First Chorizo – question

[JB]

Just finished making Spanish Chorizo and it is hanging now. My question is this: Is there a way to tell whether the product is actually fermenting? It smells really good, but was wondering if I will be able to see or smell any changes as it hangs for the next three days. Thanks.

Her’s the picture….the sausage colors look different, buy that is only because of the lighting.

[Dave]

I couldn’t smell anything when I did mine. They may brighten a bit in color, but with so much paprika, you probably won’t see much color change.

As long as there’s not too much salt and you didn’t kill your bacteria, it just about can’t not ferment.

You should be in good shape. Don’t forget to post pics when you’re done. Good luck!!

[JB]

Thanks for the response. If the culture didn’t take, will I be able to tell? I used proper amount of salt and insta cure…..is there an eating risk? Next time I am going to figure out a way to measure the pH.

[Dave]

I’m not comfortable answering the safety question. I really have no idea whether mine did anything either, but I’m assuming it did. I’m young and healthy. It could make me sick but it won’t kill me. Even if it did, people would say I died doing what I love – eating!

A guy at work makes 50 pound batches of fresh sausage that he immediately cold smokes for 12 or more hours. He’d never heard of instacure or pink salt before. I asked if anyone ever got sick and he said no. This dude has held hundreds of pounds raw meat in the “danger zone” numerous times without getting anyone sick. I understand the smoking acts as a preservative but my understanding is that instacure would always be added as well in those circumstances.

The bottom line is I’m not worried about it. If I lived close to you, I would sample it for you and let you know whether I got sick.

YMMV

[JB]

Thanks….I’ll use some common sense when i open it up.

[Jim]

Stanley Marianski’s book explains the process of making fermented sausage quite well and helps understand the safety aspects of the process. Here is a link to his website:
http://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-types/fermented-sausage
Hope this helps.

[Jeff Burlington]

I am also doing my first Chorizo (and Sopresatta at the same time). My question is how do I know when it’s ready? firmness? or Weight loss? if weight loss how much?
My weights have already significantly decreased in the 72 hour fermenting period. (one chub went from 620 grams to 550 grams)
Any help would be appreciated. I will start a thread with pictures later!
Cheers

[JB]

Thanks for the reply. I just recently got the book and have been reading it.I just ordered a pH meter so I can tell if the fermentation took place. I am going to cut a chub open and measure the pH. Ill tell you how it goes.

[JB]

i am going to wait a month and measure the weight. If it is >30% loss, then I’ll decide what to do. I’ll be back then to tell you how it comes out.

[JB]

Another note: My concern is that I am depending on the lowering of the pH and formation of lactic acid to kill off more “bad” bacteria. It bothers me that I can’t tell if the culture took “hold”, so I am going to measure the pH. (I have made bread before where the yeast didn’t take hold, but I could tell immediately). Thanks again for your reply, it’s nice to hear from someone on here.

[Dave]

Remember too that this was done for thousands of years without any understanding of how it worked, but people knew it worked and the results were phenomenal. That’s why we still do it today.

I liken it to homebrewing. Any beginner always reads Papazian before they ever start. He stresses cleanliness throughout. With modern homebrew equipment, sanitizers, and yeast strains, I’ve only seen one batch of beer get infected with wild yeast in 5 years, but that was because we were experimenting with open fermentation.

Kimchi and other fermented veggies are the easiest thing in the world to ferment and to my knowledge no one has ever died from a bad batch. At it’s most basic, it’s just salted veg later covered in water and loosely covered to ferment for the desired time. It works every time, everywhere in the world using the same ingredients as when the technique was discovered.

With beer, we’ve used our knowledge to make amazingly better beer with just a few tweaks to the process that (generally) contain the very same ingredients as the original: water, barley, hops, yeast. The modern homebrewer can make (insert your favorite brewery here) quality beer at home.

There is always a risk of something going wrong when employing old-world techniques, but we’ve taken all the knowledge we’ve gained and stacked the deck in our favor. The only downside is that the risks are not insignificant. Listeria and botulism are crazy, nasty things I never want to experience.

Everything is so highly regulated that if a product marketed to consumers with the intent of leaving raw meat hang in your closet for 3 days was really that dangerous, the gov’t wouldn’t let them do it. Perhaps we could still get some “off’-label” for fermenting meats but they could not market it to us.

My guess is that if you get fresh, local ingredients and treat them with love, anything you create is going to be far safer than anything mass produced that suffers from a biological outbreak. Has anyone ever bought the charcuterie at Costco? Whatever company makes that had an enormous recall not long ago.

Happy Fermenting Friday!!!

[JB]

I made a small slurry of the some chorizo from one of my chubs and distilled water. I measured the pH of the slurry to be 5.3-5.4. Not an exact science, but I feel better now knowing that the bacteria took hold.

[Thea]

So it passed the litmus test, eh? (har har har)

Really cool test–the results of which we are delighted to hear proved out the process.

I do believe Mr. Marianski would be proud of you.

We are grateful you shared the whole process with us all on the Forum!

Crowd sourcing our concerns, experience and learnings is the intended goal!

Thank you JB!

–BagLady
aka Thea

[JB]

Thea,
Are you the person in the videos?

[JB]

Just cut it up! Smells and tastes good!

[Author]

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