Making salami

Not all meat is necessarily edible in a nice way right away. This is generally meat around the joints of an animal. It is worked, stretched and full of connective tissues.

One way to use this kind of meat is to incorporate it into a processed meat product. Basically modify and mix it with other ingredients to turn it into a product greater than the sum of it parts.

The other benefit of this approach is that it can make the salami sausage store for longer. It stays safe to eat due to be dried, fermented and from some of the ingredients.

An example of this is salami. A sausage like product. Where salami differs from a sausage is how it is a fermented or cured product. This is similar to ham, prosciutto, sauerkraut and more.

The benefit of salami being cure dis how it adds flavour and complexity. The downside is that it is made using a culture. This a collection of bacteria that cause the salami to ferment and cure.

The bacterial culture is called a cure. It contains bacteria but also several ingredients that make it hard for pathogenic bacteria to grow. A home made salami can and generally will use this but may not.

When you combine the meat, culture and flavours you get the salami filling. The meat part you will eat.

Since it is a filling there must be a container. This is in the form of a casing. Generally you can use any sausage casing but you will probably want a larger size casing.

For this video we used both a 65mm or 2.5 inch and 100mm or 4 inch casing.

The ingredients we used included:

35 percent lean pork
35 percent lean beef
30 percent pork fat

The flavouring was:

50 grams salt
20 grams black pepper
A salami cure

the equipment needed:

Meat grinder
Freezer and fridge
Sausage filler or adaptor for meat grinder
String

After you have made your salami as per this video you will need to wait. The curing process can take at least 2 weeks if not longer. It is practically impossible to tell from the outside when it is done. Instead you want ..