Rustic Italian Food

by Marc Vetri

  The other salt in cured sausage is, you guessed it, curing salt. There are two types: curing salt No. 1 and curing salt No. 2. Simple, right? Both are formulated so that 1 level teaspoon cures 5 pounds of meat. Cure No. 1, also known as pink salt, Tinted Cure Mix (TCM), Insta Cure No. 1, and DQ Curing Salt No. 1, is tinted pink so it’s easy to recognize. It contains 6.25 percent sodium nitrite and 93.75 percent salt. Use Cure No. 1 for fresh and cooked sausages like mortadella, terrines, and fresh link sausage. Cure No. 2 (aka Insta Cure No. 2 and DQ Curing Salt No. 2) is white, like regular kosher salt, and it’s used for uncooked dry-cured salumi like soppressata, chorizo, pancetta, and coppa that will be dried for weeks. Cure No. 2 also contains 6.25 percent sodium nitrite, but with 4 percent sodium nitrate and 89.75 percent salt. That small amount of nitrate is what helps control the growth of harmful bacteria over weeks and months of curing in the open air.

  Sugar has the opposite effect of salt. Instead of slowing down the growth of bacteria, it speeds it up. Sugar gives the bacteria something to feed on. By adding sugar to the cure, you’re trying to feed the good bacteria early on in the process, so it will develop during the initial fermentation of the salumi. This good bacteria helps fight off the bad bacteria as the salumi dries and cures.

  It’s important to add something sweet to the mix, and I use powdered dextrose. It has a fine texture that distributes very evenly throughout the sausage, much more evenly than granulated sugar. I typically use 0.5 percent dextrose for soppressatta and other dry-cured sausages that will be fermented. You can find dextrose powder in most natural foods stores and nutrition stores like GNC. Fitness buffs use it in smoothies and such, and most of them probably have no clue that it’s perfect for making salumi, too. If you can’t find dextrose, you can substitute superfine granulated sugar, but the measurements aren’t one to one. Dextrose is made from corn, and superfine sugar (aka castor sugar or bar sugar) is usually made from cane. Dextrose is about 25 percent less sweet than cane sugar. That means you need to use about 25 percent less superfine sugar than dextrose. Essentially, substitute 1 cup dextrose with ¾ cup plus 2½ teaspoons superfine sugar. Or, replace 100 grams of dextrose with 80 grams of superfine sugar. I wrote the salumi recipes to list both dextrose and superfine sugar. And what if you can’t find superfine sugar? Just make it at home. Take regular granulated sugar, put it in a clean spice grinder or coffee mill, and process until very finely ground.

  GRINDING

  There’s a nice segue! Once your meat and fat are seasoned with sugar, salt, curing salt, and whatever other seasonings you like, you’ll need a meat grinder to get the texture right. If you have a KitchenAid stand mixer, you’re all set. Every sausage recipe in the book was tested on a 6-quart KitchenAid with the sausage grinder attachment. The key is grinding the meat quickly so it doesn’t have time to warm up and smear. Attach your cold grinder parts to the machine, then set it to high speed. I grind most sausage with a large cutting die for a coarse texture, and I usually grind twice. But for smoother sausages, like mortadella, I grind the meat and fat together five times using a small die. Big die for coarse sausage. Small die for smooth sausage. Give yourself a couple of hours for grinding, especially if you’re making smooth sausages like mortadella that must be put through the grinder at least five times to get the texture right. That gives you enough time to grind the meat and put it back in the freezer between grindings to get it cold and firm again so it won’t smear. When grinding more than once, it also helps to grind the meat into a bowl set in a larger bowl of ice.

  MIXING

  After you grind, it’s important to mix everything into a sort of paste. If you grind into the bowl of the stand mixer, you just put the bowl in the machine and mix with the paddle attachment on low speed. Most sausages include some kind of cold liquid like ice water or wine, and this is the time to add it. Sausage makers often use garlic powder or onion powder, but I can’t stand that stuff. I like to soak the smashed whole cloves of fresh garlic in wine for 30 minutes or so, then toss the garlic and use the wine. You get a nice, light garlic scent that way. Either way, mix everything on low speed until it looks dense and sticky, kind of like wet bread dough. It takes only a minute or two.

