Homemade Sausage Making

Cogboy, it looks delicious! Good goin' pal. It just HAS to have a nice flavor. Nice lookin' texuture too.
Tell me, please if you will, what did you learn from making this? Anything to share with the group? Thanks pal.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Hi Dave,
Next batch of your Venison salami, spruce it up with some red pepper paste either hot or mild and more powdered garlic and chilli flakes.
Cheers,
Jan.

Hey Davey, that salame looks perfecto! Can you hammer out the spices for us? And did you use TSP-X? Maybe you prefer something with a bit of tang? And from the pic, it looks like it lost a lot more than 30%!? What else do you have curing?

The recipe I used was from Umai, I SHOULD have used one from this site !The weight loss was a bit over 30% but I left the other 3 going to get a harder salami . Definitely needs more kick as it is lacking something maybe the ingredients that Crusty suggests. TSP-X was used and I have 2 coppas still doing there thing. My winter project will be to build a proper curing chamber so I can really experiment. Is it possible to smoke one of these salamis after curing? You guys are great here with all the valuable info !

I just wonder if TSPX is the best choice for the UMAI process. It is a slow working culture and basically goes dormant at temps under 50f. Maybe a faster working culture lke F-LC or LHP.

Nice looking Salami Cogboy!

Bob K wrote:I just wonder if TSPX is the best choice for the UMAI process. It is a slow working culture and basically goes dormant at temps under 50f. Maybe a faster working culture lke F-LC or LHP.

Nice looking Salami Cogboy!

Bob, I used the umai recipe exactly which called for the TSP-X, I will use a recipe from this excellent site for the next batch !

Dave-

Yes I know you followed the UMAI recipe,,,I was not trying to fault your method.

Just saying that at the much colder drying temps in a refrigerator UMAI recipes may be better off using a culture that has done its thing before going to the drying phase. More of a US style get it done quick culture.

cogboy wrote:Is it possible to smoke one of these salamis after curing?

There should be no problem or adverse effects if you would cold smoke the salami after the cure. Best would be to keep the temp at 20 or under, and I would not go over 24. Better results are achieved if you smoke for several hours then rest and smoke again the next day for three or four days. And remember, that smoking will dry your salami a lot more.

Cogboy,
In Australia we now have bags available which you can use for smoking AND drying your meat or salami. Same manufacturer as the UMAi bags in Denmark.
Cheers,
Jan.

Bob, I will look into other cures but not real happy w/ umai products ,lousy sealing problems and now 5 pounds of bland salami.thanks for the ideas.
Redzed, thanks for the smoking tips but guess that won't happen as work/commute keeps me out of the house 60 hours a week.

cogboy wrote:Bob, I will look into other cures but not real happy w/ umai products ,lousy sealing problems and now 5 pounds of bland salami.thanks for the ideas..

I thought you had a VP chamber machine....the seal time is adjustable.

I tried sealing with the vacuum chamber and it started to pull the product out of the bag. I ended up using my old foodsaver to try to seal, I would love to experiment with the bag sealing but the cost of the bags prevented me from playing around too much. I ended up with one good seal from the chamber sealer(salami) and one good seal from the foodsaver(coppa) and the rest were bad and I wrapped them in butchers twine which seemed to work somewhat. I see Umai is coming out with a pepperoni bag which will be squeezed tight and zip tied, they know their sealing process/air extraction leaves something to be desired. Dave

crustyo44 wrote:Cogboy,
In Australia we now have bags available which you can use for smoking AND drying your meat or salami. Same manufacturer as the UMAi bags in Denmark.
Cheers,
Jan.

Jan, Bring some to the states when you come over to visit !

After 63 days I gave up on getting the Sopressata drier in the Umai bags. The drying really slowed down in the past 18 days. Then it was 29% WL and now it is 33% WL.



We tried it at 28% WL and it did not slice well at all. Now it slices very nicely and is very tasty with a sesame rice cracker and cream cheese - yummy It actually looks like the real deal when I compare it to the photo in Marianski`s article on mixing. However, we aren`t that keen about the large grind for fat. I`ve ordered a 1/4" plate to see how that works for us.

Shuswap, I'm happy to see you had better results with the Umai process than I did , looks delicious !