Kosher Doshers Koshcuterie {kosh-koo-tur-ee}: MultiCultural Salami

BONELESS CHUCK

BONELESS SHORT RIB

BEEF FAT

Three pictures that show what beauty there is in food....at least yours truly thinks so. Ponder this for a moment, you combine simple ingredients I.E. meats, herbs and spices and create a masterpiece. You start out with a blank canvas and discover something special and new. What was an idea now becomes a reality and the manifestation of a Salami is born. I have been playing around with the idea of making my own Salami for some time now but have not been inspired until recently. Determined to a make a Salami and making one that was unique I decided I wanted something BIG too....Go big or go home I say. Big is certainly different. Experimenting with unusual ingredients is a lot of fun and every once in a while you make something interesting and great hence my salami is born. I present you with my Multi-Cultural Salami. Maybe I should explain why I chose this name for my Salami. The list of ingredients are multicultural, some are from North India and some are Middle Eastern thus the name.

Dry Cure notes

This is very simple to make. I chose these meats for their flavor and fat content. As you can see I needed extra fat so I chose hard beef white fat. The other ingredients are also unique. The Grains of Paradise have citrus notes and a pungent peppery flavor. While the Demera Sugar has some molasses in it. Garam Masala is an amazing North Indian and Sumac is a tangy Middle East/Turkish spice. The mustard seeds I chose are both common (Yellow) and unique (Brown). Very different in flavor and hard to describe. The brown version is used in North African cuisine.

Note: I used Cure # 1 to preserve color and as a preservative. I also used Sodium Phosphate to help with the yield and with its ability for allow proteins to hold on to more water. More water greater yield and moisture.

OK enough with the spice tutorial lets move on to the Salami.

Cut the meat and fat into 2-3 inch pieces ( this works well with my monster grinder) and partially freeze. Run meat through grinder twice. I used a 1/2 plate followed by a 1/4 inch plate.

The above video shows what a 1/2 inch grind looks like. The picture to the left shows the second grind through a 1/4 inch plate. From my experience if you're going to use a 1/4 inch plate or smaller you should always grind first through a larger plate.

I placed the meat in mixer with all the spices with the exception of cure and phosphates and I let it rip for about 6 minutes. My meat mixer attaches to my grinder and it will hold 25 pounds of meat which makes this endeavor easy. I then took out a hunk and fried it up and tasted it to possibly adjust for taste and salt content. It was perfect. I then added the cure and phosphate and finished the mixing adding a little crushed ice to keep temp down below 40 degrees.

I prepared my high barrier casings which are huge. They are 4 3/4 inches in diameter and will hold 8 lbs. I used hog rings to secure. I wanted to make sure they could withstand the pressure of the meat being forced into them and remain airtight when I submerge them in water. I plan on using my Sous-Vide to cook these monsters. I am using my polyscience Sous-Vide app to calculate time. I am going to cook them at 161 degrees for 5:53 minutes which will bring the internal temp up to 155 F.

I used my Sausage stuffer which holds 15 lbs of meat to stuff these monster salamis. After I stuffed my Salamis I let them rest in a refrigerator for 24 hours to cure.

Lets recap. Cut meat up, partially freeze and grind. Add spices and mix, stuff into prepared casings and hold for 24 hours. Sous-Vide until an internal temp of 155 F is reached. Submerge Salami in huge ice bath until temp falls rapidly to 38 degrees. Getting temp below 40 quickly takes meat out of the danger zone.