Homemade Salami or I need more hands!

My husband in his infinite niceness, bought me every known attachment and add on for my Kitchenaid mixer. (Except the ice cream maker...I already have one). This included a meat grinder and sausage stuffer. So of course, me being me and liking to make all kinds of things completely homemade and looking for ANY excuse to buy a new book, picked up Home Sausage Making by Susan Mahnke Peery. For several weeks, I poured through the pages on my Nook, marking this recipe and that, thinking how nice it would be to have fresh Italian sausage for lasagna with homemade sauce and pasta, and possibly cheese too if I got real squirrely. If you've been following my blog or know me personally...yeah I'm totally going to make my own cheese for lasagna one day! A lot of the sausages required smoking, or were to be used right away, either sauteed, grilled or seared. But one particular sausage caught my eye. Salami. I love salami. Nothing is tastier then some slabs of salami on buttered German bread. I glanced through the ingredients and it all seemed simple enough, and I decided to take on the challenge! Eventually. It took several months before I actually got the opportunity and the proper refrigeration, to take on this little project.

Salami, like pepperoni, is a dried and aged meat. Meaning, its cased raw with curing salt containing nitrates that help inhibit the growth of some nasties, and then left to hang out in some cool, slightly humid space for several weeks to months. Now living in Texas, its not easy to find such a place naturally. Folks up North can typically make use of their attics or garages during the cooler months and have no issue. But again, this is Texas. While we have a nice cold winter, its usually two weeks in January. Not great when you need an ideal climate of 40 degrees for two months at least. So I needed to create this kind of environment. It worked out really, as I needed that for cheese making anyways. So when the hubby was home on R&R in April, we purchased a small beverage refrigerator with wire wracks just to make sausage and cheese. I bought a thermometer and hydrometer to make sure I could reach ideal conditions and tada! Instant curing box. All that was left to do was make some cheese (DONE! And that's will be a future blog I'm sure) and sausage, which I will take ya'll through today!

The salami I chose to make is an Italian salami, as it was a bit less complicated and I figured it would be a good start. You will need:

5 pounds prefrozen pork shoulder
3 pounds lean beef
2 pounds of prefrozen pork fat
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon fine ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fine ground white pepper
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ascorbic acid
Curing salt (use the recommended amount for 10 pounds of meat)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup dry white wine (I used Chardonnay)
4 feet of beef casings (I used all natural collagen casings, not into the whole intestine thing thank you very much!)

Tools:
Grinder and sausage stuffer (I used my Kitchenaid naturally)
Butcher twine (Or some kind of string)
Scissors
Latex gloves
Toothpicks or skewers to prick air holes
Knives and measuring spoons and all that good stuff of course.
Someplace to hang your completed product

 

Now making the salami is a two day process. So on the first day we're going to do the grinding and mixing up of the meat. You'll want to set your grinder, whether is manual, Kitchenaid or some separate machine, to its fine grind setting. I went ahead and purchased the beef preground and for the pork I purchased two pork shoulders, and cut the fat off, which pretty much balanced out for the pork and pork fat measurements. Cut the fat and the pork up into cubes.

 

Run the pork and pork fat through the grinder. I was having issues so instead of separately like the book said...I just kind of ran them all through. I figured they were going to get mixed together anyways, so no harm.

 

I measured out my spices, salt, sugar and wine ahead of time so I could just dump them in instead of measuring and dumping. This worked out as I needed to let the mixer rest a few times before it started to smoke! For the curing salt I purchased Hi-Country Domestic Meat and Wild Game Curing Salt which was conveniently prepackaged in little pouches perfect for a batch of sausage.

 

Once all the meat is ground up, mix it, the seasonings, and wine in a large bowl. Your hands will get messy, I HIGHLY recommend gloves. Also, if like me, cold is hell on your joints and hands, this will help keep some of that discomfort down. Cover the bowl with cling film and park it in the fridge for 24 hours.

The next day, your meat mix will look a little brownish on top, this is normal. Here is where things get sticky. Literally!! I think I need more hands, but I managed to accomplish some of this monstrous task before I had to just stop. It will take some clever maneuvering, but you can do it on your own, it will be slow progress though. I highly recommend getting a pal to help you out!

 

First, cut off a length of casing, about two or three feet, and work it over the nozzle of the stuffer. Pull some over the end of the nozzle, pinching closed. Fill the hopper with small balls of meat, pushing down with the feeder slowly. Don't move too fast or you'll push air into the casing and can make it burst if you aren't carefully. You will get some air bubbles, that will be dealt with after the links are complete. Get a little bit of meat mixture into the casing, then knot it off tight against that meat.

 

Continue feeding meat into the hopper and through to the casing, moving slowly, guiding it with your hand until you reach the desired length. I kept mine a bit on the smallish side, as I wanted them to have enough room to hang and not hit the cheese aging in the fridge and I was thinking snack size honestly.

 

 

When you get your desired length, give it a bit of a twist to hold it closed and then tie off with a bit of string. Use a toothpick to prick the air holes and you may want to give the salami a quick rinse off to get any raw meat off of it. Continue this process until you are out of meat or exhausted. I did the latter! Also, I kept my links in twos for the sake of space, you can do multiple lengths beyond that if that's what you want to do.

 

 

Hang the completed links in a place that will retain a 40 degree temperature and 80% humidity. A beverage fridge with some water in a bowl at the bottom works just fine. I used S hooks to suspend my salami from the highest wire wrack, removing the center wrack. Let age for about eight weeks.

 

After about ten links, I was done. My back ached, my feet hurt, it had been three hours...I was tired. I still had a huge bowl of meat though. What do you do then if you have enough to age properly in the space you have, but more meat? Pack the meat in freezer bags and park those suckers in the freezer until you can case them. They should keep for at least six months. Make sure you mark the bags accordingly! I felt so proud of myself though for what I have done! and I have to say, they look pretty cool hanging in my fridge! It was exhausting, but I'm sure rewarding and I'll be sure to keep you posted on how they taste!

Brightest Blessings!