  STUFFING

  For cooked sausage and dry-cured salami, the next step is stuffing the meat mixture into casings. I use three types of casing, all of them natural: hog casings, beef middles, and beef bungs. These come from the intestines of pigs and cows and have been the perfect casings for handmade artisanal sausage for centuries. Hog casings are the smallest (think link sausage), beef middles are the next biggest (think soppressatta), and beef bungs are the largest (think mortadella and bologna). The larger the casing, the longer the sausage will take to dry-cure. Sausages in hog casings dry in a matter of weeks, while those in beef bungs can take months. I like the beef middles because the sausages seem to age best in them.

  The casings will come packed in salt and should be soaked and rinsed to remove the salt. After soaking them in cold water in the refrigerator for about an hour, I usually tie one end closed with butcher’s string (tie it extra tight!), then fill it with water like a water balloon. That helps me see the shape the final sausage will take once it’s stuffed. As for sausage length, it’s up to you. You can fill an entire casing at once and twist it into links, or cut the casing into lengths a little longer than the final sausage length you want. If you want links, just feed the meat into the casing until you reach a link length, then twirl the sausage a couple of times to form the link. Keep stuffing until you reach another link length, then twist the sausage in the opposite direction from the first time. That keeps the links from unraveling as you go. The first time you make sausage, you might find it easier to just cut the casings into 1½-foot lengths and tie them off. That will give you sausages that are about a foot long—a very manageable size. Or make them longer, if you like. Sausage is one of those great arts that is totally open to your personal preference!

  I will say that stuffing is the only time it’s hard to use gloves. With gloves on, you just can’t hold the casing tightly enough against the sausage stuffer without it slipping away. Stuffing is the time to invite a friend over. Believe me, the process is much, much easier with two people: one person feeds the meat into the stuffer (wearing gloves) and the other handles and shapes the sausage (without gloves).

  Start by feeding some of the meat mixture into the feed tube until it just starts to poke out of the end of the sausage stuffer. That way, there is no air in the system. Then you grease the stuffer tube with a little meat mixture and slip the casing onto the stuffer. Slip it all the way to the end of the stuffer tube, like putting a sock on your foot. Once it’s on there, it helps to put pressure on the tied end of the casing so it’s gently pressed against the stuffer. When the meat comes through the machine, a little pressure helps the meat pack tight into the middle of the casing with fewer chances of air getting in. You want a nice tight sausage with no air in it. If you have any air bubbles, mold will grow inside of them during dry-curing and ruin the sausage. The worst thing is getting halfway through the weeks and weeks of dry-curing and anticipation to find out that you’ve got air bubbles in your sausage. As the meat gets stuffed into the casing, constantly check for air bubbles, working them out the open end of the casing as needed. You can also prick the casing wherever there is a bubble to let out the air.

  Remove the stuffed casing from the stuffer, grab the open end, and squeeze it down tightly against the meat to pack it down. Twist the open end several times against the meat until the sausage is sealed. Then tie off that twisted end with butcher’s string. Be sure to leave enough extra string for hanging the sausage in your curing room, which can be as simple as an empty basement closet with a humidifier and air conditioner or heater in it.

  COOKING

  The hardest thing about cooked sausage is poaching it at the right temperature. If the poaching liquid is too hot, the fat in the sausage will melt. If it’s too cold, the meat won’t cook pr
operly. The temperature also can’t fluctuate too much. I like to use a big pot of water on the stove so the temperature doesn’t change too drastically when the cold sausage goes in. Use a thermometer and adjust the burner to maintain the poaching water at a constant temperature. That temperature could be anywhere from 145°F to 165°F, depending on what kind of meat is in the sausage. Fish and rabbit should poach on the lower end of that range to keep them tender, while lamb and pork should poach at the upper end.

  Cooked sausages often include internal “garnishes” like cubed pork fat and pistachios. To keep fat garnishes from melting when the sausage is cooked, I like to blanch the fat first to render it a little. It’s a simple step that makes a big difference.

