Today (April 24, 2010), I harvested the Coppa that came from the class on February 27.
When it came home it was in the spice mix in a Ziploc (weighing in at 1062 grams) where it was to spend the next 20 days in the refrigerator being turned over once a day.
At that point it was pulled from the Ziploc, rinsed off, and put on a rack to dry in the refrigerator for one day. It was in three pieces - one large and two small:
The next day it was stuffed into a beef middle:
This proved to be a challenge. The two small pieces fit into the middle, but it took some concerted manipulation to get them to work down through the casing:
The larger piece would obviously not fit into the casing:
So, it was cut in half:
It was still a struggle to get the halves into the casing:
And, the struggle produced a tear in the casing:
Which was repaired using the little bit of extra casing that was left by cutting it off and working it into the hole.
You can clearly see that the casing and meat did not come together in many places leaving air pockets:
It was impossible to pack the meat into the casing any more tightly without risking more tears. The casing was pricked all over to allow for easier drying/curing.
This went into the kitchen oven to "ferment" at about 75 degrees (plus or minus 10) for one day:
Pulled the coppa from the oven the next day (weighing in at 961 grams). The specimen looked like this hanging:
And, you can see that the tear and repair looked pretty good:
Note the air pockets were quite prevalent. So, I decided that the curing/drying process would be done with it laying on the same rack/pan you saw in the oven. This would reduce the gravitational pull on the casing and allow it to conform to the meat as it dried more readily.
I put it into the wine storage area (where the prosciutto are now) at around 60 degrees and 60% RH. After 5 days in these conditions it lost %17 weight (798 grams). After 5 more days it was getting rather dry on the outside (with some white mold developing). I was worried about case hardening. So, I moved it into my compact fridge with the Genoa salami at mid 50s
for temperature and mid 70s RH. This seemed to slow things down little. I turned the coppa over on the rack each day through the whole drying process. I did have some doubts about the aroma of the meat a few times. But, the end product seems to be quite good.
It remained in those conditions until I harvested it today looking like this on one side:
And like this on the other:
The divisions between the pieces of meat were obvious through the casing, so that is where I cut it into pieces and you can see evidence of some white mold inside the casing where there were air gaps. I am sure this is good mold:
Here is a cleaner cut into solid meat:
And here are thin slices:
As I mentioned above, I rinsed off the spice mix before stuffing. The instructions did not call for this. In fact, they said to add coarse black pepper to the outside of the meat before stuffing. Our pallets like pepper flavors on the mild side (we used to be able to get GREAT mild coppa from Ratto's in Oakland many years ago that matched our taste). Thus, the rinsing and skipping the black pepper.
In tasting the thicker slices that came off as I was trimming, it is plenty spicy anyway. The thin slices tone this down and make it a very appealing product. The flavor underlying the spice is quite good.
The final weight before cutting was 546 grams - 43% weight loss from coming out of the oven. This product will obviously keep for a long time....and that's the whole point....right ancestors??
