Noob

[Joel]

Thanks for the information on the EQ curing, I really appreciate it! Is there a specific reason you are using the half and half method?

You bring up some good points. Perhaps I should have said a long weekend instead of a day when getting everything done. We are used to making fresh sausages or smoked sausages, and can typically get it all done in one LONG day for the year…at most two days. I realize that it would be at the earliest three days until we got everything done due to the initial hanging time.

We do have plenty of space for curing the meats. We have two modern refrigerators in our milking room that we typically use for aging cheeses and storing milk for use in cheese, soap and kefir. Right now they are empty as we aren’t currently milking, and won’t be for the next few months (spring of next year). Typically they stay pretty packed. I have found that using a small computer cooling fan in the refrigerators is great for keeping a very small but important amount of air movement going while aging cheeses. We typically use that along with a small bowl of salted water for humidity to try and keep ideal conditions for aging cheese…I figured to use the same setup for aging the whole muscles as well as the sausages…any thoughts?

We have typically just followed manufacturers directions for use of salt in our sausages, or else just followed the recipes they suggest when adding salt…we just fiddle with the spices to make our own preferred taste profiles. It’s going to be interesting to be able to salt the meat based on weight rather than just blindly following a recipe…which, I hope, also means that we can store the meats ( we also plan to vacuum pack as you do) without fear of them becoming too salty.

I appreciate the help and the response! Hopefully someone will address the other things as well so we both can benefit…

By the way, I am also interested in adding cheeses and mushrooms and other ingredients to our dry sausages, as we do that a lot with our fresh sausages…have you made any recipes that you find were really successful?
I am also wondering about making a dried lamb merguez…the fresh is our favorite lamb sausage, and the favorite of a lot of our friends who happen to drop by when we get ready to sample our creations for the year…the southern India style we make with fenugreek leaves and garam masala is another favorite…