Michael Ruhlman

jason and i were posting simultaneously. i'm glad to know about the spray bottle experiment, and would like to know how butcher packer stuff works.

it's not unreasonable. molds are alive and they compete. i've heard from some sausage makers that it is indeed a good idea to hang a sausage with good mold on it next to the new ones. I hadn't heard of making a mold slurry but i can't imagine it would hurt.

it should be wrapped and kept frozen, i believe it will keep for several months. if it's thawed and been sitting around for a while i don't know if i'd have confidence in it when i went to use it.

The skin does help retain moisture, it also helps retain the shape. and skin of course is loaded with collagen and so skin is fantastic to add to stocks and stews for great body. and it's sublime when cooked till crispy. but you don't need skin. I would go for the best quality pork.

hard to say withoug seeing it but unless it's furry, it should be fine. I would leave it on while it's drying--good mold competes with bad mold so the more good you have the better--and then brush it off when it's finished. the only reason you would want mold at all, as far as i'm concerned, is because it prevents bad mold from growing.

Brian who has worked with frozen says, "thaw completely stir with a stick blender then proceed as described in the recipe." blood coagualates to something like dense Jello almost immediately outside the body (an important trait!), and I don't think any amount of salt (or vinegar) will change that. it becomes liquid again on stirring.

not sure why water is added. salt maybe to preserve. i've never used frozen, but i'm told it freezes well. assume you can use according to recipe as is. in that recipe the blood is like a binder for the apple and onion.

needless to say, that's appalling, so much so it's hard to believe. not that i don't believe you, it's just astonishing. I look forward to a response, as I'm sure Nick is eager to answer.

that is really salty--30 percent salt? i would think you could take it down to 50 grams which is what you want for any basic pickle

again, abra, talk to niman about this. jason, the thickness of that fatback is fantastic. glad it worked out. a drop of really good olive oil, some fleur de sel, some good bread...looks beautiful.

I'd bring this up with niman customer service. they've been very attentive when i've had issues, though no green pig. very strange. if you just used salt and herbs, should not happen.

another one i love, from erstwhile egulleter tana butler, is http://smallfarms.typepad.com/, devoted to small farms, which are ultimately the source of the best food on earth

definitely not supposed to be green. is it green all the way through? how does it smell? is this from ron's hog?

you must confit some of it! this way you can keep it in the back of the fridge for months, a great method for when you have an abundance, which is why the method began in the first place!

glad to see mark mentioned megnut.com and her whole-hog relaunch devoted to food. it's really good.

I don't recall that i was so absolute. maybe just very cautionary. you can wipe down a moldy sausage with vinegar or brine. the danger is that some of those evil molds can penetrate the skin and get into the sausage, in which case throwing it out is prudent. but after washing them down, examine the casing to ensure it's intact and you've got all the mold. but once the mold has started, it's tough battle.

Abra, when will your lardo be ready? I have a nice chunk of fatback from a local farmer, and am considering the lardo cure. It will be my second attempt at anything out of the book, after today's Pate Grandmere is all done. I don't have any pink salt, nor have I got a good hanging set-up. But I figured I could just leave the fat to dry in the fridge instead of hanging it, and that way I wouldn't need the preservative/ antibacterial properties of the nitrite. I talked to a guy at the farmer's market yesterday, and he said all he does for his salt-cured fatback is rub it with salt, wrap it in plastic and leave it in the fridge for three weeks or so, until it feels right. Talk about easy! So I figure I can modify the lardo cure in a similar way. Maybe it will take longer to dry in the fridge. Any thoughts? ← scottie, you don't need sodium nitrite for lardo; unless you smoke it there's no botulism concern. salt and herbs are all you need. my only concern with drying in fridge is that it's too dry in there, though i know chefs who only cure in the walkin. but youre not going to hurt any body no matter how you do it. i think the most important factor with lardo is light, it needs to be kept out of the light, which actually disintegrates the fat, if i understand the venerable harold mcgee correctly. my only problem with dry-cured lardo is that it still retains a slight crunchiness--this is the case with the ones i've cured, with brian's, and was the case with the lardo pizza at mario and co.'s otto (excellent btw, and also saw an unusal drycured sausage there with a bullseye of fat in the middle the size of a quarter; the superlative bartender that day refused to reveal how they got that fat in there--if anyone knows, would love to find out!). the first lardo i had was in the mountains above carrara near the marble quarries. a scary man, long and lanky with long uncombed black hair and a black beard, named fausto, served it to me and then showed me the marble casks in a lightless dirt cellar where they cured--salt and herbs and oil for many many months. that lardo was smooth as butter. that was the lardo cherry-breaking for me and i've never found it again since. i think a long slow cure in absolute blackness is the key...

not so, i say it all the time. sometimes i say it when i'm here. i wrote a whole book about the subject!

i prefer sweet but it's a matter of taste, the most important part is that it's fresh and hasn't been hanging out in your pantry for ages

I and seven other friends ate there last week. symon's a friend i've written about, so i'm completely biased, but if it had been shit, i wouldn't post. I was really happy, the food was excellent. he and his exec chef jonathan sawyer did a phenomenal job. from octopus to veal breast even to some midwestern walleye he slipped in there, definitely two-star caliber restaurant. great house cured and dried meats, too.

bingo. i cannot emphasize enough: as with any special cut of meat and there's nothing more special than a well made sausage, cook it carefully and to a precise internal temperature.

I agree with Dave. If you don't have some bugs in there to generate acid, it's not likely to dry properly and will remain mushy and will rot. but maybe not, maybe you'll get lucky. in any case, you'll know it if it's not right. do you have any sourdough starter or real yogurt? i have no idea if adding liquid from those would work but it would be better than nothing...

they can and you don't want to eat them, though i doubt they'd hurt you. they're about the size of a quarter sometimes bigger, disc shaped, and a little off color, clearly not fat and not meat.

what i love best about aarons post, besides seeing the perfect looking duck breast, is that this cook is evaluating and thinking and fixing. everyone on this thread does that, but it's nice to see the thoughts and actions described because really that's the essence of cooking.

some meat proteins are salt soluable, so i wonder if some of the surface moisture is liquified protein, which accounts for the better more complex crust and why maybe you shouldn't pat dry meat that's been salted before it goes into the pan, even though it is the common sense thing to do.