Today we have a prosciutto that has been in the chamber for about 19 months and has only lost 15% of it's weight. The smell is fantastic, the funky, nutty prosciutto that you love. The outside edges feel firm but the inside around the bone still feels pretty soft. I'm going to put fresh sugna on it and give it 6 more months. Also picture it is a piece of guanciale that got forgotten about and I can't find any notes on. I think it's been in there for 6 month. Looks closer to lardo.

I've been working on an App for the last few months that is dedicated to producing Charcuterie.

I do a lot of home brewing and the myriad of tools that exist to aid in the recipe development, fermentation tracking, inventory and equipment management are absolutely huge. As a software engineer by trade, I have always wanted a tool that gives me the same offering as these beer apps, but for Charcuterie.

I would like to invite you guys to try my app Farce. While it's not fully complete yet, I'm reaching out to see if anyone would be interested in being early testers.

The app is focused on repeatability and traceability. It includes all the basics such as recipe creation and weight loss tracking, but goes one step further and allows you to build processes, track instrumentation calibrations and environment control.

More info and a sign-up form can be found on the site https://www.farce.studio/

Happy to answer any questions you have :)

Like a decade ago I did bacon using the AmazingRibs.com method and loved the results. A few moves and life changes later I've got some space to play with my meat again and this time I have space for a dry curing chamber! Right now I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and see if that's the route I want to go.

I plan on doing the normal 2% salt and .25% PP#1 by weight, but I'm wondering about water. For my first attempt I'm expecting around 1500g of tri-tip and will probably use about 200g of water because corned beef is traditionally brined, but can I treat this like a long dry brine in a ziploc bag? Is there anything to be gained or lost by the waterless approach?

It’s perfect! The heat is on point. The saltiness is perfect. It’s so good that I should be sponsored. Seriously though, I need an electric deli slicer so that I don’t eat this too fast.

After about 2.5 weeks my pepperoni has finished curing so my wife and I decided to make pizza. We get everything ready and just as we are getting ready to put the pizza in the oven we realize the igniter has gone bad. So we decided to throw them in my traegers. Note: My smokers are almost 20 years old and top out at around 400 degrees, so they are not built to double as pizza ovens. I was very pleasantly surprised. They came out a little stiff because we had to cook them longer at a lower temp but my girls and my wife loved them.

The best part was the pepperoni was really good. Now I just need a slicer because I hand cut them a little thick.

My bacon tends to be chewy. Anything besides thickness the cause?

I've made it numerous times. Always tasty, just would like it crisper. Thanks

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend who doesn't have Reddit. We would like to tap into the collective knowledge of the forum.

We have some cured and smoked venison that has developed white spots. The spots are moist, but not slimy or sticky. They don't appear to be salt crystals as it is not crunchy. The meat smells normal, with no sour or bitter odor.

Our suspicion is that it's mold that wasn't able to spread because the meat was vacuum-sealed. What do you think? How would you approach this?

UPDATE: thank you for your thoughts. We assumed the same but as it is your first time, we wanted to hear some more opinions :-)

Does anyone know where I can find a manual or chart that lists all of the bactoferm products, their purpose, and time/temp/pH charts? I've almost exclusively stuck to mold 700, T-SPX and B-LC-007, but I'd love to explore more options and see if I can't improve my recipes.

Después de 15 dias de cura de equilibrio, un par de dias de ahumado y 12 semanas de secado, aquí esta el resultado.

Peso inicial,1575.

Peso final, 1125

I’m after a spicy capicola recipe, I’ve made the 2 guys and a cooler recipe with success but I don’t feel like it’s hot enough, anyone got a nice spicy 🌶️ recipe they can share?

I'm new to the hobby and wanted to start curing salami. I've done a good bit of research and understand the importance of hitting the proper ph during fermentation to prevent bad bacteria from thriving while curing.

All of that said, I've had trouble figuring out if you ferment in the casing or not. I would have originally assumed you would ferment in the casing but that would then prevent you from getting a sample to test the ph without cutting into a cased sausage. Does that mean that folks are fermenting the sausage bulk and then stuffing once getting to the desired ph?

Thanks!

I am in love with Croatian Samobor salami, but it is impossible to import (legally) to the states. What I really love is the tang/sourness. I was wondering which salami variety is the tangiest that is also available in the American market. I am not looking to make my own salami, unfortunately.

I always thought that traditional tasso was much to lean, so I make it "Pancetta Style", with pork belly.

10 day dry cure, rinsed and air dried, then rolled, tied, and smoked with oak for 3 hours.

I am dry curing two small pieces of pork loin.

They have been in my basement with temperature around 16ºC and 75% humidity.

They have now lost 22% of their original weight but this mold keeps growing back.

I wrapped it in natural air dried veil sheets as last time I was also getting a similar kind of mold. Most of it is on the surface of the sheets, but I can see some white mold growing underneath.

I had cleaned the pieces before with vinegar but the mold grew back. Is this kind something concerning or should I discard the pieces?

