Local Food Heroes Blog

Thursday, 02 09 10 - 20:38

Genoa Salami

To try out my new drying fridge I wanted a simple salami recipe and chose one of Len Poli's (adobe .pdf file). It's a Genoa salami, but it's not of Italian origin; the famous Italian salami from the Genoa area is Salame Sant'Olcese, this recipe's wholly American.

I adapted the recipe slightly to use cure #1 and saltpetre instead of cure 2, also to replace the wine as my wife can't have alcohol and to increase the salt slightly. I also used acidophilus instead of the starter cure. Ridiculous though it may seem, the starter cultures used in the US aren't available in the UK even though the Danish manufacturer has UK offices. I normally use Bessastart or LS-25 instead, but in the absence of either, acidophilus is an acceptable substitute.

The meat was stuffed into 60mm casings as against the 100mm ones in the original recipe. They were fermented for 48 hours and have been drying for a further 4 days:

So far, I'm pleased with the way the new curing chamber/fridge is working. I guess that the final "proof of the pudding" will be in the tasting though. I am slightly worried that I have estimated the airflow incorrectly - this can result in the outside hardening before the inside of the salami is dry. For fear of this, I've set the fan to operate only when the fridge motor is running, rather than continuously.

Saturday, 28 08 10 - 14:30

Air drying Meat, Pickled Walnuts and Gin

Air drying Fridge

Posts have been pretty scarce around here lately. It's not that I've not been doing things; just that I haven't got around to writing about them.

The redesign of my 'drying' fridge has taken up a lot of my time - mainly because I'm not very good when it comes to anything that involves DIY skills! However, it's up and running again and although it will need a further modification (to remove a large dehumidifier that's inside it), it's working well.

The major change has been to install digital rather than analogue controls; they're far more accurate. I've also installed two humidity controls so that I can set the humidifier and dehumidifier to run independently. Designing the control box was a kerfuffle, but with the help of my friendly neighbourhood electronics expert (a friend with his own electronic controls company), I have finally got my head 'around' relays and other such electronic gizmos. The controls are now also housed in a wooden box kindly made for me by a neighbour. It still needs a coat of paint but that can come later:

It's seen here running at high temperature (23°C) and humidity (82%) during the fermentation stage of a Genoa type salami. I'll post the recipe and method when I see how they turn out.

Pickled Walnuts

Something I'd forgotten to write about is the batch of pickled walnuts I made in July. It's too late now to make them, you'll have to wait until next year as you have to pick them when they still have their green outer covering - before the shell has started to form.

The walnuts are put into a brine of 150gm salt to 1 litre water and left for a week. This process is then repeated with a fresh brine. After the second week you drain the walnuts and leave them in the sun(?) or at least somewhere dry for a day until they go black. They are then bottled in boiled and cooled spiced vinegar. Simples!

Sloe Gin

One thing that it's too late to make - and one that it's a little to early for; it'll soon be time to start sloe gin off on it's merry way to sloe heaven. That reminds me, I must get around to straining the lot I made last year. Self-restraint or what...

...well neither - the fact is that I clean forgot it was there!

Saturday, 19 06 10 - 14:43

Mortadella with Pistachios

It's great to get back to doing some real sausage making. We're fast running out of ham, bacon and sausage from my last mammoth session, so it's time to clear all the frozen meat out of the freezer to make way for the next lot.

Given that the meat's been frozen, it shouldn't then be refrozen unless it's been cooked - making fresh sausage is therefore a no, no. I was going to make hot dogs, but the weather looked a bit iffy and I'm very much a fair weather smoker, so that left a choice of the many and various other cooked sausages/luncheon meats.

I enjoy making emulsified sausages, not least because they taste good, but also because no-one expects you to. Big headed, I know: I don't care, it makes me feels good!

Mortadella is a traditional Italian cooked pork sausage that varies in size from quite small to massive. It's major characteristic is the small pieces of fat dispersed throughout it. To be 'traditional' these should make up at least 15% of the total sausage - this version has less. The addition of pistachios or pine nuts is optional.