  I also like to sear my cooked sausages. Once poached, you could slice and eat Rabbit Salami or Swordfish Sausage as is. But they taste even better if you slice them lengthwise or into rounds, then sear them in a hot skillet until brown. It puts a nice crispy crust on the outside of the tender sausage.

  As I mentioned earlier, terrines are another type of cooked sausage. Sausage just means “ground meat,” which certainly applies to a terrine. The difference is that the meat for a terrine is packed into a terrine mold instead of being stuffed into a soft casing. Then it’s cooked, usually in a water bath (bain marie). The cooking is very similar to poaching a stuffed sausage except that the terrine isn’t completely submerged in the water. Either way, the water helps cook the ground meat slowly and gently so it stays moist and rich when it’s done. Terrines are a great place to start in this chapter because they are easy and impressive. The cooked sausages like Lamb Mortadella and Swordfish Sausage are good starting places, too, because you don’t have to deal with the issues of fermentation and controlling humidity and air temperature as you do with dry-cured sausages.

  FERMENTATION

  Ground-meat dry-cured sausage is by far the most complicated type to make. It takes dedication, precision, and a lot of patience. Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work out the first time you try it. There are so many variables to control! You could do everything right and it still won’t work. I still get failed batches now and then. Don’t worry; it’s not you. It’s just a very complex process! The most important variables are sanitation, temperature, and humidity. Learn as much as you can about these factors, be diligent about them, and you’ll have the best shot at success.

  The bottom line for all dry-cured salami is the drying itself. You basically need to dry the salami so it has a very low “water activity” level, which is expressed numerically by scientists as “aw.” When the salami has an aw of 0.85 or lower, it is considered microbiologically stable. But how do you get there without creating a petri dish of bacteria inside the salami? That is the dilemma. The solution is to slow down the growth of bad bacteria with an initial fermentation step. This step creates good lactic bacteria that holds off the unwanted bad bacteria. It’s that simple. Create good bacteria and it will deter bad bacteria. Commercial sausage makers in America create the good lactic bacteria by adding a starter culture like Bactoferm. But that chemical fermenter can bring the pH up so high that it gives the finished salami a metallic taste. The pH should range between 4.6 and 5.3. But if it’s too high, it can make the salami texture too rubbery, which is how you end up with horrible rubbery pepperoni.

  The artisan sausage makers in Italy create good bacteria the old-school way—by letting it grow naturally. They put the sausage in a warm, humid environment to ferment, encouraging good bacteria like Staphylococcus carnosus and Kocuria to grow right away. Increasing the number of these bacteria helps develop good color and flavor in the finished salami. Fermentation also increases the number of good lactic acid–producing bacteria like Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. These beneficial bacteria keep the harmful bacteria at bay, and they continue to multiply during the weeks or months of dry-curing.

  That’s the trick: keeping the beneficial bacteria multiplying and keeping the harmful bacteria at bay. I have found that the best way to initiate this fermentation process is with an exact temperature, humidity, and length of time. I ferment my salami at 90°F and 100 percent humidity for 36 hours. I do it in an oven that has a steaming function. If you have an oven with steam, set it for 100 percent humidity and 90°F, put the salami inside (preferably hung so each one is separate) and close the door for 36 hours.

  If you don’t have a steam oven, create one using a regular oven and a small humidifier. This method will work for most home cooks and it’s how we tested all the fermented sausage recipes in this book. You can use a gas oven with the pilot light on, or if your oven has a bread-proofing or warming mode, set the oven to 90°F. Take out all the oven racks and put a small humidifier right inside the oven on the oven floor. Run the cord out the oven door, plug it in, and set the humidifier to high. To monitor the temperature and humidity, put a thermometer and hygrometer inside the oven, and close the oven door. A remote thermometer/hygrometer is really convenient because the sensor stays inside the oven and sends a wireless signal to a receiver that automatically displays the temperature and humidity. It allows you to easily monitor the salami without opening the oven. Then, you simply adjust the oven temperature or the humidifier to maintain 90°F and 100 percent humidity inside the oven for 36 hours. You may have to replenish the water in the humidifier once or twice, and I highly recommend using distilled water to keep the humidifier from getting gummed up by any minerals in hard water. Plus, it will get pretty wet in there, just like a steam room, so put a large drip pan or rimmed sheet pan on the oven floor to catch some of the water. If you have enough room at the top of the oven, keep one oven rack in place so you can hang the salami from it.

