Monday, April 11, 2011

Lamb/Pork Salami Tasting Notes

Here are the finished Lamb/Pork Salami.    The reddish one on the left is the Berbere spiced and the greenish on the right is the Zattar.

They are both well made, dried to about 40% weight loss ( we like our salami drier ), and with a very light mold on them.

The Berbere has a VERY strong spice taste.. and I like that, but it's obscured the taste of the meat, so next time I'll use less.

The Zattar tastes wonderful.. exotic lamby-porky goodness, with a hint of the desert and mint tea.

These went very well with a Paulaner HefeWeizen on a rare sunny April day in Portland this past weekend.

Before:


After:



I vacuum sealed them and threw them in my keg fridge to keep them from drying anymore.. hoping that they'll be fine ( I do that with my lonzino and coppa and it hasn't hurt them yet.

The salt % was under 2% on this batch.. but from now on, I"m kicking it up to 3.5% to be on the safe side.  I just finished another pork soppressata last week and we'll see how that turns out.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Lamb/Pork Salami- Zattar and Berbere

Here's the recipe




3lb's Anderson farms ground Lamb, and 2lbs  Carlton Farms ground pork ( Great fat/meat ratio)

40 grams Kosher Salt

5 grams cure #2

17 grams Bacto Ferm F-RM-52

1/3 cup water

25 grams dextrose

4 oz red wine ( mosen cleto.. grenache/tempranillo blend )

25 grams cayenne pepper

10 grams bactoferm Mold 600 culture (to be sprayed on salami for development of white mold"fiore")






I then used 80 grams each of green Zattar Spice for half the mixture and 80 grams of Berbere spice for the other half ( stuffed separately)



Here it all is.. ready to be mixed together. I decided that grinding pork at home is a pain in the butt and if my buddy Morgan at T&T is willing to do it for me, why not?






Next up, take the bactoferm and water (with a pinch of dextrose ) mix together and wake them up and put aside. ( do the same with the Mold culture)





I froze the mixing bowl the night before and then threw the meat in the freezer for an hour to keep everything cold and keep emulsification to a minimum ( same with the metal parts of the sausage stuffer ).





Mix everything together by hand, saving the bactoferm culture for the last part ( I put the meat back in the freezer for about 30 mins while doing my prep, then pulled it out and added the bactoferm and mixed well.

 
 



After tying off, it's into my ghetto fermenter ( aka- tupperware container in my oven, with the door cracked, light on, and covered by a towel ) at around 85 degrees F for 3 days. After that, it's off to the "curing chamber" Aka Mancave, now Home Office to hang for about 4-6 weeks or until they've lost about 30% of their weight

 If you look closely you can see the greenish tint to the Zattar Salami, and the reddish tint of the Berbere Salami.

Stay tuned.. they've been hanging for about a week now and look ( and smell) great.. I think I"ll be able to cut one of the "chubs" next weekned to test.