Rookie failure doing Spanish chorizo
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2020 15:37
Hi guys... first of all I must apologize since I posted this same text in another post a couple weeks ago. I just did a copy/paste to create this new post.
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I got a hog a few months ago (it went from the farm to my kitchen). I immediately broke it down and froze it. A few days later I started cleaning each piece and cutting to start grinding it (after I finished cleaning the meat was 100% thawed). Right after I cleaned it I started grinding using a 4,5mm disc and then separated in 1kg bags and back to the freezer.
Now I have to say that when I say "I cleaned it" I don't mean that I separated 100% meat from fat like a surgery. I would say that each 1kg bag had 20-30% of fat (I separated the back fat and the other muscles outer fat but I left the fat inside muscles).
Anyway I used 300gr of that ground meat I had in the back of the freezer to try to make a dried chorizo but I got an odd result and I have no idea why (maybe the 2 times frozen/thawed meat, maybe the recipe, maybe my non-tested drying chamber).
I used:
300gr of ground meat (I would say 70/30)
1/2 fresh garlic clove (I saw this in a Spanish recipe)
2gr of sugar
7gr of salt
0,9gr of curing salt #2
2 teaspoons of smoked sweet Paprika
I mixed everything for 15min but I never felt like it got sticky, in fact it felt kind of loose. I stuffed everything in hog casings, fermented for 2 days in a place of the house that stays at 25-27 °C and 85-95% H and then placed it in the curing chamber at 12-14°C and 70-75%H.
The 2nd and 3rd week I noticed the casing was a bit greasy and sticky. I cleaned it with water and vinegar and put it back in. The other 2 weeks left the casing felt dry.
After 1month it only lost 25% I cut it open the 5th week and that's what I got. One thing I noticed before I cut it was that if I pressed and slided my fingers against the sausage, the casing slided too (it was obviously not attached to the meat).
Now... a few things I think about that make me think "oh.. maybe thats the problem":
1- Maybe the ground meat I used didn't have 30% of fat as I thought. Maybe it had more than 30%... maybe a lot more. Maybe due to my inexperience I just can't estimate the meat/fat ratio.
2- Maybe the fresh garlic spoiled the whole thing as I read it somewhere I could happen (I read it after I stuffed it).
3- My non-tested curing chamber is a broken old fridge I fixed up and set to work as curing chamber. Happens that my regular fridge stopped cooling as it should during the first 3 weeks the sausage was in the curing chamber, so my family started opening the door a lot. As soon as you open the door, the humidity goes up like crazy to infinity and beyond, but once you close the door it takes 2-4min to go down to 70-75. Maybe the opening/closing ended up spoling the sausage.
4- Maybe the fact that the meat was ground with a considerable % of fat in it, caused a seal on the meat preventing it from drying.
5- Maybe the 2 frozen/unfrozen caused it to lose lots of liquids and proteins preventing it to bind and dry.
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I got a hog a few months ago (it went from the farm to my kitchen). I immediately broke it down and froze it. A few days later I started cleaning each piece and cutting to start grinding it (after I finished cleaning the meat was 100% thawed). Right after I cleaned it I started grinding using a 4,5mm disc and then separated in 1kg bags and back to the freezer.
Now I have to say that when I say "I cleaned it" I don't mean that I separated 100% meat from fat like a surgery. I would say that each 1kg bag had 20-30% of fat (I separated the back fat and the other muscles outer fat but I left the fat inside muscles).
Anyway I used 300gr of that ground meat I had in the back of the freezer to try to make a dried chorizo but I got an odd result and I have no idea why (maybe the 2 times frozen/thawed meat, maybe the recipe, maybe my non-tested drying chamber).
I used:
300gr of ground meat (I would say 70/30)
1/2 fresh garlic clove (I saw this in a Spanish recipe)
2gr of sugar
7gr of salt
0,9gr of curing salt #2
2 teaspoons of smoked sweet Paprika
I mixed everything for 15min but I never felt like it got sticky, in fact it felt kind of loose. I stuffed everything in hog casings, fermented for 2 days in a place of the house that stays at 25-27 °C and 85-95% H and then placed it in the curing chamber at 12-14°C and 70-75%H.
The 2nd and 3rd week I noticed the casing was a bit greasy and sticky. I cleaned it with water and vinegar and put it back in. The other 2 weeks left the casing felt dry.
After 1month it only lost 25% I cut it open the 5th week and that's what I got. One thing I noticed before I cut it was that if I pressed and slided my fingers against the sausage, the casing slided too (it was obviously not attached to the meat).
Now... a few things I think about that make me think "oh.. maybe thats the problem":
1- Maybe the ground meat I used didn't have 30% of fat as I thought. Maybe it had more than 30%... maybe a lot more. Maybe due to my inexperience I just can't estimate the meat/fat ratio.
2- Maybe the fresh garlic spoiled the whole thing as I read it somewhere I could happen (I read it after I stuffed it).
3- My non-tested curing chamber is a broken old fridge I fixed up and set to work as curing chamber. Happens that my regular fridge stopped cooling as it should during the first 3 weeks the sausage was in the curing chamber, so my family started opening the door a lot. As soon as you open the door, the humidity goes up like crazy to infinity and beyond, but once you close the door it takes 2-4min to go down to 70-75. Maybe the opening/closing ended up spoling the sausage.
4- Maybe the fact that the meat was ground with a considerable % of fat in it, caused a seal on the meat preventing it from drying.
5- Maybe the 2 frozen/unfrozen caused it to lose lots of liquids and proteins preventing it to bind and dry.