Hi,

My recent batch of chorizo used Mold 600 solution for the first time. This seemed to be going well with a consistent covering of white mold after a few days. However a week after fermentation I noticed some gray/green dots on the chorizo - which dont look good :

Closeup :

The chamber is...

Hello all! I have 10-15 lbs of fresh wild duck meat ready to go. I currently have a batch of venison salametti`s in the curing chamber, but when complete I was thinking about making a batch of wild duck salami of some sort. Flavor profile I had in mind:

Cracked Black peppercorns
Garlic
Smoked red...

Question about mixing cultures in spices.

My thinking is to make spice formulas in advance for the making cured meat. Many require the use of cultures, which I store in the freezer. Can I add these cultures to the spice mix then store for any length of time. If so should it be in the freezer or...

Vol. 2 Fermented sausages with Chr. Hansen surface cultures

Above content added 1/15

Several people have asked about Mold 600 - the preferred mold for the protection of raw, dry-cured, sausages. This should eliminate some of the mystery. :wink:

Mold 600 Bactoferm™ (Previously M-EK-4)...

So what exactly is Quick Tender?
Many years ago I used it a few times, but then started to find out about cure #1 & #2.
So I've always used the cures.
So what is quick tender, as apposed to the two cures?

Ok, I just got back into making dry cured sausagesm cappy, soppra's etc.
Right now, made a curing chamber out of an old refrig, and only have 10lbs of Italian sausage and 1 cappy.

I made everything with seasonings, salt and cure#2 plus sprayed Bac 600 on it and the nice white mold grew within 2...

This my first attempt at making Lonzino. I made three orange Lonzino`s from recipes found on the site and three what I call regular adding the spices I like and removing the one I don`t like. I cured them at approximately 37 degrees for 14 days. I just washed and dried them. I have beef bungs...

I'm new to this forum, and while I've been making fresh sausage for years, I've only recently started learning about dry curing. I've been interested in making landjager, and used Chuckwagon's Lawman's Landjager recipe, posted 9/10/14. I converted a used fridge for fermentation, using a combination...

I am ready to make a couple of prociutto's. Can someone take me thru the steps? Is this done in a curing chamber? Thanks.

Hi,

When making Chorizo I first cure the pork with the following mix:
Sea Salt 2.50%
Insta Cure #2 0.25%
Demerara 0.30%
Dextrose (Glucose) 0.20%

I grind this mix into a fine powder before applying it.

However measuring everything for each batch takes time - and I was wondering it there was any...

This was a picnic and it's aged one year!

Not sure where to post this, so this seems like the generic spot. I've been making semi-dry fermented sausage (pepperoni/summer sausage) for a while, but I'm preparing to graduate to dry cured. Reference books list cure#2 as 6.25% nitrite and 4% nitrate. They also say that Prague Powder#2, insta...

I just pulled 7 lbs of orange lonzino meant for Christmas gifts. I left the casing and the netting on and vacuum packed them.Now I'm wondering if I should have removed the wrappings before I vac pac'd them. What's the group wisdom say on this?
Thanks
Bill

hi again i read that it is not good to use fresh herbs in dry and ferm i have some california reapers that i want to use is there any way to do this safely

I plan on doing a culatello in the next few months. I have some of the dried pasted hog sheets, but I have access to fresh hog bladders. I would like to try using the bladders but I cant find any info on how to prepare them. Does anyone have any experience in this?

Cheers
Toby

hi i have been using a sausage meal spanish chozizo it has sodium metabisulfite in it can i use this to make dry ferm sausage as i like the flavor will this affect the cure2 in the dry or the culture also it has salt 9020mg per100g serve how much more do i add thks

Used this recipe:
Bresaola
Ingredient % of Meat
Eye of round 100%
Salt ( Kosher) 3%
Sugar 1%
Mixed peppercorns 0.5%
Fresh rosemary 0.25%
Juniper berries 0.1%
Dry thyme 0.1%
Cinnamon 0.05%
Clove 0.025%
Cure #2 0.30

Meat was aprox 3.5-4 in diameter. Cured for 25 days, should have been more than...

Just wondering if you see anything out of place or wrong on this recipe.

Salami Calabrese ( I left out the fennel seed on purpose )

12 lbs lean pork loin
5 lbs of pork back fat
salt 215g
cure #2 19.3
dextrose 15.4g
sugar 15.4g
pepper 15.4g
red pepper flakes 30g
paprika 15.4g
t-spx culture. I used...

Here is something I thought might be useful and I think it compliments Reddals post about nitrate levels after curing.

Putting things in perspective

If you are reading this you are familiar with cured meats and I`m sure you are also familiar with the concern many have with the use of nitrates...

Hi,

I've been making Chorizo using cure #2 (ie inc nitrates) and some customers have been concerned about Nitrates in the product. I've explained that most of the worry about nitrates is myth and fear mongering - and that most if not all of the nitrates are consumed during the curing process....

A friend of mine has had Crones / Colitis for years and had a large part of her gut removed years ago. The disease has been managed well for the last several years but in the last months she is having issues again and her doctors are removing items from her diet almost weekly. Currently she CAN NOT...

Just finished making a black truffle sea salt coppa, anyone use the black truffle sea salt from Savinitartufi? It has 3% black truffle in it, which apparently is about 3x the normal black truffle content from other vendors.

3% doesnt seem like a lot, but you can smell the truffles thru the...

Guys,

Is there a sticky that exists for standard cure %'s?
I know, USDA standards, other country standards, etc. are a bit different from each other....

