Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [84]
Nevertheless, trichinosis does exist, but preventing the remote possibility of its occurrence is easy, and in some cases a necessary precaution. Though many chefs who dry-cure sausage consider freezing meat sacrilege, as a precaution, we recommend that pork that is to be dry-cured (that is, not cooked) be frozen before using. The Centers for Disease Control says that pork less than 6 inches/15 centimeters thick can be frozen for twenty days at 5 degrees F./-15 degrees C. or less to kill the Trichinella larva. The freezing times can be shortened by lowering the temperature to -10 degrees F./-23 degrees C. (for 12 days) and -20 degrees F./-30 degrees C. (for 6 days).
CASINGS
Certain dried sausages traditionally use specific casings that determine the diameter of the sausage. Cold-smoked andouille, for example, is prepared in sheep casings, and salami is stuffed into beef middles, a section of cow intestine that’s about 3 inches/7.5 centimeters in diameter. While we encourage you to maintain such traditions, from a purely practical standpoint, the casing is not critical. The diameter may change your experience eating it, but it doesn’t affect the principles of dry-curing. So you can put any of these sausages into whatever casings are available to you. However, manufactured collagen casings, available in varying sizes, do work, but they’re not as satisfying to work with as natural casings.
TROUBLESHOOTING DURING THE DRYING PROCESS
The biggest problem with home-dried sausages is what’s called case hardening: a drying out of the casing that prevents water from leaving the sausage. A sausage with case hardening will develop a gray oxidized ring around the outside with a red, not-quite-dried interior. If your humidity is variable, you should examine your sausages daily to check the texture. The casing should feel hydrated, not dried out; it should have a soft texture, some traction when you run your thumb over it. If it feels smooth and dry, and is almost shiny, it is too dry. If you sense the casings are drying out, try misting them with water once a day for the first week.
The second biggest problem is mold. If you’re having problems with the green fuzzies, wipe down your drying box with a bleach solution. Wipe down your sausages with brine, as directed on pages 178–179. Some experts have recommended hanging a sausage with good mold (see page 179) on it in your drying box: Molds compete, and the more good mold you have, the less likely bad molds are to take over.
The third problem might be achieving a high-enough acidity within the sausage (or a low pH, 4.9 or below). If your sausages are not drying properly and you can’t figure out why, they may not have fermented properly. The only way to accurately measure the pH is with pH paper or a pH meter (see Sources, page 304). If it doesn’t have a pH of 4.9 or below, odds are it won’t dry properly.
DRYING TIMES AND JUDGING DONENESS
Once you’ve cured your meat, stuffed it into casings, and hung it in your dark, humid, cool place, your next task is to know when it’s done. This is difficult to gauge without experience because here doneness isn’t measured by temperature; it’s determined by water loss.
One way to gauge water loss is to weigh your sausages after you’ve made them, and make a note of the weight. Then, when you sense that they may be done, weigh them. Generally speaking, a 30 percent weight reduction indicates doneness. Five pounds/2.25 kilograms of fresh sausage should, when dried, weigh about 3 1⁄2 pounds/1.60 kilograms.
Touch is a fairly reliable means of judging the doneness of sausage. Squeeze the sausage: It should feel stiff, almost hard, all the way through to the center. Ultimately, you probably won’t know for certain that a sausage has finished drying until you’ve made a few and acquired a sense of how your drying environment works. Cutting into the sausage is the only sure way of knowing. So, slice off the end of the sausage. If the center still has a raw appearance, if it’s got a tacky, squishy texture, return it to the drying box.
The same general rules