The Original Dry Bag Steak | Make Artisan Dry Age Steak at Home › Forums › Dry Aging Steak › Dry Aging Steak with UMAi Dry® › Bag separating from Salami
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Bill.
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January 9, 2014 at 12:00 am #1818
Matthew Kocin
MemberSo I have been interested in making Salami for quite a long time but never really had the time, resources, or space, to devote to building or creating a curing chamber. Found Umai and they sounded perfect for me, so I ordered the starter kit and the salumi kit.
I attempted to create my first batch of salami last week basing my recipe off a recipe for cacciatore salami from the marianski book.
I ran into some issues, namely that I do not know my total fat content as I just picked up a whole pork shoulder and ground that up. Regardless, I was able to get the recipe mixed up and attempted to stuff the casings as best I could (the kitchenaid grinder and stuffer really are not great).
Anyways, there were a few small air pockets that I could not get rid of because I was stuffing by myself and the kitchenaid stuffer really is terrible (took 3+ hours for ~5 pounds of mixture).
I hung them to ferment for 3 1/2 days where the nice red color developed. Although I am still worried about the consistency, they seem to progressing.
Two days ago I put them on a wire rack in the fridge. They seem to be drying alright, but I went to check today because I am a bit obsessive like that and noticed the bag had begun to separate from the meat mixture on 2 or 3 of the 4 that I made. I would say maybe 15-20% of the bag has separated. I have read around here and they say as long as there is 75-80%, I should be good, but I am a bit concerned that this happened after just 2 days.
If this batch does not work out, I won’t be that disappointed as it is my first attempt, and I am trying to learn as I go, but any tips or ideas of what I might have done wrong or what I could do to improve next time around would be great!
January 9, 2014 at 4:34 am #7663Jan Ooms
MemberPork shoulder should have the right amount of fat for salami, so don’t be over concerned.
Kitchenaid mincer and stuffer are a big NO NO as you found out.
Try and get a dedicated grinder, the same with a stuffer .It makes sausage making very easy and quick.
Could you get some elastic netting for your salamis with the casing separation or tie them up tight with butchers string.
As a beginner That’s what I would do.
Our moderator might have the correct solution.
Good Luck,
Jan.January 9, 2014 at 5:28 am #7664Matthew Kocin
MemberGood to know about the pork shoulder! The recipes I read called for specific fat contents, and the consistency and color once everything was ground and mixed just didn’t seem quite right.
Thanks, I have some twine that I used to hang them that I guess I could try to tie them up with, although I think that would hold the bag material against the meat only where the twine was, which would then block any drying that would happen there.
I found the kitchenaid grinder seemed to work well enough if I used the larger plate and as long as the meat cubes I put into it were fairly solid. Although it did tend to get clogged up quite a bit on the fat (sinew?) which was annoying. But trying to put a wet, ground up mixture down there proved impossible. Luckily for me, we had the kitchenaid already, the grinder was a gift, and the sausage stuffer attachment was cheap enough that I don’t care if I never use it again. Any recommendations on grinders or sausage stuffers?
Also, I still am not sure if I should be worried about the bag coming up. As I said, its maybe at most 20% of the surface, but I guess my biggest concern is that if that much came up from the salami shrinking in just two days, is it going to continue to get worse and cause more issues?
January 9, 2014 at 8:36 am #7665Jim
MemberHi Mashuto,
The casing separating from the sausage is fairly common when making dry sausage, it happens because the sausage shrinks away from the casing and also because it is quite difficult to stuff the casing perfectly tight as you found out.
In our experience this separation does not cause a big problem when drying in the fridge. The sausage may take a bit longer to dry if it is just loose inside the casing, but eventually it will dry. If you have 20-30% separation at this point, it is not uncommon and you should be able to get pretty good results. The separation area will only get bigger as the meat dries, so don’t be concerned.The suggestion to use elastic netting is also great, or you can tie with twine. It will most likely speed up the drying process.
As for grinding and stuffing, we used a hand grinder to grind and stuffed it with a hand grinder horn, as the videos show. As long as the meat was nearly frozen, the grinding went relatively smoothly. It was a different story with stuffing, the manual grinder stuffing was a bit of a challenge.
We are planning to use a jerky gun to stuff in our next video and see what happens 😉January 9, 2014 at 9:55 am #7667Matthew Kocin
MemberWell I am glad to hear that about the casing. It really isn’t that bad, and I figured it was because it was shrinking. I just wasn’t sure if it was an issue or not. Sounds like it isn’t and that things are going quite to plan with my first attempt. Hopefully the results will be good when I get to check in a few weeks!
I actually have a jerky gun myself, but it is fairly small and I imagine it would be a bit time consuming as I have found my jerky gun is actually a bit difficult to load, although without a strict need to remove every air bubble as I assume I wouldnt need to for sausage stuffing, it might be a bit easier.
I found that the kitchenaid grinder worked ok, except that the fat and sinew clogged it up quite a bit and it continually needed to be cleaned. The stuffer attachment was the real problem, while it was mildly challenging to actually stuff the casings, the hardest part was getting the meat into the attachment, and because of that it took forever. So once this batch is finished I will look into alternate grinding and stuffing tools.
January 9, 2014 at 2:39 pm #7668Jan Ooms
MemberA Jerky gun is messy and very slow to fill up salami casings. Save your pennies and buy a small horizontal or vertical dedicated stuffer.
With my 5 kg model, I can stuff casings tight in about 5 minutes with the largest nozzle. No Bull….!!January 9, 2014 at 11:14 pm #7669Matthew Kocin
MemberYea I was thinking about getting a 5 pound vertical stuffer from LEM that looks pretty good and should make much much quicker work of it than with the kitchenaid.
January 10, 2014 at 10:39 am #7670Jan Ooms
MemberThe LEM stuffers are very popular. Make sure you buy the one with the 4 stainless stuffer tubes.
Do you like smoked csabai sausage, I have a ripper recipe if you want it. Just email me.
Cheers,
Jan.January 10, 2014 at 9:27 pm #7671Matthew Kocin
MemberYou know, I do not think I have tried that kind of sausage. However, I also do not have the equipment right now to do any kind of smoking, so until I get myself a smoker, I wouldn’t be able to make the recipe anyways.
January 23, 2014 at 10:44 pm #7709Jim
MemberCrusty,
Thanks for talking us out to the Jerky gun idea. We went out and got a 5 lb stuffer and it works like a charm.January 29, 2014 at 7:37 am #7733Bill
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