Ciauscolo Salami

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indaswamp

Epic Pitmaster
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Apr 27, 2017
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South Louisiana-Yes, it is HOT
I've been wanting to make this one since the first time I saw the recipe. I had to order Vino Cotto first, which is "cooked wine". But the Italians don't refer to it as such, they call it Saba. Took me a lot of digging and asking questions to find out what I was looking for. Anyways, after 2 months searching, I finally found it. And this stuff is the original-straight from Modena, Italy. It is the precursor to Balsamic vinegar production, When Making Balsamic they add white white vinegar to and it is aged for 25-30 years, changing into progressively smaller barrels every 5 years as the balsamic reduces through natural evaporation through the wood.

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This Salami is from the Marche region of Italy. It has many variations, but most are eaten fairly soft when the salami is spreadable like a pate. The old world recipes used offal, which is the reason some recipes are heavily spiced with orange zest, rosemary, garlic and saba. Newer variations use pork belly 60% for spreadability. When I scored the Hamshire pig, I knew Ciauscolo salami would be one of the first salamis I made with the meat. I had quite a bit of both belly and throat trim so I used that and 20% shoulder trim for the salami. Made 6Kg. of salami, stuffed into 50-55mm beef middles. I made them 12" long.

Sorry I did not take more pictures. It was a long day processing 110# of pork and I was just focused on getting this done and going to bed. Here is the lean mixed with the spices, salt, cure #2, starter culture, and Saba along with the second grind of the pork belly through the 3mm plate.
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I followed the recipe for Ciauscolo @ meatsandsausagesDOTcom. Recipe said to keep the lean and fat separate. Well, the fat and lean were so cold that getting good distribution was damn near impossible mixing by hand. I had to break out my old Oster and use the blender with dough hooks. Did not have a paddle attachment, luckily, the dough hooks worked surprisingly well and did not overwork the meat, just blended the fat in gently as I folded the meat paste with a rubber spatula.

After stuffing, trussing, picking, and weighing; I put the salami in the fermentation can with an inkbird temp controller and a pan of water @75*F. Salami fermented 29 hours to pH of 5.25. I then put them in the chamber for a day.
Last night, I cold smoked the Ciauscolo with pitmaster choice pellet dust along with some crushed juniper berries, about 2TBSPS. This worked great for getting that juniper smoke smell. I want to try this out and make real black forest ham one day...
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Juniper berry powder in pitmaster's choice pellet dust for cold smoking...
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Here they are after fermenting, 2nd round of cold smoke tonight...
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Pics didn’t load. All sounds amazing. You are the salami whisperer for sure.
Try and refresh. It is always easier for me to load pics. straight from my phone, but I hate typing from it and dealing with all the damn pop-up adds on a little bity screen. Drives me nuts.
 
You are the salume king.
No Italian in my lineage unless grandparents somewhere didn't tell the whole story...


That little 245mL bottle of Saba is grape must concentrated down to 1/5 original volume....
I thought "must" was left over grape skins after pressing to produce vinegar?
Reading your description it is soured wine. Did you taste it?
 
Ciauscolo is finishing up drying. All are at 21-22% weight loss so I will wipe the casings with white wine vinegar and vac seal tonight.
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It's like a soft spread bologna...but with the fermented flavor. Good on crustinis.....
 
Grape must is just unsweetened fresh pressed grape juice. Yes, I did taste it...sweet, like a syrup, thick, lots of depth of flavor kinda like molasses.

Another super looking cure. Spreadables are not my thing, but these look perfect, kind of similar to a Mortadella. After reading a bit more about it, I see that the Ciauscolo salami is also used in pasta dishes, which sounds really good. Nice find on that recipe.

RE: Saba - I think this is a version of Grappa, a common digestivo served throughout Italy, though from your description, it sounds pretty mild. In Sicily the regional stuff was certainly an acquired taste - I never got used to it. I believe it was partially distilled as it had a pretty high alcohol content (like 40%) for a product derived from grape skins. Limoncello was most American's substitute after a nice dinner out.
 
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