Soppressata: The Old and the New,,,,and why

[Music] okay we're back I had a lot of people that asked for a quicker breakdown a lot of people asked for recipes and this and that and so I just wanted to go over the differences because of course we get a lot of people that say oh you know that's not the way these two do it in the old way and all that stuff so I'll explain my process and why I use my process and the difference between the new way and the old way so what I did yesterday was I ground up all of the pork using a 10 millimeter grinding plate and I added my kosher salt and I added what we call a curing agent number two the curing agent number two is a sodium nitrate a sodium nitrate basically inhibits botulism so it's something good that you can put in the meat and it enhances flavor and it also keeps the meat nice and red so in the olden days they always fought on how to treat keep the super sata red and they would continue to add paprika paprika paprika the more paprika they added thinking it was going to turn it red it actually turned it more Brown so I don't use any paprika in mine but the sodium nitrate the dosage is one quarter of one percent of the meat weight I do everything in grams because rams are a lot easier when you pick up me you're not always using a 10-pound batch or a 12-pound batch so it's easier to just say okay way the meat in grams you know if you have 3,000 grams or 8,000 grams you multiply that times two and a half percent and you get your kosher salt weight of the required salt that's going to be needed in the meet which is for me two and a half percent sea salt the sodium nitrate is added onto the sea salt and the sodium nitrate is critical that you use a dosage of 0.25 percent of the meet weight that's all you ever want to put in it so grams are much more accurate because on this particular batch where we have eight thousand eight hundred and thirty five grams of meat we're only talking about 22 grams of cure number two so so what I did yesterday was I ground the meat and I added the kosher salt and I added the cure number two those are the two key ingredients for curing meat everything else is a spice and then we'll talk about starter cultures which I'm going to add today so as far as spices I took three different bins and I divided them into equal batches of eighty eight hundred and thirty five grams per batch that makes it a lot easier because once I distributed the meat at eighty eight thirty five two and a half percent salt is the same grams here so you can measure one two three and you're ready to go with your salt and I got three different cups of salt and three different cups of starter culture and then in this one I added a red pepper flake and and black whole peppercorns and I have percentages on that if you guys want to know that East Coast guys and some of the collaborators use what we call pepper paste so I made an eighty eight hundred and thirty-five gram batch of sweet pepper paste and I also made an 88 hundred and thirty-five grand batch of hot pepper paste the sweet and the hot pepper paste doesn't have in these batches that I'm making today does not have any whole peppercorns in it is strictly a red pepper paste then what I did was you let the myosin release from the meat you you grind this and you mix it really well and you put them in the refrigerator you saran wrap them when you refrigerate them overnight the myosin releases from the meat and it makes the meat much stickier and the reason why you do that is it creates a much better find when you stuff them into the casing it gives them to stick so it creates less potential air pockets and then when you press them whatever air pockets you have in there after you both the casing once after about a week when you press them hopefully whatever little air pockets you have in there the pressing helps in getting rid of some of those other little air pockets if you have any in there but a lot of times you'll even though the Super's Otto stays in one piece if you look at it real closely you'll see that sometimes there's some separation in the meat between fat and meat and it just and that's what we call the bind is not quite as good whereas if you make the meat a little stickier by releasing the myosin overnight it creates kind of that glue and and that you get a much smoother rendition on the meat whatsoever so far so let's talk about the old way the old way then they would add wine which you can add wine if you like to and wine we are going to use a 2001 Sanjiv AC wine and I use 1.6% again when I say 1.6 percent its 1.6 percent by weight of the grams of meat so when we're talking line we're talking about 141 grams of wine not cups that ounces not by volume everything is by weight there is a certain amount of sugars or not or carbohydrates in meat even though everybody thinks that it's just the protein there is a certain amount of carbohydrates and sugar in me so when you hang these and you ferment them and you're relying on the bacteria in the air to ferment your product this is the old way that it was done it would rely on the sugars in the meat and the bacteria would feed on the sugars and when the bacteria feeds on the sugars it releases lactose lactic acid when it releases lactic acid in the meat that's what drops your pH down the ph bringing the pH down is critical to having a safer environment for any other bacterias that could attack the meat because there are certain bacterias out there that cannot live under a pH of 5.1 this is one of the main reasons why you use vinegar when you can vegetables okay the vinegar what it does is it drops that pH down to a safer level so in the old days they would rely on the sugar of the meat and whatever bacteria is in the air at that time when it's fermenting the issue that you have there is that you don't really know what bacteria from one time that you've made the meat versus another time which bacteria is actually feeding on the sugars and the meat and one bacteria will win that might be a good one that might be a bad one so what we do now is I add what we call a starter culture and there's a lot of different manufacturers that make starter cultures and starter cultures there's different cultures out there based on the flavor it will put out the benefit of the starter culture is you are feeding it a known good bacteria and then you are giving it about 0.3% dextrose which is a sugar the benefit of doing it this way is we know that 0.3% is about the proper value where the starter culture will continue to