Some weird salami

Pork shoulder was on special at the supermarket this week, so I'm making another salami. The recipe is again a mixture of several from The Art of Making Fermented Sausages and Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing.

New boning knife!


Makes boning the shoulder a breeze, although I do usually try to get a piece with as little bone as possible. No point in paying for bone if you don't have to.

It was a nice fatty bit of meat; I removed the back fat and cut it into little cubes…


… the rest of the meat …


… plus meaty trimmings from the back fat …


… went through the mincer:


I saved the pork skins …


… and froze them to use in a Thai fermented sausage that has a lot of pork skin in it. It'll take me a while to save up enough, but it'll get used instead of getting thrown away.

The seasoning in this salami is caraway and coriander seed, and pepper. Of course there's a lot of salt, some glucose, sodium nitrite and potassium nitrate.


There's also a healthy dose of garlic, and I chucked in some yoghurt for acidity and bacteria:


I mixed it all up with the little cubes of fat, first in the mixer and then by hand:


And stuffed it into some fibrous casings. Now comes the weird bit;


it's being squashed! This is to make it turn out a rectangular shaped sausage. It sits between these two boards and ferments for four days, then I take it out and "wipe off any slime that has formed" (eugh) then hang it to dry.

We shall see what happens. At least if it all goes horribly pear-shaped all will not be lost - I've had a request from a guy at work for maggots! Should I by any strange chance acquire any that is. He's trying to nurture some newts and it seems they need very slow food, not being terribly efficient predators.