I take no credit for the recipe, it came to me via Jason Molinari who I understand got it from a book by Paul Bertolli: no doubt it's had a few tweaks on the way! Salt seemed to have been omitted along the way - the amount I added was too little, I will increase it next time - I have altered the recipe to reflect this.

I won't say that the recipe is easy, it isn't. However, there's nothing difficult about it if you're careful. The cardinal rule is that everything must be kept very cold.

Here's a very 'snatched' photo of the finished product perched on the edge of the fridge. Trust me to find a bit with badly dispersed nuts and fat, and air-holes to boot!

Ingredients

Pork Shoulder 630 gm
Pork Fat (1) 420 gm (Hard fat from the back or throat)
Crushed Ice 310 gm
Garlic Powder 1.7 gm
Dextrose 15 gm
Mace 2 gm
Coriander 1 gm
Cinnamon 1 gm
Cayenne 1 gm
Cubed fat (2) 75 gm
Pistachio nuts 25 gm (weighed after shelling and peeling)
Black Pepper lightly Crushed 2 gm
Salt 23 gm
Cure #1 1.9 gm

Method

Firstly get everything really cold. Put your pork fat (1) in to the freezer for about an hour before you will use it, put the pork shoulder in to join it for about ½ hour. If you can get your mincer and food processor attachments in as well, all the better.

Cut the Pork Fat (2) into small cubes and blanch them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, cool in iced water and drain. Return them to a cold fridge.

Shell the pistachios then pour boiling water over them and leave them for one minute. The brown skins should now slip off quite easily. Refresh them in iced water then dry.

Weigh out your dry ingredients.

Mince the pork and pork fat (1) separately through the medium plate on your mincer, then mince again through the finest plate you have. If, like me, you don't have a mincer plate smaller than 4.5mm, mince three times through this plate. With a small mincer you may want to put the meat and fat back into the fridge between mincings. (I didn't because I have a large powerful mixer that doesn't heat the meat up like a small one may).

Return the meat to the freezer for 10 - 15 minutes.

If you've not had your food processor bowl in the freezer, cool it with some ice. I crushed my ice in the processor but I'm not sure that this does the blade any good!

Put the pork shoulder in the food processor with ½ the ice and all the other ingredients except the pork fat, pistachios and the black pepper. Process it until it's a smooth emulsion. Check the temperature often, stop if it gets to 8°C. Add the pork fat (1) and the remaining ice and process until it becomes a smooth paste. Do not let the temperature rise above 15°C

In a bowl, mix together the meat paste, pork fat (2), pistachios and black pepper.

Fill into a large casing, maybe a beef (ox) bung or cap, try to avoid air pockets, tie the casing tightly when filled: I used a 90mm collagen casing, 120mm would be better.

Poach in water at 75 - 80°C until the internal temperature has been at, or just over 68°C, for at least 10 minutes. You could bake it at 75 - 80°C instead (but not with a collagen casing: they melt!).

Cool it quickly in iced water. When cool put it in the fridge for a day for the flavours to mingle.

This sausage contains none of the binders or phosphates so often used in this type of sausage to 'lock in the fat and water'. It relies entirely on careful formation of an emulsion between the water and fat, along with careful cooking, so as not to split. The chemical reactions are similar to those found when making mayonnaise.

The recipe made a sausage approximately 10 inches long (250mm) in a 90mm casing. For larger sausages/casings you will need to increase the quantities - but make sure that you have a pot large/wide enough to cook it in!

Friday, 11 06 10 - 16:16

Bacon and Musings

I recently posted a bacon tutorial that I wrote for the sausage making forum. The recipe used was an amalgamation of a few already posted by myself and others, as such it was a compromise in that, whilst it makes very nice bacon, it is a little sweet for some people. The recipe I use most regularly differs in that it's slightly more salty and has less sugar. The method and other instructions are exactly the same as in the tutorial.

