Curing & Fermentation Chamber

As I got started making different types of charcuterie I quickly saw my needs grow as the variety of types of things I wanted to make also grew. When I was just making smaller batches of air-dried items I was able to get by sufficiently with a place to hang items in my kitchen or pantry. That required some creativity to help maintain air-circulation and proper humidity. While most of my projects turned out well, they were never as good as I wanted them to be. Most of the trouble I ran into was maintaining a relative-humidity that allowed the meats to dry at a slow and steady rate. Case-hardening is an issue. If the items dry too quickly the outside can lose moisture while the inside doesn't. When the weight loss is too quick it doesn't allow proper changes throughout the meat to take place that lead to taste development through enzymatic changes that require a longer timeframe. So after having made several items that suffered in one way or another, mostly from these issues, I was ready for a better, yet affordable way to fix these problems and maintain success with other important aspects like temperature and air circulation.

Chamber ready to go to work.

The over-all chamber is what I would refer to as medium sized. It takes up a footprint of 18" X 48". The size is that of the InterMetro Rack that houses everything. It is 74.5" tall. I bought the black Metro rack for about $150 at The Container Store. It comes with four shelves, a top, the two middle shelves and a bottom. I arranged it so that the top is flush, the bottom is a notch or two off the bottom and the two middle shelved are equally spaced between top and bottom.

A Fermented Sausage Challenge, Finocchiona

Growing up I would say I knew of 3 sausages: Hot Dogs (of the Oscar Mayer type), Polish Sausage/Kielbasa (again of the Eckrich/Oscar Mayer type) and Salami. A bit later came Bratwurst. I will admit I knew of Bologna, but never really got into it. That is still the case. Many years later I have really gotten into encased meats, and even the un-cased ones. I received my KitchenAid grinder attachment for Christmas in 2002 and began making my own. Then it was mostly different versions of brats. In 2005 I picked up Charcuterie and made several of the recipes over then next few months. Some were successes (breakfast, brat) and others not so much (peperone, chorizo). Since then I would say that I have down the fresh sausage techniques and could even judge a sausage just on the recipe alone. What I have failed to master thus far has been the fermented sausages. So when I saw the new challenge for Charcutepalooza, I decided to tackle a fermented sausage once again.

Drinking is Getting Hard: Hard Cider pt. 2

This past week marked the point at which, based on my readings, it seemed safe to bottle the 5.5 gallons of Hard Apple Ciders I started at the end of last year (original post). The first three I made were from an organic cider out of Michigan that I had purchased at Whole Foods here in Chicago. I started these the last week of October, first week of November and the end of November. In the photo below they are the three on the right. I didn't add anything to the first one, but to the second, I added the sediment from another hard cider, and third was sediment from a Belgian Gueuze. As you can see, they are also the clearest of the 6. The remaining three versions were made from ciders purchased at Chicago's Green City Market. They were started the first week of December. The furthest left was from Grandpa's Mill, while the inner two left were from Seedling Farms. They have not cleared up as much as the other 3, though they are about a month behind in the process. I added some sediment to one of the Seedling batches. To understand why sediment was added, refer to the original post.

Drinking is Getting Hard: Hooked on Hard Cider

Way back when I was in Culinary School, I took an elective class on Fermentation. One suggested read was Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation. I quickly picked it up and have tried only a couple recipes from it (tempeh, mead). But recently I decided that with so much delicious apple cider coming into Chicago from Michigan, I wanted to try my hand at a homemade Hard Cider. The recipe is really only quite simple instructions, so I doubt it would violate any legal grounds to simply explain it in my words:

Grab a gallon of fresh cider, without any preservatives or any over-modifying procedures. All ciders sold around here are pasteurized. Many contain preservatives. So look for those with one ingredient, apple cider. I found Hy's Cider from Romeo, Michigan at Whole Foods for $5.99 a gallon. I had a couple old empty "Louisiana Hot Sauce" jugs so I washed and sanitized one well. I then poured the cider into the jug and covered the opening with some cheesecloth for a couple days while storing it in my pantry at 65˚.

Round 2 'Nduja update.

So after the four days of fermentation in my chamber (oven) it was time to get some smoke onto these 32 'nduja monsters. The pH had dropped below 5.0 in the first 24 hours after stuffing and fermentation began, and was down to 4.6 in less than 48 hours so I felt good about food safety. I did a week straight of daily smoking with hickory wood. Because I don't have a cold smoker I simply waited for the full blast of smoke from my propane smoker to hit and threw these guys in and killed the gas, in two rounds, for 15-20 minutes a day. Everyday before I smoked them I cooled them down in my fridge for an hour beforehand and returned them for another hour to cool back down slightly. Each day our apartment smelled like the best smoky Slim-Jims you've never eaten. This was great for me, Rebecca wasn't so excited! After the week and a half of fermentation and smoking it was time to see their new home, my recently built drying rack at Emily and Henning's.

Round 2: Kinda quick 'Nduja

As part of our culinary offerings for our wedding in May, I am getting to do a cheese and charcuterie table. I have to admit that I am a bit pressed for time in preparing the things I am offering, so I have to take the 6 week time-frame into account. I do think that this might be just enough time for a decent 'nduja, a quick version. You might have read about the lack of success with my first attempt. It was far from notable with it having over-dried and having a bizarre graininess. But as I eluded to in that last post, I have a couple fixes that I am banking on working out. Most importantly, my friends Emily and Henning (the same couple for whom I prepared the pulled shoulder) have recently moved. It just so happens that they have a room seemingly ideal for some charcuterie drying! And being a meat lover, Henning is happily accepting my offer of products in payment for his space and occasional tending to the goods (checking temperature, weight and refilling humidifier)!

Instead of beating a dead horse, I'll quickly remind you what wasn't right with the last batch: dry, grainy and it was rather mildly-porky in taste. So I changed the meat composition, peppers, added a controlled drying process, improved the pork quality and fermented this batch. And thus far they are looking much better, though I felt the last batch held good potential at the start. Since I wanted a large enough batch to give to friends as well as offer at the wedding, I ended up with a 24 pound batch, that should yield around 16 pounds in final product! The composition of this batch is:

3 parts Shoulder
2 parts fatback
1 part belly
9% hot pepper puree
9% sweet pepper puree
9% hot pepper powder
4.5% sweet pepper powder
Bactoferm™ F-RM-52 as directed (6g for my recipe)
.1 % cure #2
1% salt