I'm new to charcuterie. My salami is 3 weeks old and lost 20% weight. I plan to dry it for 5 to 6 weeks, but I' m worry because I used Cure #2 that contain nitrate. Is 5 or 6 weeks is enough for nitrate to fully convert to nitrite and then nitric oxide? Because I heard that if I applied heat to an unconvert nitrate and nitrite and eat it it's gonna create nitrosamine and cause cancer. I plan to put it on my pizza as a topping and then bake it. (Sorry for my english)

Hi folks,

Longtime lurker first time poster, found myself with a bit of a problem.

I discovered the other day that ham mites have infiltrated my jambon and other coppas / lonzos in my meat drying set up.

However I have not been able to find THAT much information on them and how to deal with them in my books nor via the internet, to be honest I’d never even heard of them.

I have thrown out the worst pieces in question (I believe the jambons) and have frozen my other pieces sous vide which I will leave for a week frozen before thawing and replacing in the chamber. I am also going to thoroughly wash the dryer with hot soapy water, vinegar and also a sanitizer afterwards.

Has anyone had any experience in this area and can advise on whether this seems reasonable/ anything I may have done wrong to provoke this etc.

My concern is that after I have taken all the above action i may find myself with the same problem in the near future.

Many thanks!

Recently I saw someone used dried tangerine in their salami. I was wondering if adding zest to it. Would it be safe?

The usually naem From “hqpms” but…. I want to fully age it to 60% green weight. To eat raw(as opposed to cooking after fermenting)

I just picked Thai chilis from my garden and have them fermenting at 3% salt.

I have made dried chorizo with pumpkin so I’m not that worried, but I wanted to double check that rice doesn’t act any different.

This is my full charcuterie spread to date. Everything here is homemade knife & wine included. Salumi left to right: lomo, bresola, jalapeño coppacola, onion & garlic coppacola, traditional coppacola. Salami left to right: traditional Salami (not.sure what i'd call it), pepperoni, dried cured kielbasa, Spanish chorizo, landjager, Italian recipe I made up ( heavy fennel & coriander) In the front my 1st cheddar and Hawaiian pipikaula.

Knife is made from 1095 steel, brass bolsters (30-06 shell casings), & spalted lemon wood handle.

Wine is made from home grown grapes from my grape vines. Mix of edelweiss and frontenac grapes.

Been hanging a week, should be good to go next week

What are your thoughts about transglutaminase? Do you use it? Does it significantly improve the texture and the properties of the product? Where's the best quality and value transglutaminase sold?

Red pepper flake, black peppercorn, and pieropan soave wine. #schmeat

This is potentially a first i don't know but I've made a venison salami with obviously very lean venison and done a 30% mix of wagyu fat. What do you people with more experience think a good target weight loss would be? Everything seems to be going good so far. Getting close to 3 months in im at about 25% weight loss.

Salami smells and tastes delicious, has lost 35% volume in the drying chamber, has sour taste from the T-spx culture, but has a pale, pink color and soft texture. Any idea why it isn't bright red and firm?

My two thoughts are too high of a fermenting temperature or too much fat mixed in the meat mix. Anyone have any thoughts?

Hi All,

My first attempt, bugger all airflow in my chamber but had a crack anyway.

Green powdery mold has appeared.

It did appear earlier on, but i wiped with vinegar and was looking good. I then went away for work for a week and came back to this. It has reach the desired weight, but don't want to die eating it.

What do you experts say?

Hey all, doing my first whole muscle cure, a 2kg coppa that I took down to 38% weight loss in a dry-bag, and on slicing it open I noticed a little case hardening while still moist in the middle. I've vac packed it to equalise, but I just wanted to ask roughly how long that equalisation step takes? I haven't been able to find a good answer online. Cheers in advance!

Does the wet casing and the dry casing have different user cases?

Question. I'm curing two separate loins - using twoguysandacooler's spanish lomo recipe. Didn't have cure#2 at the time so i used cure#1 (this was before i really understood the difference between #1 and #2). Now that I know the difference I'm going to start another lomo using cure#2. But in the meantime, I'm getting close to my target weight loss on one loin (around 30 days) but my other loin definitely will go over 30 days to get to the target weight of 35% weight loss.
Can i still eat the lomo cured with #1? Any adverse effects? TIA

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7073624/

Hi there, i’m currently curing 3 lbs of beef cut into 1 to 1.5 inch cubes. I used half tsp pink salt (prague #1) with rest of spices and dry rubbed it. The recipe says to cure it like this for 3 days before rinsing and cooking. Would it make much of a difference if i only cure it for 2 days??

Hello! I am sorry these posts must be too frequent but I thought if anywhere I could get some guidance here.

I dry cured pork jowl as per Ruhlman book and then put it in my wine fridge at 50c for three weeks. I had checked in on it weekly but must have missed this mold growth developing in a small cut into the flesh. I am assuming salt might not have penetrated there the way it should have or moisture got trapped there.

This is a 2 inch long cut and mold is around it in a 2 x 2 inch square.

Toss the whole cut? Cut it out? With what safety margin if yes? Thanks

So I understand the standard guidance to be to dry until 30-40% weight loss. And for very fatty cuts like pancetta, sometimes less weight loss is also ok, especially if cooking. However, I'm not sure I understand "when" the starting weight is measured. Is it measured based on the initial weight of the muscle pre-curing, muscle including the cure mixture but before curing, muscle after curing but before rinsing, muscle after curing and rinsing, or muscle after wrapping/casing and trussing?

Given a 1kg muscle, once just salt, curing salt, and sugar are added, the weight would be up to ~1050g, add spices for curing and you could get up to 1100g. After equilibrium curing, I find that there is ~1-2% of the initial weight as liquid in the bag, leaving 1080g. After rinsing/picking off the spices, closer to say 1040g. Depending on whether using collagen wraps or a beef bung/etc, the weight after trussing could be just 1050g or could be 1200g+. Here, 35% weight loss would be 650g based on the initial muscle weight of 1000g, all the way up to 780g assuming the trussed weight is 1200g. But 650g is 54% of 1200g, and 780g is 78% of 1000g, so if you don't know what the weight loss is from, you could end up with an end product that is too dry and tough or too moist and unsafe. This disparity is far less when using collagen wraps, which I have used for all my charcuterie so far, but I want to experiment with natural casings and the weight difference is quite significant there.

So I made duck breast prosciutto for the first time following Joshua Weissman's recipe. It has been hanging in my fridge for about 3 weeks now and lost about 30% of weight (starting weight after curing for 24h was 175g, now it's at 126g). It smells pretty good, kinda like salami, and it also looks kinda good. However I noticed a few small white spots on the back (see the picture). Is this mold and if yes, do I have to throw the whole thing away or can I just cut it off? Or could this be just salt crystals, just like you sometimes see on parmesan and other hard cheese? I would really like to try it, but I don't wanna give my family or myself food poisining. I hope the picture is clear enough, thanks for every advice!

Rate my first capicolla Original weight 2.9lbs Final weight 2.0 lbs Firm on the outside dry aged in a fridge and dry age bag for 2 months