But it would be nice to have a simple SAFE sticky that gave good general info on Cure % to use for different types of products, such as bacon,...

I made some fresh Salami seven days ago today and they have been hanging at a temperature of 16 deg. C with humidity at 75%. When I got the Salami out of the cellar room to smoke them last Saturday, I noticed that they had a very odd array of molds. There was white dots, some very light fluffy grey...

I'm going to make this recipe on Sunday. I'm going to sub the 'red flakes' for smoked hot hungarian paprika.. However I don't have dextrose, just sugar. Can I substitute or is it worth the trip to the brew store for some? I'm using T-PX.

cacciatore recipe

As an aside, I found a new farm to...

The cacciatore should be ready next weekend, so I am planning my next batch. It is truffle season here, and I am thinking about a nice truffle salami. We get great local black truffles.

Not sure how much per kg or whether I need to treat the raw truffle before I use it, and would be grateful for...

I have seen Hungarian paprika listed as sweet and hot , what kind of paprika do I need to use in peperoni ?
Thank you !

This may have been discussed in the past but a quick search did not find anything. But what is the general thought of aging salami in a vacuum pack? Maintaining a cool and high humidity environment is difficult through the summer months. My refer sucks the humidity out of the are but keeps things...

Hi,

Up to now I've been using Sea Salt in my recipe for Chorizo - only because it was specified in the original recipe I started from. I grind it into a fine powder so the texture doesn't make any difference.

However I read that Sea Salt has all kinds of things in it other than Sodium Chloride -...

Question for Chris, Bob, etc

I saw a coppa recipe from someone that said to rub dextrose and corn syrup solids on coppa before casing, along with whatever spice blend one may be using.

What's the reason for adding these sugar components to the surface of the coppa before casing? Necessary? Makes...

Drying and aging
I have just cut into my first Culatello and am very satisfied. Only one thing bothers me: Hoped it would be ready for Christmas instead of today! 6 months in the chamber.
When checked today the weight loss was 37 %. I constantly have a temperature of 12 dgr C and a RH of 75 to 80...

So I decided to do the bacons of the world. I made Canadian bacon American bacon (that's what I called the regular slab of bacon), German Bacon, Speck, and now just finished Italian Bacon, Pancetta!

Hi,

I made my last batch of Chorizo 10 days ago and its been in the chamber since.

During fermentation I tried to test the ph level - but I only have ph paper strips and a cheap ph meter - neither of which was giving very clear results. After 36 hours I think the ph was about 5.4 - ie not quite...

Hi,

I saw a small retail pack of sliced Chorizo in a shop today - retailing in a major supermarket for £20 for 120g - ie £167/kg (about $215/kg) !!!

I bought a pack to do a taste test. It was very good - but I've had plenty of other iberico chorizo that was just as good for a lot less.

For...

My friend is killing a boar he doesn't want. He's going to make some fermented salami here but I'll end up 200+ pounds. I think I'll have to freeze some. Other than Speck, Swiss guys call it Boro schpek, (spelling). I might have to put some heat to a piece to see how strong it is.
Thoughts?
for...

I here often this description with a dried salami of the funk smell with a long aged mature Salami. I just finished my first long dry mouled Genoa salami. It has a slight stinky feet funk smell. Tastes great but is this what to expect?

Bob K has been very helpful to me as I go into the whole muscle cure arena, but I figured I should probably move the discussion over to where it belongs...here!

If anyone has missed the thread, it's here:

My question is how many PPM nitrate is required for a long term cure. Bob pointed out that...

Been awhile since I've been here! My apologies and my loss! What cut is a cured whole side? I've seen it but can't recall the name. The whole side (of Pork) is boned and applied with cure then rolled and tied. It starts with the loin rolled in surrounded by the rib meat then the belly. I think it's...

Hello all,
I finally tried CHR Hansen LHP DRY US culture this week in a 20 lb. batch of snack sticks and they turned out great.
We dry cure everything in our plant and this fast acting culture did the trick. This was the first time I have ever used a culture so I was leery on how the taste would...

Just got back from 2 weeks in Cuba. I left the chamber alone and all is well. My Genoa and sopressatta are down to a perfect 40% weight loss. I threw one of each into the fridge to firm them up a bit for slicing. I had one bigger 65 of Genoa in a regular fibrous casing as I ran out of the small...

Hi,

I'm trying to make Chorizo using this recipe - .

However I can't find anywhere I can buy the Bactoferm B-LC-007 starter culture in the UK or europe? I can see some US websites that have it - but they don't seem to ship internationally.

For my last batch I used Bessastart starter culture (...

So I was thinking, if I'm going to do a pork loin for Lonzino, why can't I do a pork tenderloin? I searched, but since I don't know the formal name for it, I came up empty. I did run across a recipe that someone came up with on facebook, which looks like this:

Salt 2.55%
Cure #2 0.50%
Coriander...

I was making dry sausage with a friend and he was mixing the pink salt #2 and when I checked his numbers he was about 1/3 higher than it should be. He did not think it was a big deal I am not sure if it is safe to eat at what point would it be dangerous to consume?

Thanks

Hello folks,
I've been making sausage a long time ,never using stater cultures. We make an average of 1000 - 1500 lbs of fermented summer sausage/snack sticks a week, half of those numbers is deer sausage.
It's hard to control the temperature of my two smokehouses because I fire with all hickory...

We've been making sausage for a long time and I have never had this problem with my snack sticks. We have covered every possible scenario in the process we use and we can't figure out why these sticks are turning gray at the bottom and hollowing out,sometimes halfway up the stick,sometimes it's...