How to make a Smoked Salami

welcome back everyone I'm glad you could join us for today's episode because you called me mixing up a little seasoning for our smoked salami which I'm going to show you how to make here in just a second my name is Erik with two guys in a cooler let's make it happen making a salami is a lot like making sausage you want to start by weighing your meat in your fat so we're gonna use a lean meat lean beef and pork back fat and then I'm gonna chill it I want to get it just under 30 degrees 31 degrees I'm gonna be grinding my meat on a 10-millimeter course plate and that's gonna give me really good particle definition and really nice marbling but you can grind it however you want you can grind your meat and fat separate you can grind your pork course and your beef fine however you choose to grind it once you're done be sure to stick it back in the freezer so that you can bring the temperature down again while that's chilling that's gonna take about thirty minutes we're gonna go ahead and get our starter culture already and a starter culture is nothing more than bacteria that acidifies your sausage meat this acidification process is one of the safety hurdles that you must achieve when making salami as the lower pH creates an environment that's inhospitable to unwanted bacteria all we're gonna do is let that starter culture rehydrate which takes about 30 minutes once all that's done our meat is chilled our starter culture has been rehydrated we're just gonna go ahead and mix our seasonings with our ground meat and then we're gonna add our starter culture just like that unlike fresh sausages where you tend to add a little more water to help with the binding properties when making salami you don't want to add too much liquid so we're just gonna add the absolute minimum out of liquid we're gonna mix it till our mince gets nice and sticky we've got good protein extraction and we can go ahead and stuff it into our hopper when stuffing our salami meat into our hopper we want to make sure that we slam it in there to avoid any air pockets from forming when we stuff it into our casing and in this case I'm gonna be using a 60 millimeter synthetic casing which we're gonna pack as tight as we can with that salami mince meat the size of the casing is completely up to you the wider the casing the longer that it's gonna take to dry we're now gonna go ahead and record the weight as this is the easiest way to know when your salami is ready to eat we're gonna be targeting a 35 to 40 percent weight loss if you like a more firm salami or hearts me you go on the on the 40% and if you prefer a softer style of salami then I would stop around 33 to 35 but anywhere between 30 to 40% is okay to eat time to prick your salami as we're looking for air pockets that might have formed this is also gonna help with the drying process and it's now time to firm it now this doesn't have to be a complicated step I'm putting this inside of a box where I have a 100 watt light that's gonna control the heat and I've got a tray of water directly on top that's gonna keep the humidity high and that's it that's a fermentation chamber my 100 watt light which is gonna radiate heat is controlled by this Inc bird temperature controller and this is a great controller because it's accurate it's simple and affordable notice a 75 F that's the target temperature and the 60 8.6 that's the actual temperature the little light that says heating what that means that my light is on and it's gonna stay on until I get to 75 F at which point it will turn off and now we get to the smoking so we're gonna go ahead and cold smoke this during the fermentation stage and I'm using a cold smoker from smoking it it's called Bella's cold smoke generator which actually produces true cold smoke under 80 degrees this is gonna smoke for in my case I wanted to smoke about seven or eight hours it's relatively late right now it's about midnight and I'm gonna turn my smoke down to about halfway close the chamber door and allow that to ferment and smoke through the entire night now tomorrow morning we're gonna open this up and it's roughly about six o'clock in the morning we've been smoking all night long and depending on how you smokey you like your salami you could smoke for an hour or two or in my case all night it's time to test the pH of our mince meat in this little pack is what was left over in the hopper after I stuffed my salami and all I'm gonna do is test it with a pH beater the pH that I'm looking for is anything between 4.9 and 5.3 and as I put my pH meter in there I'm reading a five point one five five point one four and that's absolutely perfect now we're gonna transfer our salami from the fermentation area to the drying area this is where it's gonna stay for the next 45 to 60 days this particular refrigerate has been modified I can control the humidity and can control the temperature I've got a video coming up dedicated specifically to a drawing chamber but the conditions inside are 55 degrees Fahrenheit and 80% humidity and it's gonna hang out in there for about 60 days until I hit about 38% weight loss it's been 60 days there's my salami it's nice and firm to the touch and if the conditions are right inside your chamber then your salami is gonna dry evenly if there's too much airflow if the humidity is too low if the temperature is too high then you're gonna encounter problems but I'm gonna cover all those issues in the drying chamber video which is gonna come out pretty soon let's go ahead and cut it open remove the casing and give it a slice and then see how it tastes but first impressions as I'm cutting it open the smoky element to it is absolutely incredible I used a combination of pecan wood and Applewood it's mild and I can't wait to taste it center cut looks great no visible dry ring the particle definition and the marbling looks brilliant let's go ahead and give it a slice salami making doesn't have to be complicated there are processes that you must follow and you can apply those same processes to any recipe you can make whatever salami you want and enjoy being a part of a tradition that's literally thousands of years old this smoked salami came out remarkable I hope you enjoyed the process if you want the recipe check out the link in the description box below and if you like what you see and you want to support our work check us out at patreon there's also a link in the description box below thanks for watching if you're new we'd like to say welcome we appreciate you being here check out some of our other videos and we'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 84,138

Keywords: smoked meats, cold smoke, how to cold smoke, how to make salami, italian meats, cured meats, best way to preserve food, salumi

Id: 2n305L674dQ

Length: 6min 40sec (400 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020