Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [80]
Importing salume and charcuterie to the United States is often prohibited. Though this may be slowly changing, it’s difficult for Americans to know what truly great stuff these dry-cured items are without traveling to Italy or France. Many American restaurants are now producing house-cured sausages and other meats, but to our minds, there are only a handful of people producing dried sausages for national distribution that can stand up to their Italian and French counterparts. Mark Buzzio, who runs Salumeria Biellese, the company his father started in 1925 at 29th Street and Eighth Avenue in New York City (see Sources, page 303), is one. His soppressata, salame Milano, and hams and guanciale hang for a year or longer in his drying room. By the time they’re ready to sell they smell like nasty old socks, the first hint of their excellence—nothing that smells so rank on the outside would sell if it weren’t truly remarkable on the inside.
On the opposite coast, in Seattle, Armandino Batali produces extraordinary dry-cured products, from traditional Italian salumi to exquisite dried lamb, at his small shop called Salumi, soon to expand (see Sources, page 303). His son, celebrity chef Mario, who has numerous New York restaurants, dry-cures guanciale, fennel salami, salame picanti, coppa, pancetta, lardo, and prosciutto for his menus (much of it is done in the kitchen of his shop, Italian Wine Merchants, by Anne Burrell).
Paul Bertolli, chef and co-owner of Oliveto in Oakland, California, may be among the most gonzo of the chefs who cure their own meat. He has traveled widely in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, a center of European meat curing and the home of prosciutto, and has studied there with norcinos, the meat cutters specializing in pork butchery for salumi, some of whom are revered as artists. Bertolli writes about his experience and beliefs and practice in his book, Cooking by Hand. He built a dry-cure cellar beneath his home, he offers numerous products at his restaurant, and each year devotes a week-long series of dinners to the hog, bless him. He’s planning a larger facility to make these special products available retail. Sausage making has for too long been performed behind closed doors, he says; he wants to make it more visible.
While dry-curing is unpredictable and temperamental, and the cook first attempting dry-curing should prepare for early failure, the process is actually very simple. Practically the only special equipment you need is a place to hang your sausage or ham or belly or fat in.
Humidity is the critical factor and the one most difficult to control. Air with less than 60 percent humidity tends to dry out the casings before the water inside can get out, causing rot; 70 percent humidity is better. Cool is also best, about 60 degrees F./15 degrees C. Some circulation is important. And the sausages should be protected from light, which can damage the fat.
How you achieved this may be up to your imagination. An unused refrigerator can be a perfect drying box, given a pan of heavily salted water to create the humidity (the salt keeps molds from growing in the water) during the early stages of fermenting and curing. It shouldn’t matter how you create the enclosed humid environment—whether in a room in your cellar or in an old wooden box—but without humidity, you won’t be able to dry-cure properly.
With the appropriate humidity, you can dry-cure just about anything. A round of beef becomes bresaola. Chunks of diced pork shoulder stuffed into casing become coppa. Even pure fat can be cured,