Sort of Sopressata

As detail elsewhere I had a lot of porky odds and ends knocking around that needed using up. The meat I had left was a front and back leg from a small pig. Not the best cuts.

By the time I had made up the Offaloaf mixture i only had about a kilo and a half of meat - mainly from the hand and all the trimmings and oddments. Not really much use for anything but ideal for sopressata.

I coarse ground the meat and added 500g of diced back fat, and 50g of sea salt.

As I was rather short on black pepper by this stage (the Offaloaf absorbed loads) I ground some Szechuan pepper, and at this point decided to branch out from a traditional sopressata a little. I added a handful of little mild Mexican pasilla chillies and a good handful of chopped sundried tomatoes (really dry ones, not the soft sort in a jar). And a good splosh of Rhombo-cider to lubricate it all.



Then added a bit of acidophilus and a couple of grams of nitrite



mixed it altogether and stuffed it in a beef cap.




This needs to hang for a few days and I was concerned that it might not be able to support its own weight so gave it a basic trussing, and voila, the part-finished sundried tomato, chili and szechuan pepper sopressata:



This will hang for 5 or 6 days then go under a board with 10 or 15 kg weight on top for about 3 weeks, then hang in a cool place for another 3 months and then it will be ready for tasting.

So..this is all raw offal and meat, am I right?

What stops it going off? I am very confused?

No offal in there. Just meat and fat.

Lactic acid fermentation is what stops it from going off, promoted by the acidophilus and encuraged by the cider.

This is the principle by which all salami, saucission sec is made. Also the salt content is quite critical.

Ah! I understand, now..........but I thought this had lungs in it?

Er, no. You must have misread the ingredient - 1.5 kg meat, 500g back fat and sundreid tomato, chilli, slat and pepper.

You are confusing this with the Offaloaf. That is a separate thread.

Ah. I blame Mr S! He sort of mentioned lungs in relation to this.....

but my bad, I was wrong etc etc ....

I had to re-read it twice before I figured out the lung/no lung thing

Billy, what do you do if you dont have a cool dry place? Our inside temp is set to 80f during the day to save energy (outside temps right now range from 54f to 92f and will soon be between 80f and 102f) and mums ac unit fills a gallon bucket with condensed drip water every two or three days so its HUMID already and will only get worse as it gets hotter.

Can any air dried sausagy thingy be made with conditions like that? Or am I better off just doing freezer storage of porky bits?

Get an old fridge to use as a curing chamber.

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Get an old fridge to use as a curing chamber.

Will that not bee too cold?

yo just rewire it to perate at a higer temperature -a s a cooler rather than a fridge per se. There are loads of threads about this over at the sausage making forum.

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:yo just rewire it to perate at a higer temperature -a s a cooler rather than a fridge per se. There are loads of threads about this over at the sausage making forum.

You type that so easily Billy

GB wrote:

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:yo just rewire it to perate at a higer temperature -a s a cooler rather than a fridge per se. There are loads of threads about this over at the sausage making forum.

You type that so easily Billy

Testify, Sister!

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:

GB wrote:

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:yo just rewire it to perate at a higer temperature -a s a cooler rather than a fridge per se. There are loads of threads about this over at the sausage making forum.

You type that so easily Billy

Testify, Sister!

I stand up and TEStifY to my in a bilitY to reawire that there re fir idgera tor!

And in my head that came out in a strong southern preachers accent...............

Well, at least I amuse myself