For 1kg of meat use:

22gm Salt
8gm Sugar
2.5gm Cure #1
0.5gm Sodium ascorbate (optional)

Use the cure pro rata for other weights of meat adding whatever herbs and spices you like. To aid calculation you can use this cure calculator:

Plans and the NHS

There's been a paucity of posts around here for a while; the reason is that I have not been too well of late - nothing serious, but some digestive problems followed by a lousy cold have meant that I've hardly been in the kitchen for a while.

I've got quite a bit of meat in the freezer so will be making either hot dogs or some form of luncheon meat shortly; hot dogs if the weathers fine enough for me to be in the garden to smoke them: luncheon meat otherwise. My neighbour's kindly made me a new box to house the controls for my drying fridge so I'll also be writing about that, when I finally go to merchants for the electrical bits that I need.

What did catch my eye recently is that Nottingham's City Hospital and Queens Medical Centre have started sourcing much of their food from the local area; they're not only getting better produce but are saving £2.50 per patient a day, some 6 million pounds a year. If other hospital trusts did the same it would save the NHS some 400 million pounds a year, and not only that, it would also bring much needed jobs and income to their local area. As the kids say, "It's a no brainer!".

Thursday, 25 03 10 - 16:35

Smoking - Roe, Bacon and Cheese

I've done a couple of smoking projects in the last couple of weeks. It's funny, but since I've been using the Cold Smoke Generator (CSG) it's that easy I don't think to write about it.

I was surprised how good the Edam cheese was that I smoked at Christmas, it may not be a local cheese, but it sure does make a nice smoked one.

One of my real favourites though is Smoked Cod's Roe. Before you start, I know it's from a fish with long term sustainability issues but I justify it in my tiny little brain by saying to myself that the roe is only a by-product. If I didn't buy it, the fish would still be killed for it's flesh. In any case, I'm loathe to alter my habits whilst the EU/GB authorities insist that fishermen throw perfectly good fish away - just because the wrong variety had the audacity to get caught in nets that they should have known weren't for them!

Either way, Cod's roe ain't cheap, it was about £4.50 lb - there should have been more in this picture but the fishmonger interpreted my 4½ lb order as £4½! For some reason the taramasalata in the picture looks very anaemic: surprising given that it's over 45% smoked roe; the supermarket stuff's around 12 - 15% and is generally salted rather than smoked roe.

Tomorrow it's the turn of some back bacon. It's been curing for 8 days now and is in the fridge to dry before being smoked for 24 hours or so.

The cure's a little saltier than the one in the tutorial:
For each 1kg of meat :

20gm Salt
8gm Sugar
2.5gm Cure #1
0.5gm Sodium ascorbate (optional)

The method is here.

If produce for smoking isn't dry it doesn't 'take the smoke' well. With fish, it's left until the curing salt forms a film call a pellicle on the surface.

A piece of Edam and a trial portion of local Stilton will accompany it for the first 8 - 10 hours or so. I'd like a side of salmon to smoke as well. There is some on offer at a supermarket nearby that I won't normally patronise; I'm not overly principled though so there may be some salmon in there yet! I have to say that I find it bizarre that cod's often cheaper than farmed salmon, particularly given the shortage of cod and the distance and danger that trawlers go through to get it.

I'll post the results in a few days.

Monday, 01 02 10 - 21:05

Dry Cured Bacon - Tutorial and Calculator

I've written before about curing bacon and given a recipe for what is a fairly low salt product. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this bacon, I increased the salt slightly when I wrote a tutorial on 'beginners' bacon curing for the sausagemaking.org forum. I have subsequently increased the salt level I use in my own cures again and realised that I haven't even mentioned doing so on this blog. So, here's an updated version of the tutorial I posted, including an online calculator for the cure posted on the sausage making forum, with the optional addition of vitamin C which minimises any risk from the cure...

Let's Make Bacon!

Cure suppliers

Details of cures and suppliers can be found on this page.

Cleaning/Hygiene

Pay attention to hygiene; keep everything clean and safe. Ensure work surfaces and cutting boards are clean. You may wish to use plastic gloves when handling curing salts.