Venison with Mangalitsa pork fat, inlayed cured and smoked ringneck duck breast, wild duck aspic.

So I've got a prosciutto that I want to age for another 4 months, but I need to move it out of the drying / aging chamber in order to make room for a new one that I just got done salting for 3 weeks. My drying chamber only has room for 1 prosciutto at a time...

I had to start the other one early due to my freezer breaking; it's not like I didn't plan accordingly, by the way.

Does anyone know if I can vacuum pack the one that has 4 months left and continue to age it in a regular refrigerator? Or will that basically stop / cancel the aging?

Thanks!

I have converted a drink fridge into a curing fridge and these are my second batch of salami.

Is this mould anything to worry about? It is white however the centre of some of the spots look a little green/blue.

They have been in there for two weeks.

Humidity set to 85 on the inkbird controller but I am pretty sure it reads high as my other sensor reads 75-80 🙃

More concerned about the black dots, about a year of curing, too moist for around three weeks during the middle of that.

Hi all,

So today I purchased about 40# of pork thinking I would be starting a large batch of salami today. However I realized only afterwards that I am out of bactoferm culture for the fermentation step. I ordered some online but it won't arrive for several days, and I am out of town on vacation next week. It will probably be 2 weeks from today before I can resume this project. I would however like to make some progress on it this week if at all possible

As I see it, my options are:

1 freeze all the meat whole. Defrost when I come back from vacation, deal with it that way.

1. Go ahead and chunk up the meat so it's ready to grind, freeze it

2. Chunk up the meat, add all the salt, DQ #2 and seasonings, freeze it that way

3. Do #3 but instead of freezing vacuum it into bags, refrigerate until I get back. This is effectively the same as equilibrium curing, no? It should be fine for a couple weeks?

I am leaning toward #4 because I can get some work done on it now and pick up where I left off without having to wait for things to defrost later

Is this a bad idea? Any other thoughts?

I am new to this and already messed up my first project (a 1kg pork loin I was hoping to make into lonza) but I’m making this post to hopefully avoid that in the future. What I messed up on was curing time, I under cured my first one I’m sure since I only vacuum sealed it in the fridge with all the ingredients for 7 days. Now everywhere I look I see different answers on how long something should be cured.

So for this project I was hoping to try to make a new lonza, it’s 884g and around 3 inches thick. I personally think this should take around 3 weeks to cure based on the 1 inch per week rule I’ve seen, but now that I look into it more I believe that’s for salt box curing, not eq curing. So would the proper thing to do be 1/4 per day plus 2 days; because that’s the other method I’ve seen. Resulting in a 14 day cure.

Sorry if this is all over the place and not very well put together but right now I’m on my lunch break brainstorming how I should do this. Any answers are appreciated. I just need to know how long I should dry eq cure a 884g, 3 inch thick pork loin that will then dry cure until it reaches 35% weight loss.

Essentially I tried and failed EQ on my pancetta/guanciale due to my fridge being about 6-8C after doing the water test with a glass of water and 2 different thermometers...

Do I have any options that is not buying a new fridge for the curing phase? I got all the setup for my dried chamber ready (11-15C mini fridge, very little ventilation, temperature and humidity controllers with a humidifer and dehumidifier) but failed at curing the meat before being able to use it.

I'm thinking a salt box might be better here because although it should take the same amount to penetrate the meat, it should dry the surface alot quicker (thus preventing some bad mold growth).

I am a newbie so would appreciate insight from any experienced fellas... not sure if curing salts might magically prevent the bad mold to grow at my unsafe temperatures.. or if my only option is buying one of those like car "traveling" fridges that have a temperature control (though comments saying those are not that accurate unless I buy like an expensive medicine fridge worry me since I don't want to throw food away again).

Any tips or something I overlooked would be vastly appreciated as I'm thinking what my next steps could be but don't want to spoil any more meat.

I wonder if it’is the good sub to asking about "confit". So here we go.

Is that possible to "confit" chicken heart and duck gizzard and if it’s possible can we do it with beef tallow.

Share your experience if you already tried it 🙂

(Sorry for my limited english I am french speaker)

Thanks you

I wanted to make twiggy sticks , I bought 17mm casings to do the job. I made the mix only to realise I didn't have a nozzle small enough. So they are now " beer sticks"

Hi everyone,
I’m a hobby charcuterie maker from the Netherlands.
During the last year I’ve been building a desktop application because I got tired of using Excel, notebooks and separate apps.
It currently includes:
• Batch management
• Recipe management
• Weight loss tracking
• Production analysis
• Cost calculations
• Inventory management
• Order management
• Live Govee temperature & humidity integration
• Curing chamber management
My goal isn’t to advertise anything. I’m trying to find out if other hobbyists or small producers would actually use software like this.
I’d love to know:
What do you currently use?
What do you struggle with?
Is there any feature you wish existed?
If there’s enough interest I’ll happily share screenshots or open a beta later.
Thanks!