dry curing sausage

[Kamanodental]

Aloha everyone

Havent been on the forum for awhile.  Moved back home to Hawaii and lost contact with the world. I need some help with some dry curing sausage. Has any one on the forum dry cured sausage or salame?  (dry curing is new to me)

I know that a cure could be made of salt, sugar and garlic. Question? Do you just mix this mixture with the meat, remove the meat from your cure and add your spices after?

I know there are several cures on the market but, I am trying to get the most practical and not trying to kill my family with the wrong cure.

Any help would really  be great!!!! ::)

Mahalo and Aloha
Kamano

[Tiny Tim]

I'm probably the wrong one to be answering this, but the sausage recipe that I'm going to try (close to my family's old recipe), calls for Salt, Pepper, Sugar, and cure/insta cure/cure #1/Prague Powder.  My recipe is posted somewhere in a post by me regarding sausage...maybe in the meat section.

[Gizmo]

I know that a cure could be made of salt, sugar and garlic. Question? Do you just mix this mixture with the meat, remove the meat from your cure and add your spices after?

The type of sausage you are making will greatly define the types of cure you would use to mix in with your meats.

I have been doing a bit of reading on it from a book recommended here called Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Polcyn.  There are a lot of techniques that I have seen described on the forum here as well as in the book that greatly effect the quality of the texture of the final product.  There are some recipes on Old's site and also several posts here.  I have included some but you can do a search on "sausage" and get a more complete list.

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=4775.0

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=4801.0

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=4434.0

[Habanero Smoker]

If you are going to make salami, it's best to use insta cure #2 or DQ curing salt #2. This is a mixture of nitrites and nitrates. The nitrates is important in making salami and other dry sausages. The nitrates slowly break down into nitrites over time. The cure is mixed in with the meat when you add the other seasoning.

If you are talking about dry curing in the sense that you will be air drying the sausage. I just  had one miserable failure in making Bresaola (dried beef) and Coppa. Coppa is like salami but with bigger chunks of meat. I tried to convert a beverage refrigerator to dry the sausage and beef. With the refrigerator on at the lowest setting the temperature would not get any higher then 50°F, and the humidity stayed below 50%; but at least there was airflow. With it off the temperatures were around 60°F-75°F with a humidity of around 70%, but there was no air flow. I then rigged up a time to cycle the refrigerator on for 1.5 hours off for 2.5 hours; but both the temps and humidity were all over the place. Eventually mold began to develop. First it was white powdery mold, which is harmless, and should have prevented other molds for developing. I was keeping the mold in check by washing the meat with a brine, or a vinegar solution. But other molds did develop so in a few days (which will be 5 weeks), I will make be taking the bresaola out and I will slice into it to see what it looks like.

I am going to build a box to air dry meat (dry cure), and install a fan that will circulate the air. A pan of salted water should provide the box with enough humidity, and the ambient room temperature should be about the right temperature to dry cure. If you have any tips, I would appreciate them.

Good luck I hope you are successful.

P.S.
I was in the middle of writing my replace when Gizmo posted. The book he mentions is a good book. That is the book I'm using as a guideline to dry curing.

[carnie1]

Hab here is a link for fridge control, I use one to control small fridge for cheese aging http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=4230  with a bowl of water in I get about 98% humidity at 55 degrees , not quite sure what temp/humidity you are looking for though

[Habanero Smoker]

Hab here is a link for fridge control, I use one to control small fridge for cheese aging http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=4230  with a bowl of water in I get about 98% humidity at 55 degrees , not quite sure what temp/humidity you are looking for though

Thanks for the link. At first glance it may solve my problem. I've never heard of this device before.. Originally I was going to hook up a regular rheostat, but wasn't sure if it would ruin the motor, that is why I went with a timer. At least with a rheostat there will be regular airflow.

The temperatures I am looking for are 60°F-70°F (ideally 60%); with an average humidity between 60%-70%. On the temperatures, some sources quote temperatures as high as 90°.