Choice, Size and Source of Meat

Your meat can be from the supermarket, local butcher, or direct from the farm-shop or farm. You can cure as much or as little as you want. Remember though, the better the meat: the better the bacon – for this reason, many people choose rare-breed or free-range meat. However, for a first project, a joint from the supermarket is fine. If something goes wrong it won’t have cost you the earth!

You’ll need:

For Streaky Bacon – a boned joint of belly pork
For Back Bacon – a boned joint of loin of pork

In the supermarket both of these are likely to be rolled and tied with string. Remove any string and unroll the meat. It should be noted that the rashers from these joints are smaller than those of commercial bacon as smaller pigs are used.

The Dry Cure

For this guide we will pretend we are dry curing a piece of meat weighing 1930gm (1.93kg/4.24lb).

For each 1kg of meat we need:

18.5gm Salt
10gm Sugar
2.5gm Cure #1
0.5gm Sodium ascorbate (optional)

The sugar can be one of your choosing white, brown, Demerara or even honey or maple syrup. The darker the sugar: the stronger the flavour. A mixture of white and Demerara, or light brown sugar, makes tasty mild bacon.

Weigh your piece of meat and calculate the amount of cure you need...

If you have accurate scales:

For our 1930gm (1.93kg) example, that’s:
Salt 18.5gm x 1.93kg = 35.7gm
Sugar 10gm x 1.93kg = 19.3gm
Cure #1 - 2.5gm x 1.93kg = 4.8gm
Sodium ascorbate 0.5gm x 1.93kg = 0.97gm

...or you can use this cure calculator:

You can add any herbs and spices you fancy. A sprinkle of black pepper and thyme keeps things simple.

If you don’t have accurate scales:

Make up a batch of cure:
Salt 185gm
Sugar 100gm
Cure #1 - 25gm
Sodium ascorbate 5gm (optional)

Now, ensuring it’s well mixed (you could grind it in a clean coffee grinder, if you have one, to make sure) use 31gm per kg meat. So in this case that would be 31gm x 1.93kg = 59.83gm (60gm to make it easier to weigh).

You can add any herbs and spices you fancy. A sprinkle of black pepper and thyme keeps things simple.

Applying the Cure Mix to the Meat

The amount of cure mix may seem a lot less than you expected. Don’t add more, that’s how it’s meant to be.

Sprinkle about 80% - 90% of the cure mix onto the flesh side of the meat and rub well in, getting into all the folds and crevices. Don’t forget the ends. The remainder is sprinkled onto the skin/fat side and rubbed in well.

Now put the meat, along with any cure that fell off whilst you were rubbing it in, into a food grade bag, or wrap it well in cling film. In fact it's easier to put the meat into the bag and then rub the cure into it! Put it into the fridge; on a tray’s best, just in case it leaks. Every day or two turn it over and give it a bit of a rub; you can do this ‘through’ the bag without opening it. Don’t worry if liquid comes out of the meat. It often, but not always, does. Just leave it all in the bag.

How Long Do I Leave It For?

The standard advice is to cure the meat for 1 day for each ½ inch (13mm) of thickness, plus two days. So for a piece of supermarket belly like ours, about 1½ (39mm) inches deep, that’s going to be 3 days + 2 days = 5 days total.
Don’t lose sleep about the curing times. Unlike older curing methods, this type of cure is not time critical, it won’t be too salty if you leave it longer than the calculated time – so it’s always best to err on the side of caution. If in doubt leave it a little longer.
You may notice, because you’re bound to take a peek, that it doesn’t appear to have changed colour. That’s normal. The outside colour is deceiving. If you’ve followed the instructions it’ll be lovely red bacon when you cut into it.

Wash and Dry

At the end of the curing time rinse the bacon in cold water and dry it with a clean cloth or paper kitchen towel. It then needs to dry out a bit before use. It’s best hung in the fridge, but this can sometimes be difficult. If you can’t hang it, try and place it in the fridge where the air can get all around it, maybe on the fridge shelf, with something underneath to catch any drips. Leave it for a couple of days to dry, then slice, cook, and enjoy!

