Salami

What a week! It all been very porky around the place since the pigs came home last Wednesday. Over the next few posts I will show you what we have done with all the pork and how we try and preserve it for use over the winter.

First off is salami, we made 17kg of Chorizo and 34kg of two French types of dried sausage. One is smoked and will be ready in about a month and the other will take 6 months to mature. Between the lot we should be OK for salami for the whole year.

The way we make them is basically the same no matter what the variety, the only difference being the spices we add and if they are smoked or not. Some also take longer to mature.

We start off with the meat (We get the butcher to mince it for us as there is some hardship in trying to mince over 50kg of meat with a hand mincer!). This is lean minced pork and the back fat from a pig which is mixed thoroughly by hand. We then add in 2% salt by weight to the mince and fat mixture. You then add in whatever spices you want (chorizo would have lots of garlic and paprika, the French saucisson would have less garlic but have quatre espiece as the dominant flavour).

We stuffed the mixture into beef middles (Beef Intestines) and tied each salami off with a piece of string. It is important that they are as tight as possible because the salami will reduce in size by 40% and beyond. I then hung the salami in the spare room for a few days at room temperature before the saucisson went into the smoker for 3 or 4 days. It then joined it's pal the chorizo hanging up outside in Graham's porch. The chorizo will be ready in a week or so and the first of the French stuff will be ready in a month.

Next post I will tackle the parma ham. God I hope it turns out better than last year's one!