Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [81]
The following recipes offer a range of dry-cured preparations. Some are for whole pieces of meat, others call for ground meat and fat. In some recipes, chunks of meat are cured and forced into a casing. Some of these are cold-smoked before being dried, some are hot-smoked first. Some are heavily seasoned, others call for almost no seasoning. You can dry just about any cut of beef or pork with good results provided that it’s cured with salt and a curing salt first.
For novices, the best strategy is to start with skinny items, sausages that don’t take long to dry, sausage stuffed into sheep casings or hog casings. The longer something takes to dry, the greater potential for problems.
The recipes that follow represent one of humankind’s oldest form of food preparation and preservation, one almost unheard of in the American home kitchen today. They represent a craft that’s been practiced vigorously throughout Europe for centuries and continues to thrive, but here, the craft is in its infancy. All of which makes the dry-cure technique one of the most interesting in the specialty of charcuterie.
Dry-Cure Essentials and Safety Issues
The first essential is great meat. This is especially so for whole items such as hams, lardo, and cured pork belly. Do not use commercially raised pork for these preparations. We recommend using only farm-raised hogs, animals raised out of doors by sustainable farms. There are good mail-order sources for excellent pork; see Sources, pages 302–303.
The main special equipment you need to dry-cure meat and sausage is a cool, dark humid space. Some people have a damp cellar with what are optimum conditions, 60 degrees F./15 degrees C. and 70 percent humidity. For those who don’t, a second refrigerator, unplugged, makes a good drying box. To create humidity, put several cups of salt in a nonreactive container and fill it with an equal amount of water (the salt will keep mold and bacteria from growing in the water; the water will not likely need to be replaced during drying). One last element: The place in which you dry should be dark. Fat reacts to light—light actually breaks it up—and can become rancid if exposed to too much light.
Safety issues are paramount. Don’t play fast and loose with the following techniques, or you could make yourself or someone else sick. Here are the main issues.
SANITATION
Sanitation is always important when preparing food, but it’s especially important in dry-curing, because a little bacteria in a sausage, for example, held at room temperature for several weeks can grow into a big problem. But you will not have a problem if you work cleanly, wipe down and sanitize counters and boards, keep knives in their place, and avoid any possible cross-contamination. (This is especially important in restaurant kitchens. We can’t recommend strongly enough that chefs dry-curing their own sausages designate a special area for making sausages. Given the range of foods within, and the busyness of, a restaurant kitchen, the possibility of cross-contamination is high.)
Be sure your equipment is clean. Use a bleach solution to sanitize your grinder, stuffer, work surface, and sponge (often the most germy item in a kitchen). We recommend one capful of bleach for each quart of water for an effective sanitizing solution, which will kill salmonella, E. coli, staph, and other bad guys.
To reiterate: because of the warm, moist conditions involved with dry-curing foods, bacteria can multiply with abandon, so sanitation is a much more salient concern than when working with food that will be cooked or eaten immediately.
SALT
Don’t skimp on the salt. Use it in the quantities indicated in our recipes. Generally speaking, a strong salt concentration is the key factor in preventing anything harmful from growing. We often use more