Storing Your Bacon

This is not 'old style traditional bacon' that can be hung in the rafters all winter; that needed a couple of days soaking before use to remove the excess salt. Keep it in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks or freeze whole, or in slices, for 1 to 2 months. If you Vac-Pac it, you can keep it longer but it must be kept it under 5C or frozen.

Sunday, 03 01 10 - 19:23

RIP Monster Bresaola

With nothing better to do because of the snow, I had a trawl through my past posts. I realised that I never posted the outcome of the monster piece of beef that I was making bresaola with here and here.

I'd like to tell you how brilliant it was - but I can't! After a while hanging in my drying fridge it started to smell like a tramp's underwear - take it from me, I know from personal experience what a tramp's underwear smells like and it isn't pleasant! There was nothing to do,other than bin it. As one of my forum colleagues has as his signature "It's Not a Sin to Bin". We all get occasional failures but it's all the more galling when the meat has cost a lot of money.

That's the last time I come up with a hair brained-scheme like injecting cure into meat that I'm aiming to dry out! If I'd used my head, I should have realised it was a daft idea in the first place.

Monday, 28 12 09 - 19:22

Pauline's Ham

I hope you all had a great Christmas and got all the pressies that you asked for. We had a superb turkey from Clump Farm, a farm that's only about half a mile from here. That along with home-cured ham and bacon, home-made sausage and home-smoked cheese made for some great food.

Now, the ham was one of the best flavoured I've made, even if it did nearly cause a divorce! You see, whilst you may think that saying that my 'bread rolls are just like the supermarket's' is a compliment, most cooks will not. Likewise when Pauline said: "Can you cure a ham to taste like the supermarket's". Well, I ask you, what would you think? Anyway, when she got back from the hospital we discussed the ham further and I came up with a revised cure. Funnily enough it has a lot more salt; something that the family had always said they didn't want when I suggested it before regarding my bacon! Sometimes I think that I can't win, but with just me in the house and three women, I guess I can't!

The post-Christmas remains of 6 kg of ham:

Anyway, here's the new cure:

Pauline's Ham

Water 2810gm
Salt 680gm
Muscodavo Sugar 405gm
Cure #1 105gm
Juniper Berries 2
Cloves 2
Black Pepper Corns 4
Bay Leaves 1
Coriander seeds 4

Method

Weigh the spices then bash them about a bit. Put the water, salt, sugar and spices (in fact, everything except the Cure #1) into a pan and bring to the boil. Stir to dissolve the salt and sugar. Leave to cool.

Using water, make the weight back up to the original amount - that is the original weight of the water, salt, sugar and spices, added together. That's the total weight of everything except the Cure #1.

Mix the Cure #1 into the cooled brine mixture stirring to ensure that it is dissolved.

Weigh the meat and calculate 10% of its weight. Inject this weight of brine into the meat ensuring that you get brine into all areas of the meat.

Now put the meat into the remaining brine and put it in the fridge for around 5 - 7 days, turning the meat every day or two. My meat weighed 6kg so I gave it the full 7 days.

The meat was then rinsed, dried off, and left to dry further in the fridge overnight. You could smoke it at this stage if you wanted.

The other change I made was to the cooking method. I steamed this ham, keeping the temperature above the water to 80°C. The ham is cooked when the temperature of the centre of the meat reaches 75°C. I have found that this method results in less flavour loss and also less weight loss in the finished ham and that by cooking to 75°C, as against 72°C, it gives a more tender product. An alternative would be to cook it in a vacuum bag or boil-able 'roasting' bag in water at 75 - 80°C.

Friday, 30 10 09 - 17:09

More Chorizo - New Recipe

When I started making my latest batch of chorizo on the 17th October it was my intention to photograph everything and create a sort of mini-tutorial. Need less to say when I got involved with making them I forgot to take most of the photos!