  Either way, you can see that the most important factors to regulate are the heat and the humidity. To make it easy, pick up an inexpensive remote thermometer/hygrometer. As for timing, I’ve found that 36 hours is the sweet spot, but if your temperature and/or humidity is over or under 90°F and 100 percent, you may have to adjust the total time. You can tell that the salami is done fermenting when it starts to turn reddish and the casing begins to get tight, as if the meat has plumped up a bit. At that point, it is ready to be put into the curing room.

  CURING

  To slow down the bacterial activity, you need to move the salami to a cooler and less humid environment. I hang my dry-cured salumi at 50°F to 55°F and 75 percent humidity for anywhere from 4 weeks to 6 months, depending on the size of the casing and whether they are ground-meat sausages or whole-muscle salumi. Here is where the salumi gets gradually drier, firmer, and more flavorful.

  Pick a small area so it’s easier to regulate the key environmental factors of temperature and humidity. It should also be dark to prevent light from discoloring the salumi. A wine cellar or root cellar is traditional, but an uninsulated basement closet works great, too. The area should be clean, with at least a little air circulation. Here are a few options I’ve tried successfully:

  Basement closet: For most home sausage makers, an uninsulated basement closet will be the way to go. As long as your basement is underground, the temperature should stay at or close to 55°F. Temperatures do fluctuate at different times of the day and different times of the year, so it’s safest to set a small window-style air conditioner in the closet to adjust the temperature if it gets too hot. You can also put a small space heater in there if it gets too cold. To regulate the humidity, put a small cool-mist humidifer in the closet (use a standard cool-air humidifier, the kind used to relieve congestion in kids). To monitor everything, hang a remote thermometer/hygrometer in the closet. They only cost around fifty bucks. Get the room set up a few hours ahead of time, so you’ve got the environmental factors stabilized before you put the salumi in the room. Then, if the temperature gets too high, turn up the air conditioner. If the humidity falls too low, turn up the humidifier. To make it even easier, you can buy an in-line thermostat and hydrostat for each appliance and set the thermostat to 55°F and the hydrostat to 75 percent humidity. They cos
t a hundred dollars or so each, but they do the real work of sensing the temperature and humidity and automatically turn the air conditioner or humidifier on or off whenever necessary. When testing this method, I simply cranked the humidifier and air conditioner to high and plugged them into the thermostat and hydrostat. The in-line thermostat and hydrostat did the rest of the work. It was by far the easiest method for home use.

  Wine refrigerator: Here’s another nifty option. It is a little more expensive than a basement closet, but wine refrigerators are designed to replicate a cave or cellar environment, and they are generally adjustable to 55°F and 75 percent humidity. Just be sure to buy a wine refrigerator with adjustable temperature and humidity controls and adjustable racks so you can fit the salumi inside. Bonus: When you’re not curing salumi, you can age wine in the fridge!

  Converted freezer: I haven’t tried this method myself, but dedicated home sausage makers swear by it. Buy a small freezer and plug it into an in-line thermostat to bypass the freezer control. A freezer has its own internal thermostat that powers the cooling mechanism to drive the temperature down to around 0°F. With an in-line thermostat, you can bypass the internal thermostat, set the temperature to 55°F, and the freezer’s cooling mechanism won’t power on until that temperature is exceeded. Humidity is the other factor to control and placing a cool-mist humidifier in the freezer is the best way do it, just as described above for a basement closet. If you plug the humidifier into an in-line hydrostat, then both the thermostat and the hydrostat will automatically regulate the temperature and humidity. Simple! The only other thing to keep in mind is the defroster, which is designed to cycle on periodically to eliminate moisture in the freezer—basically, all the humidity you’ve worked so hard to get in there! If you have a frost-free unit, find and disconnect the wire to the defroster, which usually runs beneath the main cooling coils of the freezer. The advantage to this converted freezer method is that when you’re not curing salumi, you have an extra freezer on hand.