Home made sausage, drying/curing

[GotRocks]

Prosciutto is cured only with salt and air...no nitrites or nitrates. Ground sausages are sometimes fermented to help control unwanted bacterial growth; also, the promotion of harmless molds (creamy and white) on the exterior of dry cured sausages can act as a protection against undesirable strains of mold, etc...

Prosciutto is cured only with salt and air...no nitrites or nitrates.

The above statement is partially true, because Nitrites and Nitrates occur naturally in unprocessed salt as trace elements.

Rock salts were mined in different areas of the world and exhibited different properties which depended mainly on impurities contained within. Some salts contained nitrates and it was soon discovered that they would impart a pinkish - red color to beef and a pink color to other meats. It took more than 2,000 years to isolate nitrates/nitrites from salts and to understand how and why meats change the color. The fact remains that for thousands of years nitrate has played a crucial role in meat curing.

As for molds,
There are beneficial molds, and there are detrimental molds, the beneficial molds are white, and do not appear fuzzy. Not only do they help preserve the meat, they impart a special flavor indicative for that sausage..
Freeze-dried spores of beneficial mold strains can be purchased for a very reasonable cost, this helps you make sure the correct mold for the type of sausage you are making is present instead of relying on what you have in your geographic location.
Just as San Francisco has the preferred wild yeast strain for flavorful bread's. different area's of the world have specific mold strains which make sausage from each region special so it is difficult to reproduce the same flavor in a different part of the world even of the recipe is followed exactly.
Even if you brought a yeast or mold strain to a different area, the local flora would quickly take over and you would lose the strain you tried to preserve

Anyways, learn the secrets and follow proper safety protocol before attempting any cured, or dry-aged sausage or meats. A few shortcuts can create a deadly toxin with no off smell or flavor to make you realize it is going to kill you. Toxic Botulism spores cannot be deactivated by typical cooking temps, so cooking will not make a tainted food safe.

duck-breast prosciutto and bresaola are great starting projects due to their ease of preparation and you are dealing with whole muscle meats.
if you are dealing with pork, you  have trichinosis to be concerned about, although it has mostly been made extinct in commercially raised pigs in the US, but at the same time the commercially raised pigs have the least flavor and wanted properties for cured sausage. The FDA has a meat freezing chart that outlines how to make sure any thrich. cysts are killed.

[Home_Deck]

The above statement is partially true, because Nitrites and Nitrates occur naturally in unprocessed salt as trace elements.
As for molds,
There are beneficial molds, and there are detrimental molds, the beneficial molds are white, and do not appear fuzzy. Not only do they help preserve the meat, they impart a special flavor indicative for that sausage..
Freeze-dried spores of beneficial mold strains can be purchased for a very reasonable cost, this helps you make sure the correct mold for the type of sausage you are making is present instead of relying on what you have in your geographic location.
Just as San Francisco has the preferred wild yeast strain for flavorful bread's. different area's of the world have specific mold strains which make sausage from each region special so it is difficult to reproduce the same flavor in a different part of the world even of the recipe is followed exactly.
Even if you brought a yeast or mold strain to a different area, the local flora would quickly take over and you would lose the strain you tried to preserve

Anyways, learn the secrets and follow proper safety protocol before attempting any cured, or dry-aged sausage or meats. A few shortcuts can create a deadly toxin with no off smell or flavor to make you realize it is going to kill you. Toxic Botulism spores cannot be deactivated by typical cooking temps, so cooking will not make a tainted food safe.

duck-breast prosciutto and bresaola are great starting projects due to their ease of preparation and you are dealing with whole muscle meats.
if you are dealing with pork, you  have trichinosis to be concerned about, although it has mostly been made extinct in commercially raised pigs in the US, but at the same time the commercially raised pigs have the least flavor and wanted properties for cured sausage. The FDA has a meat freezing chart that outlines how to make sure any thrich. cysts are killed.

You can write a book about this subject.  I wish the form was broken up to more specific areas, maybe not a call for it.  More I search the more sausage making threads I find. 

I have tried to create US commercial tasting pepperoni at home, but so far have not got the flavor that I am looking for.  I also dabbled in fermented cured non-cooked sausage.  You have to be really serious about making non-cooked sausage, its involved, you need to be safe and understand all the problems in making such uncooked meet, which could be deadly.  Non-cooked cured sausage is something most of us here in the US never have tasted.  I had to build a special temp humidly controlled box to ferment in.  Takes a long time and investment, then not to be happy with the taste - but that is part of the learning.  Have not tried to make any in a few years.

[Jackitup]

fast cured meats with using quick cure#1 is a fast released nitrate to be used on meat that will be cooked, smoked, eaten or froze soon. Dry cured product uses cure #2 that has a slow release of nitrate to insure the safety of the meat over time 2-3 months or more and promote beneficial bacteria. Care must be made to create the right temp and humidity for several reasons. Worth doing and requires some reading first.

jon

[Home_Deck]

uncooked sausage take much more of a leaning curve and a careful cook.  So far I only made about 4-5 different kinds of sausage uncooked and did not care for any of them.  I think you get use to what you eat.  The ph effects the tangingness and that is something you need to dial in to suite for yourself as well as flavor.  I might try it again, but it is a big investment in money and time.  Being it is so hard to make small batch of sausage.  You have to plan ahead to freeze your pork for quite some time (w/o looking it up 2-3 months), fermenting takes some time seems like 2-3 months.  So you have to baby sit the drying chamber the whole time, make sure moister and temp are where they need to be.  Like to learn more, maybe someone might share a pepperoni recipe, that's good?

[rcbaughn]

This is a site that I first started reading on about dry curing meats. I don't have any setup and haven't tried to make anything at this point, but it's definitely inspiring and he has a ton of info on inoculating, chambers, and fermentation times. Seems to be a pretty good blog to learn about charcuterie from.

[Home_Deck]

I use a refrigerator modified to cool or heat.  I added a bypass thermostat that controls the until with external outlets.  Depending on what I am doing in it, I have a ultrasonic humidifier and heat, light bulb or little heater.  I can use it as a fridge or warm it up and control the humidity.   Right now it running as a spare fridge.  I did build this thinking to to proof bread also.  But most time I use my small Tupperware temp control to rise dough.