a crash course on fermenting/curing sausage or salami

[Dr. D]

http://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-types/fermented-sausage

it talks about nurturing good bacteria, preventing bad bacteria, humidity levels, ph, dry aging secrets essentially.

it is not high meat. This is for guaranteeing your dry aged meat doesn't go sour. Most of the article promotes raw fermentation, aside from a tid-bit about smoking, which even then is geared towards fermentation rather than cooking.

lots of detail and I may try to dry age my meat in salt and at a certain humidity recommended here, as I love the flavor.

[eveheart]

The article in your link refers specifically to sausage-making, which is different from dry aging, so I'm not sure if you are confusing the two. Dry aging is not so complicated. If you want a salted meat, you can use dry salt or a brine, but you have to watch the weight as the meat gives up its moisture. You can find good basic instructions for violino de capra, which is a salted leg of goat. If you use beef for this technique, you will be making bresaeola, for which you can also find good online instructions.

I make aged, uncured, unsalted beef - not high meat - all the time because it is easiest to buy meat in bulk and store it for a while (without freezing). The sour flavor in the meat is very subtle, not at all objectionable.

[raw-al]

Eve,
can you dry it without salt ?

[eveheart]

Eve,
can you dry it without salt ?

I dry-age without salt, but only with untrimmed, whole muscle so that the intramuscular tissue prevents the meat from drying out too quickly. I use a regular refrigerator. I do this with liver, heart, glands, too. My ex-butcher was sure I would kill myself. My husband was from a European culture that hangs meat in the attic and is generally less refrigerator-neurotic than I was brought up to be.

I've also dried meat in a Lex Rooker light-bulb dryer using no seasoning. The result is beef leather (LOL), and I'm sure it's identical to the dried meats that I've read about in history books.

[raw-al]

So you do how much at a time ? How thick ? Any pictures?

[LePatron7]

I do something similar. I keep my meat on a rack in the fridge. I cut off meat as needed. No salt, flavoring, etc. and I never remove the part that turns black.

[eveheart]

So you do how much at a time ? How thick ? Any pictures?

Here is my fridge right now. I have 2 whole eye of round muscles from beef, they were originally about 6-8 pounds each, and you see them each cut in half and hanging from stainless steel hooks. I slice off servings from the end that was the middle before I cut it in half. My butcher gets 1/2 beef every week, so I'm ready to buy another this week and next. Another good cut is about a 3" thick roast from the sirloin or rump area. I also hang fish, like mackerel, but I eat it within about 2 weeks. Liver is good within about 2 weeks, too.

I hang slabs of fat, too, and it lasts forever.

I learned how to do this on this forum, notably from iguana, sabertooth, and van. I've thought about more elaborate set-ups, but this is too easy to replace with a more time-consuming process.

[Dr. D]

I didn't mean the whole article was about dry aging, just mentioned it as one of the techniques used for sausage making.

I find it cool that salami or some sausages can be completely aged instead of smoked/slow roasted, as I thought most were. It makes me wonder if the bacteria involved is just as good as the unsalted dry aged meat. I doubt it since salt kills some bacteria, but its nice for A little variety in food.

My original thought was to consider something like you have, Eve, and use some of the tests in the article to see how it changes. I've used 3 different fridges to dry age my meat and they seem to come out a little different.

And I like that your ex-butcher thought you'd kill yourself. Haha, its kinda fun to share some of the rancid things we ingest when people can hardly get over the idea of eating raw, much less rotten.

[eveheart]

There are lots of online tutorials that explain how to modify a refrigerator so that it runs at high humidity and warmer temperatures good for curing meat. The idea here is that you won't have to worry about the outer surfaces from drying out, which results in old shoe. Here's a link to one such set-ups: http://benstarr.com/blog/how-to-convert-a-refrigerator-for-curing-meat-or-aging-cheese/

Look at this great set-up... I would do this if I didn't live in a major metropolitan area with access to good meats.

[Dr. D]

That's really cool Eve! With humidity control, you could almost do a high-meat approach, and skip the jars and just open the door every day and do mass amounts of high meat. What a stinky fridge it would be.

I may try some homemade salami style meat, not that I care for pork, but I used to love me a beef summer sausage, and it IS summertime...

[van]

the higher the humidity the higher amount of molds you'll have.  The thing about molds/yeast/fungi is that you're probably going to grow what's floating in Your air, from whatever is in your environment, which could be good, or just as easily could be a nasty one for your body to deal with.  When animals bury their prey to either preserve it for future eating or to create high meat,,  I think it's the soil bacteria that ideally creates a healthy bacterial soup to create the high state.     Maybe I'll try to buy the soil based probiotics that Jessica mentioned for Suiren to buy, and inoculate my hanging meat with that.    I've wanted to bury it for the longest time, but,  predators, and potentially harmful worms (parasitic types ) have kept me from attempting.