I got my butt kicked the first time I tried making a fermented sausage, and I've resisted trying again for not wanting to fail again. I decided to put my big boy pants back on and stop crying over spilled milk. Long story short, I took a half hog butchering class (view only hands off) at a small local butcher shop I found a year or so ago with the intent of purchasing the collar and making some capicola. They are what I was told "Farmers Cross" pigs which apparently is a Berkshire crossed with any one of several different breeds. Never caged and the diet part I don't recall all the particulars, but I can figure it out if necessary. The piece I watched them cut was nice, but when I started trimming I was concerned about the shape of the muscle in regard to air pockets when I put in in a casing. My first and only go round with coppa was umai, and this time I wanted to try a natural casing. I didn't feel comfortable with it so I decided to make a salami, as I wasn't turning this into breakfast sausage.
So here we go again. I looked around for something simple, and 2 guys had a Salami Calabrese that was pretty straight forward. No natural casing for this, used a fibrous protein lined as called for (and I already had them from previous attempt) and stuck to best practices. Sharpened my plate and knife and went to work. As I type it's in the oven with a seed mat hooked to an inkbird controller as the bulb made way too warm temps.
Got the chamber cleaned and fired up. I'm pretty confident I corrected any issues from my last try, but I do stress on stuffing too tight with hog casings, and apparently these fibrous can take some pressure. I stuffed it as tight as I thought it wouldn't blow out so we shall see.
Thanks for looking, and we'll revisit this in a little bit.
So here we go again. I looked around for something simple, and 2 guys had a Salami Calabrese that was pretty straight forward. No natural casing for this, used a fibrous protein lined as called for (and I already had them from previous attempt) and stuck to best practices. Sharpened my plate and knife and went to work. As I type it's in the oven with a seed mat hooked to an inkbird controller as the bulb made way too warm temps.
Got the chamber cleaned and fired up. I'm pretty confident I corrected any issues from my last try, but I do stress on stuffing too tight with hog casings, and apparently these fibrous can take some pressure. I stuffed it as tight as I thought it wouldn't blow out so we shall see.
Thanks for looking, and we'll revisit this in a little bit.
