Jamie and I recently had a mini-marathon sausage session. (Perhaps that didn't come out right...) We made about 12-13lbs of fresh sausages in hog casings. Gotta admit using the fresh casings that are not salted, wrapped around the plastic thingy, is much simpler than washing and threading salted casings. That being said, the salted casing is much cheaper.

For some time now, an eye of round has, in the cold darkness of my freezer, been beckoning me to aid in its transformation into bresaola.  The last time I tried to guide the fate of a similar piece of meat, the metamorphosis was less than stellar.  I sought advice from virtual and human sources, and used the recipe from the Ruhlman/Polcyn book as my starting point.  The product was fine, but the drying was slow and uneven, and it just didn't taste that great.  So, a year-and-a-half later, I'm trying again. 

Just wanted to quickly say (no pictures, I'm sorry to say) that we bbq'd pig tails last night. I had been saving up and had about five. They were awesome. We first simmered them for hours with four or five feet and some veggies (which made an amazing stock). Then we grilled them the next night. So super yummmy! All of this is to encourage you keep the tails and eat them, but if you really don't want to do that, GIVE THEM TO ME! I will use them. Happy summer Meat Club! I'm missing you people!

Jamie, Peter and I received some guidance in the last few days from a well known and credentialed culinary professional (who shall go unnamed by me on this web site) about what should happen at this point to our beloved proscuitti after said person perused our web site.   The advice was to get lard into the cavities and onto the cut side of the beasts as soon as possible. I had difficulty envisioning how much lard would be needed. Jamie volunteered his stock, but I eyeballed it and decided it might not be enough. I was fortunate to snag a freshly rendered batch (five pounds worth) from the Café Rouge Meat Market in the Fourth Street area of Berkeley. As you will see from the following pictures, the stuff is gorgeous...and even tastes great. I was seriously trying to figure out what kind of sandwich to make with it! Since it was a very fresh batch, it was quite soft and easily workable into the cavities.   So, here are the hams on the kitchen counter before larding:     The hopefully former problem cavities are still moist, but still smell meaty....which I take as a good sign.   Here is the five pound hunk of lard:     Here are the hams after being well lubricated:     And another view:     Leftover lard (yum!):     And back into the aging fridge:     Clearly, I can no longer consider flipping these things periodically in the future since the lard would make a mess and may even drip/fall off. So, I think they are pretty much in position for the rest of their aging lives (except perhaps for being weighed every couple of months).   Speaking of weight, with lard applied the small one now weights 23.5 lbs. and the large one is 26.5 lbs. So, I used about four pounds of the lard (less what I licked off of my fingers at the end of the process).   Let's hope this actually does some good in the long run.

It has now been almost five weeks since the scare about possible spoilage involving the two prosciutto hams that are under my care.   As a reminder, as of the last post they were in my old kitchen fridge laying down with the cut side up and the suspect cavities stuffed with salt. The conditions in the fridge have been at around 50 degrees and 70% RH a great majority of the time (MAX 54 degrees & 80% RH - MIN 46 degrees & 40% RH) These variations are mainly due to the fridge cycling on and off, which is not very often. The ambient temperature in my basement where the fridge is located is high 60s. I am still using three pans of water to maintain the moisture level.   Today I took them outside, pulled and brushed and hosed the salt out, and then let them dry off. There is now a "meaty" smell in the cavities as opposed to the "off" smell that was there before. The interior of the cavities is moist, but I believe this is because the salt was packed into them quite firmly and had hardened. They will probably dry out and skin over/harden now. They both seem pretty firm all over now. But, they are "moist" in the sense that picking them up leaves a film of fat on your hands no matter where they are touched.   Their weights are now 21.5 lbs. for the small one (down a pound) and 25 lbs. for the larger one (no change) with the salt in the cavities removed. This seems a little strange. But it may be explained by the fact that I weigh them by stepping onto my bathroom digital scale while holding them. The scale only measures in half pound increments and undoubtedly does some kind of rounding.   I put them back into the fridge with the skin up (cut side down). And, I plan to flip them once a month.   Here is a picture of both after the salt had been washed out:     Here is a closer view of the smaller one and its cavity:  

I have four fryer rabbits (about 1 pound dressed) for $15.00/each and two roasters (about 2 pounds) for $20.00/each.  I have much to post but have been very busy with a new job and kids.  My Hungarian and duck sausage turned out well, but I had two other massive failures.  I will post as soon as the kids are in college.

