Making Pizza Pepperoni-Cups In Taiwan

Post Reply
fongnam1016
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri May 14, 2021 17:20

Making Pizza Pepperoni-Cups In Taiwan

Post by fongnam1016 » Tue May 25, 2021 17:35

Hi All!

New here and new to fermenting sausages. Thought I'd share my process here to hopefully get some feedback from you guys! Long post ahead...

I'm currently working on opening up a New York Style pizza shop in Taiwan. I've been making, selling, and experimenting out of my friend's bakery, and I thought it would be great to provide pepperonis-cups on our pizza, similar to ones you see in New York. It gives the pepperoni an extra crunch at the top, and it also looks fantastic visually. Example:
Image

Here's my problem, there's no Pepperoni-Cups supply in Taiwan, so I figured, why not make my own!? How hard could it be? I started doing some research, and BOY was this harder than I had thought... But... maybe this is an opportunity to differentiate; also, I'm fascinated with the process of fermenting sausages.

-- Below are what I've begun, and what I intend to do, please let me know if you guys have any inputs! --

// HOW PEPPERONI CURLS
According to Kenji from SeriousEats, pepperoni curls due to 2 factors, Natural or Collagen Casing, and thickness. I will experiment with both casings. I've ordered a 30mm collagen Casing from a distributor here, and I'll also look for a slightly bigger natural hog casing.
- For those of you interested in Kenji's experiment: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-pizza-l ... eroni-curl
Image
Image

// CULTURE & FERMENTATION (Thank you Redzed for your advice!)
No seller is willing to ship commercial cultures to me, I've only been able to get my hands on T-SPX from UMAI, but apparently, that's not the best for fast fermented sausages like pepperoni. In any case, I will still try to ferment with T-SPX with more sugar to reach higher acidity. My friend will also try and ship me F-LC and Mold 600 from LA, hopefully they arrive alive! Here's my plan:
- BATCH 1: T-SPX @25C with 6.4g of dextrose targeting 4.8 pH
- BATCH 2: F-LC @40C with 6.4g of dextrose targeting 4.8 pH
- BATCH 3 (TBD): Fermenting with probiotic supplements @40C with 6.4g of dextrose targeting 4.8 pH (this is only if F-LC does not arrive safely. If it does I will skip this)
- I'm hoping to be able to semi-dry these sausages within a week, I've read that this is possible with higher acidity and smaller diameter casing.

// CURING CHAMBER
I bought an old fridge, seriously it looks pretty bad, but it was 30 bucks and it works, so I figured I'll test and learn on this before I move onto a better chamber. I cut out the partition between the Fridge and Freezer, see below. The next step is to sanitize the crap out of it.
Image

Looking at the back of the freezer, I noticed a lot of condensation that is drained down. I'm guessing this water will be evaporated via a hot plate at the bottom of the fridge. Given I will be hooking it to a temperature controller, I'm worried there won't be enough power to evaporate the liquids. Should I further take apart the fridge to see where the fluid is drained to and try and put some towels there?
Image

- Target Humidity: 65 - 75% RH
- Target Temperature: 15-18C

// RECIPE
I'm still looking for some recipes. I'm hoping to achieve a noticeable tang, a bright red, and possibly a slight caramelization at the top.
I hope to achieve the tang through the pH, the red color will probably come from the paprika. As for caramelization, apart from the temperature of the oven, I'm wondering if having excess sugar would help, but I'm also not sure what the impact is on pH during fermentation.

// DOES PEPPERONI NEED TO BE COOKED?
I'm wondering if pepperoni should be warm smoked or cooked, I've read in some places that pizza pepperoni needs to reach internal temperature of ~60C before drying. I'm wondering if this step is necessary? Can I just treat this as a typical dry salami? Let me know your thoughts! If cooking is necessary, I will probably skip the smoker for now and sous vide it instead. Building a smokehouse seems a bit daunting for me at the moment, but I'm not opposed to doing it once I'm more familiar with the process.

--
Lastly, I've been a little anxious, it feels like a lot could go wrong the more I read. The costs have also been adding up as I'm trying to get proper equipments. I really hope this is worth it and I am able to achieve a pepperoni curl and that tastes awesome.

More to come...
User avatar
Mmmm Meat
Beginner
Beginner
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2021 15:45
Location: Longview, WA

Re: Making Pizza Pepperoni-Cups In Taiwan

Post by Mmmm Meat » Wed May 26, 2021 04:42

I bought and used a product called Hormel "Cup and Crisp" Pepperoni for a wood fired oven pizza night last week. They seem to be exactly what you want. Are you sure you can't source this stuff from someplace? That would be much easier if you are planning on selling pizza commercially.

If you don't have it already, I recommend you purchase a copy of Marianski (brothers) book "The Art of Making Fermented Sausages" and read it all (except the recipes) before you get started. You will have a much better idea how sugars and other additives affect pH among other things. I believe you will save yourself a lot of headaches by reading this text early on.

Marianski book has two recipes for Pepperoni, one slow ferment with T-SPX and the other, a fast ferment with FL-C stuffed into 60mm casings (beef middles or fibrous)
The fast ferment semi-dry recipe calls for a ferment at 100 degrees F / 38 C for 24 hours at 85 - 90% humidity. An optional step of warm smoking at 43 degrees C for six hours then gradually increasing the smoker temp until the internal temp of the sausages is 60 degrees C. For a drier sausage, dry at 16 - 22 degrees, 60 - 75% RH until desired dryness is obtained. Good luck!
fongnam1016
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri May 14, 2021 17:20

Re: Making Pizza Pepperoni-Cups In Taiwan

Post by fongnam1016 » Wed May 26, 2021 16:04

Thanks for the feedback! A friend of mine has looked into this, in Taiwan, you can't import any ground meat products if it contains more than one animal. Commercial pepperoni, especially cupped ones, are generally beef and pork.

That said, you do bring up a good point about the difficulty of supplying pepperoni to a pizza shop by myself, I hadn't really thought this through, to be honest... Assuming I'm able to sell 100 pepperoni pies a day, at ~50g - 80g of pepperoni per pie (depending on size), that would be a whopping 5-8kg a day, and 30-48kg a week :shock:. I wonder how big of an operation I would need to pull that off...

Well, for now, I'll figure out the technical aspect, then testing the market through my friend's bakery before making a bigger leap.

As for Marianski's book, I've started reading it thru kindle and the physical copy is on the way. I'll try the pepperoni recipes out!

Thanks again.
User avatar
Mmmm Meat
Beginner
Beginner
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2021 15:45
Location: Longview, WA

Re: Making Pizza Pepperoni-Cups In Taiwan

Post by Mmmm Meat » Thu May 27, 2021 02:14

Sounds like you're on a good track to success. Keep us appraised of your progress.
Stay safe - Xi Jinping may be coming for a visit soon.
Post Reply