I started off with a big chunk of pork collar, also known as spare rib, and cut it into strips. If you have a small mincer you will have to cut it smaller. I prefer strips to chunks as the screw in the mincer pulls them through with very little need to use the pusher.

The meat with plenty of fat attached was cooled right down and then minced through an 8mm mincer plate.

The rest of the ingredients were weighed out and the culture activated in a little blood heat non-chlorified water for about an hour.

Ingredients as a percentage of the meat's weight:

0.133% ls-25 Starter culture
0.4% Dextrose
1% Fresh Garlic
2.533% Salt
0.4% Black Pepper
0.8% Smoked Hot Paprika
1.2% Smoked Sweet Paprika
0.133% Cayenne Pepper
0.2% Oregano
0.267% Cure 2

Wednesday, 21 10 09 - 16:05

The Coppa Finished

I took the Coppa out of the drying fridge yesterday and to be honest I'm a bit disappointed; the flavours fine, not much sign of the paprika, but there's a nice warm aftertaste from the chilli. However, the edges have hardened far more than I would have expected from the higher humidity that I dried this one in. I'm sure it'll be fine though when sliced thinly by the slicer, so far I've only sliced it by hand so the pieces are not as thin.

The recipe was:
(Percentages are of the meat's weight)

Salt 3.1%
Cure #2 - 0.27%
Cloves 0.04%
Cinnamon 0.04%
Paprika 1%
Cayenne Pepper 0.7%
BP 0.2%
White Pepper 0.2%

This cure was applied to the meat and left to cure in the fridge for 20 days. The meat was then dusted with more paprika and cayenne pepper and put into a collagen casing and tied. After hanging at room temperature for 12 hours in was kept at 12 - 15°C with a humidity between 70 and 80% for until it had lost 37% of its original weight; 40 days in this case.

Friday, 02 10 09 - 18:48

The Monster Bresaola - II

The bresaola has now been curing for 21 days. I have taken it out of its cure, washed it briefly, and have strung it for drying. Regrettably, I don't have a casing large enough to fit it, so I am looking at other ways to ensure that it dries evenly, maybe a coating of lard or olive oil.

I've also been trying to formulate a recipe for Irish White Pudding. A pudding that seems similar to a West Country Hog's Puddin', and a completely different product from the Scottish one. The problem is that as I've never tasted it I'm reliant on my mate John in Dublin to let me know whether I'm getting anything like the real McCoy! Initial attempts have been hampered by the lack of ingredients lists from commercial products. Now I have these, I've just got to get the ingredients and I'm sure I'll be able to reproduce the recipe.

The efforts so far:

Monster Bresaola - Part I

Saturday, 19 09 09 - 15:14

The Monster Bresaola

Sometimes curing boils down to 'flying by the seat of your pants'!

Let me explain: it all started a week last Tuesday when we went to get some meat from Joseph Morris's at South Kilworth. I described to Pauline the size of the piece of topside I wanted and I certainly got what I asked for, all 5.77 kilo's of it!

...and this picture is it after 2 kg was cut off for a roast!

I made a boo-boo trimming it in that I have cut off some of the solid muscle but left a separate muscle piece attached, you can see this nearest the camera...Doh!

I was worried about dry curing this thickness of beef; had it have been pork, no worries, but my experience of beef is that cure doesn't penetrate it nearly as easily as pork. My compromise has been to inject some of the cure as brine to get it to the middle of the meat. I have then applied the herbs and spices along with the balance of the curing salts, sugar, salt etc as a dry cure. Not ideal as the idea is to dry the meat rather than make it wetter, but never mind.

On the subject of Joseph Morris's, contrary to popular belief local butchers can be a lot cheaper than the supermarket as I commented in my previous post.

I've used the same recipe as before but reduced the levels of the spices and herbs with the aim of letting the flavour of the meat shine through more. I'll probably be in trouble for doing this as Pauline and the kids loved the last one I made so hold off with the exact recipe until I know how it all works out!

