Aged Meat Madness Continued (W/ Pics)

[tx smoker]

Last week I posted in General Discussion a thread highlighting several dry aged meats and sausages that had come to maturity. I had another batch of salami going at the same time but it was not ready to slice yet. It hit the magical mark yesterday so I sliced it. This was a bit of an odd recipe perhaps. The base is my favorite spicy Italian sausage that I've always made fresh. We keep links and bulk on hand for pasta dishes and sandwiches. I thought it may be make this as a cured and dry aged Salami so I put together the recipe then added Cure #2 and Bactoferm starter, loaded it into 70 mm UMAi bags, and waited out the process. I couldn't be happier with the results. Perfect texture, great flavor, and a nice little tingle on the back end. Here is photographic proof that it really did happen

Ready to remove from the UMAi bags

Out of the bags. this stuff looks REALLY good!!

Cut away view. Oh baby...look at the texture of this stuff.

Sliced and the ends that will be chopped up and used in our favorite Italian soup

Close up view. Ready to eat and/or vac seal. Did some of both.

All of the other stuff I posted was somebody else's recipe then it dawned on me that the only difference between fresh sausage or smoked sausage and dry aged sausage was the addition of Cure #2 and the Bactoferm starter. In essence, you can do ANY sausage that you like dry aged and it'll probably be fantastic. Now that I've done the experiment and it came out so well (this is by far my favorite of the 3 I've done), I'll start playing around with other recipes and see where we can go with this

Wow....that's all I'll say,
Robert

 

[smokenharley]

tx smoker, that looks fantastic. I have a fascination with dry cure I guess because I have enjoyed it but I have never made it. You just gave me some incentive to try this process. These look fantastic. I may PM you if I need some advice. Thank you for your post.