Homemade Sausage Making

Well I thought I had read most tricks for our passion for making cured meats but today I must say I learnt something or at least I think I did. I have never had this problem when making coppa so maybe thats why I never ran into this before. One of the facebook pages I follow had a post there this morning about this fellows coppa. He was hoping it would be ready by this weekend as he was having friends stopping by and he wanted to sample some with them.
So someone pipes up and says are you not going to use equalization under vacuum for two weeks? Well now I never heard of this before but it was explained later that it helps to vacuum pack and leaving it in the fridge the texture will become even in case you have tougher ends or spots that are dried unevenly.
So just how common is this method? Would this help with case hardening? This is new to me but I'm willing to learn the science behind this.

Well I'm stumped but thats not hard for me
Been doing the interweb looking for reference for this method and still can't find any thing that confirms this works or not. Maybe I am looking in all the wrong places but I still can't find anything on the subject.

I think it's quite common....it's frequently mentioned on the Facebook sausage/meat curing groups and over at the sausagemaking.org forum.



~Martin

DiggingDogFarm wrote:I think it's quite common....it's frequently mentioned on the Facebook sausage/meat curing groups and over at the sausagemaking.org forum.



~Martin

Yes but why does it work and how much benefit is it?

The principle is diffusion...the water will move from a wetter to a drier area.

Yes, and the benefits are subjective....it's obviously not something that necessarily needs to be done and it doesn't work as well when the drier areas of the meat have become super-dry.



~Martin

Thanks for the info.
I guess its just another option open to us but so far I never had a problem.

Looks good.


~Martin

Very Nice Devo

Did you use UMAI bags?

Bob K wrote:Very Nice Devo

Did you use UMAI bags?

No Bob these where done in my curing chamber some time ago. I do have two coppa on the go that I plan on using the UMAi bags but they are still in the curing stage. I will post about them later when its time to test them.

I also discovered that a while ago with salami when the darker outside edges disappeared after being vac packed for a while. When I started making dry cured products I left them in the chamber too long. Now when they are ready I vac pac and refrigerate or freeze them.

Devo that coppa looks great. It's one thing that I am all out of and nothing in the curing chamber and I love the stuff! Will be shutting down the dry curing for a couple of months and head south with the birds.

redzed wrote:I also discovered that a while ago with salami when the darker outside edges disappeared after being vac packed for a while. When I started making dry cured products I left them in the chamber too long. Now when they are ready I vac pac and refrigerate or freeze them.

I agree 100%. Along with the color becoming more uniform, I think the flavor somehow improves also (in the fridge).

The trick is keeping ahead of the rate at which the stuff disappears..especially this time of year.

Devo wrote:So someone pipes up and says are you not going to use equalization under vacuum for two weeks? Well now I never heard of this before but it was explained later that it helps to vacuum pack and leaving it in the fridge the texture will become even in case you have tougher ends or spots that are dried unevenly.

I searched "equalization in meat processing" and most articles refer to the period after curing required for "salt equalization" throughout the whole muscle.

Shuswap wrote:

Devo wrote:So someone pipes up and says are you not going to use equalization under vacuum for two weeks? Well now I never heard of this before but it was explained later that it helps to vacuum pack and leaving it in the fridge the texture will become even in case you have tougher ends or spots that are dried unevenly.

I searchedand most articles refer to the period after curing required for "salt equalization" throughout the whole muscle.

And there is nothing about this process in the Marianski, Ruhlman, or any other books that I have. Probably not something that commercial and traditional producers do. The term "equalization in meat processing" was obviously coined by a hobbyist and may not describe the process appropriately, but it does work. I discovered it accidentally after vac packing an overly dry lonzino and leaving it in the fridge for about three weeks.

Sometimes it's better to learn from peers who actually make charcuterie at home, rather than from those who dole out advice and pretend they are experts and never make anything themselves.

redzed wrote:The term "equalization in meat processing" was obviously coined by a hobbyist and may not describe the process appropriately, but it does work.

Red, that is the phrase I used for my google search that produced links to scholarly and government books/articles most of which tlaked about salt "equalization". I'm the hobbyist but they aren't.