Homemade Sausage Making

I finally got myself a curing fridge. Made in Australia by Cleaver (small family business).

This one is suitable for salumi, cheese, and dry-aged meat. Temperature can be set between 0 ºC und 25 ºC; humidity can be set between 60 % and 85 %. For dry-aging, it maintains 80 % humidity at as low as 2 ºC (36 ºF). Also has a UV light to inhibit mold.

This is the smallest model they sell, with about 8 kg capacity. That's plenty enough for my needs

Actually not bad pricing but shipping here to Canada would kill me.
Nearest dealer is 8661.1 miles away

Devo wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 09, 2024 20:24

Actually not bad pricing but shipping here to Canada would kill me.
Nearest dealer is 8661.1 miles away

Yeah, that's the usual problem with bulky niche products. You basically have to buy local, otherwise it becomes prohibitively expensive.

Nice!

Very nice unit Michi! lets's see what you can do with it!

redzed wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 30, 2024 06:04

Very nice unit Michi! lets's see what you can do with it!

I only got around last week to actually doing something with this fridge. (I've been busy with other things.)

Made a bunch of saucisson sec, 5.7 kg worth. Casings are beef middles. I ran out of casings towards the end, so I used the remainder of the farce to make pitina-style salami (dip in red wine and roll in polenta). I have a separate temperature and humidity monitor in the fridge, so I don't have to rely on the built-in one exclusively.
So far, both temperature and humidity have been extremely stable. Temp is 13 ºC ±0.4 ºC, humidity is between 81.3 % and 84.4 %.
I inoculated with Mold 600. It's now one week since the salami went into the curing fridge, and the mold is growing nicely.
Now comes the long wait…

Mold is coming along nicely. No more risk of infection by foreign molds at this point.

Saucisson Sec is ready after 40% weight loss. It took a 5½ weeks to reach target weight.
I am extremely happy with the way that turned out. Perfect bind, absolutely no dry ring, and really nice flavour, better than even top artisanal brands here. The mould adds some subtle and really nice brie-type flavour.

Looks great!
What about the pitina ones? I'd think they would dry out even faster, I'm interested in how they did.

Dave in AZ wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2024 22:44

Looks great!
What about the pitina ones? I'd think they would dry out even faster, I'm interested in how they did.

Thank you!

The pitina version ended up fine. It was about the same diameter and dried at about the same rate, so I removed it at the same time as the cased version. No dry ring, and the flavour is good. A little bit less complex because it didn't pick up the funky/cheesy notes you get from the mold, but still very good.