[Habanero Smoker]

I took a more thorough look at the refrigerator control. I was mistaken it for a rheostat, but it's an on/off control, but it may regulate my temperature better then what my current off/on timer is doing. It just may save me the work of building a dry curing box.


Here is a screen capture of the swings in temps and humidity over the past 24 hours. For some reason the last 24 hours have not been as extreme as previous readings. Temperature readings are on the left, and the humidity is on the right. Temps were fluctuating from 53°-64°F (worse case was as high as 84°F), and the humidity been fluctuating between 50%-84%.

[Arcs_n_Sparks]

Whoa, I feel oscillations coming on. The Stargate in my smoke generator seems to be opening....

Rod Serling

[NePaSmoKer]

my flux capacitor is fluxing ;D

nepas

[Habanero Smoker]

Yeah! It look like someone was trying to draw a straight line after consuming adult beverages. :)

I couldn't get the temps and humidity to be constant. By looking at the graphs it is easy to see what time the refrigerator was turned on and off.

[fatandhappy]

great tips and links. thanks to all. Just made my research a lot easier.

[Stickbowcrafter]

Get the book Charcuterie mentioned above. It's the best resource I've come across for beginners to learn about all things dry-cured.

Habs, I give you credit for going after coppa right off the bat, that's one of the toughest to get right from what I understand. I wanted to do some big salamis (Dad's favorite) for my first attempt but I went with salami in the smaller hog casings as recommended for beginners in the book.

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=5469.0

The Bradleys are great for jump starting the fermenting process when the recipes call for hanging the product at 85 degrees F, etc for several hours. (I have a digital temperature switch installed for more accuracy)

It's day 10. Recipe says 12-18 days for hog casings. Started to notice small spots of white mold appearing on the salami (perfectly fine and just as the book said it would).

I'm using a Haier wine fridge/cooler http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5383879 Digital temp can be set between 40-65 degrees F. With a pan of salt covered with water, I've had the temp holding around 60 degrees with a humidity of 65% for the last 10 days with no problems. This set up seems to be working great. I will begin to check the salami in a few days and report back.

Keep the info coming on this. I've been soaking up everything I've been able to find on the subject.

-Brian   

[Stickbowcrafter]

I wasn't able to ward off the dreaded "case hardening" and the few attempts I have done in my converted wine cooler have been sub-par. Getting killed by the lack of circulation I suspect. I've been searching like crazy for info on building a dry curing room/box and have turned up very little. I continued my research of wine storage because the storage conditions are nearly identical to dry curing meat.

I've been planning on finishing my basement into a game room and now I want to add a small dry curing room. I have found these: http://www.beveragefactory.com/wine/cooling/breezaire/wkseries/WK1060.shtml They are a little pricey but the specs say they regulate the temps and humidity in the ranges we need to dry cure. They also circulate the air. I'm going to call and ask some more questions about the humudity levels. 50-75% is a big window. If it was 60-75% I'd be a little happier. We'll see...

-Brian

[Stickbowcrafter]

Here's a great web site on how to build a wine cellar/dry curing room: http://www.bracksco.com/buildwr/index.html

-Brian

[ThomasMN]

First, the book Charcuterie is great for the topic. It's probably my most used book.

Stickbowcrafter,

I've got a similar wine fridge that I use to cure meat in. My first few attempts didn't work so well and I got mold too. Then I decided to ditch the pan of water and voila. No mold whatsoever. We've also used a different fridge to make 25 lbs of pancetta and numerous other dry cured sausages without a water pan and they've turned out great too. I've done a cold smoked dry-cured garlic sausage that was smoked with oak that turned out absolutely awesome.

I've currently got a bresaola curing, will be making 10 lbs more of chorizo sometime this week.

There's a thread on egullet about the book (don't click unless you want to read through 88 pages about dry cured meat):

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=79195