Monster Bresaola - Part II   

Saturday, 12 09 09 - 17:07

Chorizo Version 2

My second attempt at chorizo has certainly turned out better than the first, despite the crisis when the casings proved to be too small. My nephew Mickey reckons they're just like ASDA's; I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or not! My own opinion is that they're too hot and don't have enough paprika or smokiness. Next time I'll increase the paprika, reduce the chilli/cayenne or leave it out altogether and increase the hot paprika. I'll also probably give them a few hours in the cold smoker.

The ingredients were:

Pork 1500gm
Fresh Garlic 15gm
Black Pepper 3gm
Smoked Hot Paprika 18gm
Smoked Sweet Paprika 4gm
Chilli Powder 6gm
Oregano 4gm
Dextrose 6gm
Cure #2 - 4gm
Starter Culture 2gm

Powdered dextrose is sold in many chemists as powdered glucose.

The method was:

The meat was ground with an 8mm mincer plate. The starter culture was mixed with a little blood hot water to activate it and added with all the other ingredients to the ground meat, and mixed well. The mixture was put into 60mm collagen casings and fermented at 22 -24°C with a 90% Relative Humidity (RH) for 2 days. They were then dried at 12 - 15°C with a relative humidity around 75 - 80% until they had lost 37% of their starting weight.

There's a slight hardening around the outside edge due, I think, to the air circulation fan in the fridge being too powerful; it's since been replaced with a smaller 40mm computer case fan, set to come on only when the fridge is cooling.

Thursday, 10 09 09 - 13:44

Coppa - Drying

It's now 23 days into making air-dried Coppa. Yesterday I took the meat out of it's cure, washed and dried it, and left it to dry in the fridge for about 6 hours before stuffing it into a collagen salami casing.

It sounds easy but until you've tried it you'll never understand how hard it is; something akin to getting an over-large body into a pair of tight jeans!

Whether this should be called a Coppa is somewhat debatable. Granted the term refers to any pork collar joint and also an air-dried meat made from it, but as far as I'm aware, the normal spicing doesn't include the large amount of paprika and cayenne that I included. What possessed me to add these I don't know. They are more typical of the Spanish Lomo than this Italian meat treat. Maybe it should be called "Coppa à la mode Lomo"

It's now hanging in my drying fridge at about 13°C with a humidity of 70 - 80% where it'll stay until it's lost about 40% of its weight. I'll wait to see whether it's any good before publishing the recipe!

Wednesday, 02 09 09 - 14:13

Drying Fridge Update

In May I wrote about my fridge set-up for air drying meat. It's now been fine-tuned through experience and seems to be working OK at present.

There's no doubt that if you can find somewhere that has the temperature and humidity conditions needed, it's far easier than trying to artificially create them; a cellar or pantry in an older house should be ideal, particularly if the summer months are avoided. "Summer", I hear you say, what bloomin' summer?

That said, the first time I used my new set-up the weather was scorching hot and humid with it. The fan moving air from outside the fridge to the inside just resulted in the fridge working overtime to keep cool, and the already humid air increased in relative humidity as it cooled - not what I wanted at all Doh! The fan has been moved and the vent covered; it now just circulates air in the fridge, and then only when the fridge motor is actually running as it's connected to the fridge's temperature controller. It's quite a large computer fan though and I'm going to replace it with a smaller less powerful one in due course as whilst you need air-flow you don't want a gale!

The hygrostat now operates a dehumidifier in the room the fridge is in to lower humidity when required instead of operating the fan. The mini-fogger which was used to increase humidity when required, has been replaced with a humidifier which works far better and is less messy.

I also find that a tray of salt in the fridge keeps the humidity nicely balanced - it's changed daily (when I remember).

The system is still better at increasing humidity than reducing it but I think it's working as well as I should expect for such a Heath Robinson arrangement! Short of digging a cellar, I guess it's the best I'll get; certainly everyone's enjoyed the meat I've dried so far, and it's nice to be doing it safely.