Venison Salami

[Michael Schildt]

Just wondering how long it has to stay on a rack in the refrigerator before it will lose a third of it’s weight as instructed.

[Jan Ooms]

Mike,
I never made Salami yet in the UMAi bags but going by my Coppa’s, you will need to wait between 4 and 5 weeks.
They can be hung too instead of laying on a rack. It is dependant how often you open your fridge door.
Good luck,
Jan.

[Rick]

Depending at what kind of salami your making it can take anywhere from 3 to 7 weeks to loose 30% of the green weight. Other factors need to be looked at also. Your temp in the area your going to hang, remember your fridge is just a cold dehydrator and will help with weight loss.

Keep us posted.

[Michael Schildt]

I have a separate refrigerator just for beer, it has metal grate shelves, I’m storing it there. It has been in there almost 2 weeks after the few days it hung in the house. I guess what’s scaring me is that it has not gone down in weight very much but also it still feels pretty soft. I guess it’s just still too soon. Thanks for the info.

[Jim]

Mike,

May I suggest you take the salami out of that beer fridge and put them in a regular household fridge. The reason they are not drying is because the beer fridge does not have enough air circulation which is necessary for drying. Its kind of like if you hang wet clothes in a closet, they will not dry very fast. A regular household fridge has a circulation fan that keeps air moving around and helps drying.
Just my 2 cents. That beer fridge is good for keeping beer cold, but that’s about it.

[Michael Schildt]

It is a standard household refrigerator, I just use it for beer and if we are having a party I keep extra food in there.

[Thea]

Mike,
Without being there with you to look at the set up, it’s pretty hard to say for sure. We’ve had many a customer using the second fridge (aka basement fridge, garage fridge, beer fridge) who report having failed projects–but never those who use the regular home fridge. Sometimes it is simply the age of the fridge that makes it less capable of drawing down the humidity. Sometimes it is just because the fridge isn’t opened and closed frequently enough to encourage it to cycle the humidity out. Sometimes there just isn’t enough in the fridge to encourage the cycle to work. But in most cases, the fridge has been the culprit.
Given this is your first project, and you are being attentive to the changes, maybe you are simply noticing every detail, which is a good thing. However, a salami, in our experience, ought to be getting fairly firm (“a relative concept”) in two weeks.
There are a couple of other causes of “failure to dry”, so here is what to look for:
Question 1: Did you re-chill the meat between each step–cubing, grinding, stuffing?
Question 2: Was the meat almost-frozen when you mixed in the cure, seasoning and culture?
Question 3: When you ground the meat, was it is in large, defined particles? Did this shape hold all the way through the final kneading in of the culture?
The reason I ask is that large, defined particles will make a sausage that releases moisture readily.
Question 4: When you fermented at room temp, was there air flow around the meat? I mean, like a breeze? Sometimes, this can cause the surface of the meat to harden and prevent efficient release of moisture.
Let’s do our best to ensure you are moving toward becoming a master artisan dry sausage maker!

[Rick]

Baglady posted some good questions.

On BL #4 question the hardening is called case hardening, this makes the the 1st, 3/16″ of meat get hard

IMHO and salami making xp, i would just leave it in the fridge and let the meat do its thing. It will eventually harden.

[Rick]

How is it going with the venison salami?

[Michael Schildt]

They have shrunken a lot , casing is now pretty loose. The weight is down about 15%, a few more weeks should be about right. Thank you.

[Author]

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