[oink]

Hi guys,

I cant find my river cottage salami and choritzo recipe anywhere.  Does anybody know them as I used them last year and they were great so I'd like to use them again?

Also, anybody know any other salami recipes?  I'd like to try a few different ones this year.

Cheers

[Eve]

I've got the same books 

River Cottage Cookbook:

Basic salami:
400g lean pork, coarsely minced
100g back fat, cut into small pea-sized pieces
10g fine cooking salt
100ml red wine
1/2 garlic clove, crushed to a pasta (1 clove for every kilo of mix)

Chorizo (again copied from RC):
"The mix doesn't have to be quite as lean, and I usually add about 500g regular sausage meat to a kilo of the salami mix. It is important to keep the salt level at 2 per cent, so add an extra 10g salt for your 500g sausage meat. To this 1.5kg of mix, add a generous tablespoon of paprika (smoke if you can get it), two or three more garlic cloves, crushed to a paste, and a generous teaspoon of fennel seeds. Fill up the cases and hang as for salami."

So that's the RC book. Just remember, the recipe is for 1/2 kilo of salami mix, but for chorizo is uses a kilo of salami mix + 500g sausage meat = using 30g salt. We ate one of those chorizo's a few days ago, and I could really taste the fennel. We've made ordinary salami's before, which are my favourite, and last time added just smoked paprika to the ordinary salami mix, which we preferred to the red wine + fennel + garlic version.

The Saucisson Sec recipe (what we think of as ordinary salami) is from Ruehlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie book and is as follows:
4.5 pounds / 2 kg boneless pork shoulder butt, diced
8 ounces / 225 g back fat, diced
(we just use 2.25kg of sausage meat)
1.5 ounces / 40g kosher salt (3 tablespoons) (still haven't got my hands on that, so used 2% of ordinary salt)
1 tablespoon / 10g coarsely ground pepper
1.5 tablespoons / 15g sugar
1 teaspoon / 6 g instacure #2 or DQ curing salt #2 (we don't use this)
1 tablespoons / 18g minced garlic (we don't use this either)
12 feet / 3.6m of casings

To this recipe, we've added double the pepper as we like peppery salami.
We don't have the facilities to keep humidity at a certain level with a specific temperature etc, we just fill the casings and hang them up in the loft, which is at fridge temperature in winter. There's a fan on a timer to keep the air circulating. As we use ordinary sausage skins, the salami's are thinner and easily ready in a month.

Enjoy! 

[oink]

Thank you so much, just reading your message was making my mouth water!

I'll be making them tomorrow so I'll let you know how it goes

[oink]

All done, I made 2kg each of the first and last of your recipes.  I had planned to make some chorizo, i even found smoked paprika, but unfortunately i ran out of skins.  Oh well, always next year.

Just thought I'd add I used the mincer attachment on the kenood chef for the first time.  Very good, much easier than last year when I just used a knife!

Cheers again 

[Eve]

We use the Kenwood Chef, too, with the mincer and sausage stuffer attachments - but the first time we put all the parts in the dishwasher, thinking a dishwasher wouldn't be any different from hand washing. This resulted in a dark grey coating on all the heavy parts, they had to be sanded off as otherwise grey bits would be in the meat.
Next time we'll stick to what the manual says!   


Enjoy!

[kook]

sounds good   love to get my hands on a kenwood chef---

[Eve]

The Kenwood Chef is very good, but at least £150 without the attachments. The latter go on our Christmas wish lists 
Whatever you get, don't buy one of those heavy (cast iron?) manual anchor-to-the-table-edge meat mincers; we did, and they're useless 



Eve 

[oink]

Just eaten the first of my salami.  Absolutely delicious!!

Thanks again.  I can't wait till the end of the year now, I'm gonna make LOADS.

[Eve]

Glad you enjoy them!

So it's a dedicated salami-pig next year, is it? 

[Olly398]

Incidentally I am still eating mine that I made in November (I made around 100!!!!  ). The basement is cool and dark, and once cured I just let them hang with their mould covering on. They have gone fairly firm and dry but the flavour is as good as ever.
 

[oink]

100!! I am very impressed and slightly jealous.  Only slightly at the moment, but as soon as mine run out I'll be hugely jealous!

I read that if you rub them in wood ash when they are at the firmness you require they wont continue getting harder and harder.  Not sure if it works but I've given it a go and I'll let you know.

[Eve]

We like ours firm and dry, as long as we don't break our teeth on them we're happy 
We get practically no mould on them, though, just a little bit of white mould, even though we use acidophilus powder. Still, they never go off, so it must be ok. 

[Hilarysmum]

Does anyone know the french for acidophilus powder?  I tried poudre acidofulus and they just gave me an odd look (but thats normal for my french).   

[Padge]

please enlighten me on acidophilus powder     ie  what it is how to use and its purpose     blush       thanks in advance 

[Eve]

It's meant to encourage mould (good mould) on the salami.
It barely worked with ours, though, we only had a tiny little bit of mould.
It comes in capsules, which you cut open and tip the powder out of. You're supposed to use about 1 teaspoon per kilogramme of meat, but it's not essential to include it.

You can buy it in Holland & Barrett, but be warned: the young lad who told me where to find it on the shelves asked if I wanted the berry flavoured one. When I asked about the differences between the various bottles and mentioned it'd be used for making salami's, he looked very surprised and commented that normally "it's used by old ladies to help them go to the loo"...