Well, I thought this would be just a routine update to the Big Pig Class (February 27, 2010) participants on the status of their hams that are aging in my care. So, I will start with the routine part beginning last Saturday (May 29,2010).   Just as a reminder - after curing in salt for about 5 weeks, they have been hanging in the wine storage part of my basement for the last couple of months. The conditions there have been 60 degrees plus or minus 2 degrees (mostly minus) and 60% RH plus or minus 5% (mostly plus).  

Weighed the two hams – small one is 22.5 lbs. (18% loss) – large one is 25 lbs. (18%) loss. Took them outside to take pictures.

Here is how they look - first the smaller one - skin side:

And the cut side of the smaller one:

There is very little loose salt on it - the white part you see is meat crusted with salt.

Here is the larger one on the skin side:

And the cut side of the larger one:

Poked around the cut end. Discovered soft, moist, smelly pockets on both of them.

Note the dark areas in the lower portion of this picture of the large one:

And here is a closer view of that area:

The rest of the hams seemed quite fine. They are quite firm all over, yet there is some "give" everywhere.

I admit that I started to panic thinking that this might portend bad things going on in the interior parts of the hams. I called Jamie, sent email and pictures to him and Peter and waited for a reply....which did not come from Peter until the next day...after a restless night for me..."what had I done wrong?"....."what can we salvage (cut them up now or cut out the bad parts)?..."how am I going to tell the others about this?"..."will I be hated and ostracized from the group?"....etc.

Peter replied via email on Sunday (30th) with some somewhat soothing words. I immediately called him. We discussed options and the whole philosophy of curing prosciutto from the traditional Italians to the the recent Italians to the modern Italians (Bertolli). And, concluded this was not the end of the end of the world...

I was going to wait until Jamie could come over to take a look at the situation before I did anything (Memorial Day weekend...and he had other things to do) except that I decided to pull the hams from the wine cellar and stick them in my old full sized refrigerator at 40 degrees thinking that the higher temperature might have been the cause (the discussion with Peter actually had elements in it that argued against this theory).

I kept going down to the basement (where the old fridge is) and looking at the hams, poking a little, and smelling my finger. I finally pulled them out and REALLY poked into the suspect cavities....and started pulling out some material that stunk. But, it was clearly not rotting meat/muscle. It was a tan, mealy, moist substance I can best describe as like Fancy Feast minced fish cat food (we have four cats!). WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?  It could also be described as being similar to cooked sweetbreads that had been crushed with a fork only more moist...and had a definite organ/glandular smell...not really like rotten meat. I also noticed that there was a symmetry to the location of these cavities between the two hams - allowing for the mirror image of the right versus the left leg.

Let's see....glandular, mealy, tanish/gray...then it dawned on me. This was some kind of gland (lymph nodes?) that had not been excised during the trimming process at the class, had broken down, left the cavity and was smelling. I was somewhat relieved that this meant there probably was not a general problem with the whole ham and started formulating a plan.

The next day (Monday, 31st) I took them outside again on my deck.

Here they are again - note the dark red areas to the side of the bone - the larger one:

The smaller one:

I then poked deeply into the cavities to pull out as much of this material as I could get with my fingers:

I then used the garden hose with a stiff stream to flush out (a couple of times) the cavities and propped the hams up to drain and air dry:

Then, they went back into the fridge laying down with the cut side up. I packed the cavities with salt since the meat behind the glands (whatever they were) had obviously not been exposed to salt in the initial curing...and thinking that the salt should help negate anything bad going on in there:

I plan to let them sit like this for at least a month to allow the salt to act.

The temperature target range for the refrigerator is 50-55 degrees (per Peter's recommendation) with an RH of at least 50% (getting around 68% now...probably from some moisture still coming off the the hams from their bath).

I am going to keep them in the fridge for at least the next five months (through October) since the wine cellar temp is creeping up now that the weather is finally acting more like spring. Then, they may go back into the wine cellar.

I think that they are now in good shape....and I am sleeping better!

DEFINITELY NOT ROUTINE!

 

Last night we cut into our spicy coppa from Big Pig Day. Rob says it's the best thing we've made so far. It was quite spicy, but we like that. (I did not wash any of the spices off as Jim did.) 

I found it a little difficult and messy to stuff the meat into the casing and the casing tore a little bit. I had to actually cut one or two of the bigger pieces in half lengthwise. Would love to make this again, if I could ever again find the right cut.