Pork butt or pork shoulder

[JOSEPH FLORES]

I was wondering about the difference in the 2 pork recipes. Most of your recipes call for pork shoulder and marianski book just asks for pork? Does this make a difference in the cure or taste? When using Marianski recipes, do I just omit their process for humitity and just use the Umai system? Also, can the Umai be smoked as some of the recipes in the book call for some smoking? I have for years used Len Poli recipes for sausge and will his recipes work as will?

Mahalo for all your help
Aloha
Kamano :blush:

[Jim]

Aloha,

Sausage can be made with almost any part of a pig that can be ground through a grinder.

The Marianski recipes can be used with UMAI Dry. The part about the humidity controls is not critical for UMAi Dry because the moisture transmission rates are different from the casings covered in his book. If you ferment in a quiet place away from airflow (we used an oven that was turned off to ferment) you can then place the sausages in the fridge to dry, just like it says in the instructions.
Len Poli is very good as well, has a lot of great recipes most dry sausage ones will work with UMAi Dry.
As for smoking, we don’t encourage this, due to a couple of factors: the UMAi Dry casings do not let smoke through very easily (hense their special properties from regular collagen or natural casings) and if you smoke them and dry them in the fridge, the fridge will acquire a special odor that may be quite hard to get rid of.

[Lambert]

I’m picking up this thread late, so I apologize. I’m new to using UMAi, so don’t know much about them. I DO make a fair amount of sausage, some of which is “fermented, semi-dried” variety, and want to move toward a Spanish chorizo.

Two questions, though:
(1) What do you do about measuring pH? Can you maybe clip a corner of the bag, measure, then re-vacuum-seal?
(2) What about smoking? Can you smoke it while it’s in the UMAi bag, which is used as a casing? (If the bag is oxygen- and water-permeable, maybe smoke can get in as well).

The preceding post is a bit discouraging about smoking. Surely there’s a way, though. (?)

I’m guessing that in order to smoke a sausage, you stuff in regular casing, (optionally) ferment, smoke, then seal in UMAI to dry. (This would dodge the pH question, so may be the best route.) I’m wondering if stripping the casing from the sausage after smoking/cooling, then sealing in UMAi, would be any better.

…comments?

[Rick]

Sausage can be made from any cut of pork. Most of the time pork butt is used because of the meat to fat ratio is just about perfect, However some recipes call for lean pork with a back fat cut in.

As for pH testing and smoking with the UMAi bags.The UMAi bags helps the beginner salami maker, make great tasting salami at home without all the expensive controls and equipment. Remember way back in the day the salumi maker did not have all this equipment, they just used the environment that they had. Cutting the UMAi bag to test for pH, you will loose the integrity of the seal. Yes i know that you can cut the end off a natural casing to test for pH.

You can make dry cured spanish chorizo with the UMAi bag with great results and use just about any recipe you find online or in books. Its a small learning curve but just follow the UMAi instructions and you will be fine.

Smoking?

As of now the UMAi bags are not intended for smoking in a smoker. They will not let the smoke permeate to the meat, If your wanting smoke taste i would suggest adding liquid smoke to the meat mix (no its not bad) just get good LS like from LEM or Sausage Maker.

Cold smoking? Yes you could try it with temps below 80* Here in Florida right now its very hard to cold smoke, soon i’m going to try it around Oct.

Fermenting.

You will need to ferment any of the recipes that you are using that use a Bactoferm product. I guess you could try the smoking in natural casings then un case and seal in the UMAi, I have not done this yet.

If you do some of this please post the process and pics.

I am a full time RV’r so i dont have access to my cure fridge and equipment back up in PA.

Please forgive me if i have overlooked anything.

Good luck and have fun.

[Author]

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