3 replies to this topic

[celeriac]

After a few years making fresh sausages and occasional dry-cured whole cuts (e.g. pancetta, guanciale), I finally have the space to do some dry-cured sausages, so I hung my first ones up in my basement on Monday. I did a split batch of two recipes from Ruhlman/Polcyn's Charcuterie, the tuscan salami and a variation on the spanish chorizo.

The sausages looked good, I pricked them with a needle to get rid of air bubbles, and I placed them into a warm spot overnight to incubate the lactic acid starter. Unfortunately, it got a bit warmer than I expected in there - about 95 degrees F - but that still seemed to be within the starter culture's acceptable range (up to 100). The sausages looked fine, but had wept a small amount of liquid fat, which surprised and slightly concerned me.

Since then I've had them hanging in a basement at about 60-65 F and 60% RH. They continue to drip fat consistently, the chorizo a bit more than the salumi. Any thoughts? I'm obviously going to let them dry and see how it goes, but I'm curious what's going on here, and whether it's normal or not. I haven't really found any references to this in any text or on the internet.

Many thanks in advance.

[qrn]

I will take a WAG at it, the time at high temps got something going thatwas not good, I would consider tossing them,(but its just a WAG on my part, better safe than sorry....never had that kind of a situation with my stuff...maybe Jay molanari will check in and give a more reliable opinion...
Bud

[HKDave]

It's not normal, but it's not necessarily dangerous. Pork fat starts to melt around 30c/85f, so most likely you liquefied some fat during the incubation. The fat pooled just inside the casing and is now leaking out through the holes you made to get rid of air bubbles.

As long as you followed the usual safety practices, things still smell good, and you're not getting coloured mold or anything else nasty, the salami will probably be usable. But it may end up drier than usual, and if you're using weight loss to estimate when it's lost enough moisture to finish hanging, remember you've also lost some weight from the fat loss.

[celeriac]

Awesome, thanks so much, Dave. That was sort of the conclusion that I had come to as well, because the fat dripping pretty much stopped after a day or two, so I realized that it must have been simply draining out of the casings. Everything does seem to be proceeding as planned - no off smells, mold or anything - and I will take the weight loss into account, though I think that the actual quantity lost was probably quite small. I didn't realize that pork fat would liquify at those temps, so definitely something to be careful of in the future.