Meat curing - Swiss style....

[ExpatCanadian]

My wife and I spent a week in the beautiful country of Switzerland over Easter...  did a bit of skiing, but mainly just hung out with a good friend, drank lots, ate lots and enjoyed the scenery.  My friend is the daughter of a butcher, so she grew up making all sorts of traditional sausages and cured meats with her father in his shop.  She lives in a fairly rural place in the Alps, surrounded by farmers who all have their own versions of the traditional meats.  They prepare their meats and sausages and then take them to the butcher who smokes it all for them in a large communal smokehouse.  Years ago it was her father....  but he's in his mid-80's now and has retired so it's another butcher in the area now, but the process hasn't changed much.  Wasn't able to work out the wood they use, except that it's not the more traditional ones that we all use like Oak, Apple, Hickory etc....  it's something local that I wasn't able to find a translation for.

Anyway, one day we drove high up the mountain above a fairly well known town called "Flims" and ate at a restaurant of another friend of hers....  a guy who does everything from raise cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits and pigs to being the head chef of his restaurant, butcher, meat curer, sausage maker...  you name it, he does it, and all the meat he raises ends up in his kitchen at some point.  We ate an obscene amount of bunny that day...  which felt rather odd considering the holiday it was  ;D  After lunch he took me back into the depths of his place where he hangs everything to dry once it's been cured, prepared and smoked.  Well...  I was in heaven....  I took a few photos below with some explanations (some of the details were lost in translation, as his English wasn't so good!)

These are one of his specialities...  it's a cured, smoked and dried sausage, absolutely INCREDIBLE tasting, and he wouldn't even tell my friend the exact ingredients, a guarded secret.  I know there is some "Hirsch" (deer) and probably some beef and pork, but he would just smile with a twinkle in his eye and not give much away!


This is donkey salami... yep, I said DONKEY  :o!!!!  Can't remember how old, but I suspect a couple years.


Pork Shoulders....  not quite pullable  :D!  But they slice and eat these as is...  sadly didn't get to sample this.


Can you say bacon!?  These are all cured, smoked and now dried, and I believe all of these are from last autumn, but some may be older!  They don't cook these, just slice them paper thin and eat as is.  I tried this, and I can't even begin to describe the flavours.  I couldn't quite work out the exact spice mix on it either, but my friend says there is normally bay leaf and cloves...


More bacon


He hangs them in various places, depending on the stage of drying they are at....  these are hanging from the ceiling of a shed. Old school temperature and humidity control!




These prosciutto hams are almost 3 years old....  just getting better and better!!  Didn't get to try his, but had the same thing at another place the next day and was better than anything I've ever had before, even in Italy!



So, I got to thinking....  I could learn a thing or 2 from this guy.  So I asked my friend about when he does all this stuff, and it's usually around the last week of October for a couple of weeks to get everything done and hung up in time for the cold winter crystal pure dry air of the Swiss Alps to work it's magic on them.  I've arranged to go and spend 4 or 5 days with him this autumn when he's butchering his pigs and can hopefully get stuck in and learn some secrets from an old school master of this stuff.

[FLBentRider]

All I can say is WOW.

[3rensho]

Ditto WOW!!!  Thanks for posting the pix.  That is one impressive operation.  Donkey (Esel) salami is quite common here as is horse (both fresh and cured).  I'd be willing to bet that the wood they use is Buche or Waldbuche.  They are similar hard woods.  That's what we use for firewood in the winter.  That's almost universal here.

[ExpatCanadian]

I'd be willing to bet that the wood they use is Buche or Waldbuche.  They are similar hard woods.  That's what we use for firewood in the winter.  That's almost universal here.

That sounds like it...  as I said they couldn't give me an English word for it, but they did say it's what they use for pretty much everything.

Donkey (Esel) salami is quite common here as is horse (both fresh and cured).

This same friend served me a horse steak a few years back....  I enjoyed it, nothing weird about the flavor or anything... but getting my head around eating horse was the hard part.  I'll never say never, but given a choice, not sure I'll be eating too many more horse steaks in my life  :)

[Tenpoint5]

Wow I bet the the place smelled awesome as well. 

[RAF128]

As soon as I saw the first picture I thought it looked like Landjaeger sausage.    I had to do a little research on line and it originated in Switzerland and Germany.   I've had it and it's great.   A local super market sells it from time to time but the best I've had was given to me by my neighbor at the lake, a retired German butcher.    And he won't share the recipe :(.   The best I can tell it's made from beef and pork and fat, salt and pepper, cold smoked and then dried.   I think the drying part is what we see in the picture.   I'm afraid if I got the recipe from my neighbor it would never get to the drying stage.   It would get sampled until none was left ;)

[oakrdrzfan]

cool thread.  thanks for sharing.   :)

[York]

Cool Pix... I like reading about how different countries/cultures do things.

I never would have thought about eating donkey. Thinking of that makes me think of that Simpsons episode when Homer goes to Cuba with Mr. Burns, and he is eating Carne del Burro Tacos.

[oakville smoker]

Drools as he types AMAZING !

[RossP]

There goes another keyboard covered in drool ;)

[Habanero Smoker]

Impressive operation. That sure beats my dry curing cabinet setup. I wish I could share you autumn experience.

[Quarlow]

That does look like Landjaeger, I love that stuff. We can get it here all the time. There are a lot of german decents in canada. Looking at the pics and you said the guy uses his in his restuarant, just imagine "CFIA or USDA" saw this and we told them we served it to customers. They would go apesh#t on us, and those people have been eating it like that for hundreds of years and haven't died from it.
Great pics thanks.  I have a craving for some landjaeger now.

[sodak]

Loved the pictures and detail you put into the post.  Motivation!

[3rensho]

Just got back from a 3.5 hour lunch in Alsace and those pix are still making me drool.

[KevinG]

Don't let your dog loose in that place. Holy cow that's a lot of meat!