your own salami:
- Read a lot – make sure you understand the basic principles, what pH is and how to measure it, what lacto-bacilis fermentation is and how it affects salami, and basically make sure you understand everything you need to know before you try it.
- Equipment – a meat grinder, a stuffer, a fermentation chamber and a curing chamber, optionally a smoker. Those are the basics. There’s plenty of articles on converting a refrigerator to a salami case. I use the same one for both the fermentation phase and the curing phase. Bottom line, you need to heat it to 85 to 90 degrees during fermentation (use a portable light) and then keep it between 57 and 62 degrees during curing (drying). That’s all done by bypassing the refrigerators built in controls and plugging the fridge into a thermostat. Don’t forget humidity – another controller (a humidistat) and a humidifier to keep the relative humidity at 70-75%
- Recipes and Meat – make sure you again follow what you learn, freeze the pork at least 2 weeks at -10 degrees. Did I mention thermometers in the equipment section – freezer thermometers, salami case thermometers/hygrometers, yea, you need those things. Then grind it, and make sure you have a good supply of the proper spices and chemicals. I call them chemicals but that doesn’t sound edible, cure #2 (that has nitrite and nitrate in with salt) then kosher salt, and starter culture.
At the end of the day, this is not the article to read to learn how to make salami, it’s the article to read to tell you all the steps you MUST FOLLOW to do it safely.
Good luck and I can’t wait to taste your creation and share some of mine!