eat the sugar until there is none left if you put too much dextrose in the meat the pH would continue to drop and when you do that the issue you run into is if the pH gets below 4.9 or 4.8 you end up with a very sour or tangy meat which some people like sour and tangy but we're trying to create the old way but safer so 0.3% is just enough sugar where you can take the pH of the pork which probably started out at about 5.8 or 5.9 and over the fermentation process until the dextrose gets eaten completely okay this should drop the pH to about five point three five point one to five point three at that point the pH won't drop any more the culture has nothing worth feet on and five point one to five point three is exactly where we want to be for the safer side of that pH value and then when you when the the starter carts will we use is a powder and you keep it in the freezer and it's by weight and so we're talking about literally two grams of powdered star turd culture here and then I mix it with about no more than a quarter cup of distilled water at room temperature and and you want this to mix you you want to just basically immaculately that that culture the same way as you do yeast you're activating this right now and then so so after we mix this and put this in the refrigerator last night I did not add of the starter culture or the dextrose in here yet because I want that transaction to start working after I'm done stuffing it and not start working when it's in the refrigerator last night secondly the depending on what starter culture you use they work better in certain temperatures so this starter culture works great at about 69 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit so I will take this meat after we case it and I will hang it at 69 to 70 degrees and monitor the pH until the pH drops the five point one or five point three being that I've done at numerous times that process won't take any more than 30 to 36 hours with this particular starter culture because this is a fact fast acting fast fermenting starter culture once I get that pH the 5.1 that's when I transfer them over to my chamber and then the rest of the drying process is done at 48 to 50 degrees at 75% humidity until the total weight of the meat loses at least 35 percent once you've gone usually used occurring agent which which helped on the reducing the risk of botulism and then you've also added the starter the known good starter culture which starts your bacteria the good bacteria which is now predictable every time you make it because you're always using that same bacteria so your flavor is not going to change unless you change the spices that's the starter culture that you're always going to get the dextrose and we're going to add 1.6 percent white and we're going to case it and we're ready to go so I have my mixing box back out and here is the the meat and you'll say you'll see just due to the oxidation in the refrigerator last night that the top section was was kind of grayed out which is very common and underneath as is getting very very read so I'm going to put this all into and yes I did brush my hands thoroughly with soap and water before I started this and a whole table is completely sanitized so I use one cap of bleach per one gallon of water in a spritzer bottle and so once the tables and everything they're soaked down and washed down then I will spritz the tables with a with a one cap of bleach to one gallon of water and that's what a lot of butchers use when you see them in the store I'm going to move a couple of these bins out of the weights 58 pounds of meat so we're going to start up the mixer and we're and today now being that all of the other spices ingredients that were put in here from last night the only thing we're adding into each one now is the starter culture the dextrose that will start activating the fermentation process and 1.6% wine and each one of these three batches okay that was the starter culture with the distilled water here's the best roast and 1.6% one and you could see by adding the liquid now all that stickiness that I had that's going back more to a sticky mush so that's that's this patch this is the whole Capricorn one I'll pull the camera off and show you the mixer [Applause] [Applause] okay mother okay so this batch is mixed I'm gonna pull this out and being that I have the Box dirty I'm going to do the same thing with the other two batches and then I can get the box out of the way so I got a phone call about a week ago from a guy who wanted to know where I was located I told him where I was located and I find out that that he lives about 45 minutes from me and he's known as Frank the sod father blessed reach and so everybody knows him is the sod father as in like super sad because you know damn well that every Italian is lazy and we call column R and recoat immortal and gabagool and everybody forgets the rest of the word so in short people call it super sad so he's known as the sad father so that's how he got his name and used to shoot videos I haven't seen too many videos of him lately and and for a long time he was a believer of the old way he ain't he hangs in a cold environment which can only be done during certain seasons obviously because you need to control that temperature he is using a cure number two now because he says hey why not it reduces the risk of botulism why not put that in so I believe that he does not use a starter culture I think he used as natural which is fine I mean people who have a lot of success for many years doing it that way so what's really cool about it is we talked on the phone for almost 45 minutes the first and it's funny because it almost sounded like we knew each other for 30 years I mean memories go back in a family and they're all both very similar so he turned me on to I told him ah one of the issues I was having and and he turned me on to taking the kosher sea salt and grinding it down to almost the powder which allows the salt to mix better in the meat instead of a chunkier sea salt so this batch I decided that I am going to take the sea salt and run it through a blender and when I got done it was literally like talcum powder and so I'm assuming that it probably mixed really well we also started talking about cases and and he told me that he had some guys in nine in Canada that turned him on to these casings and I said oh you mean the collagen casings no they're not collagen because I tried the collagen 's and they work good you can pack them really tight but the one thing I noticed with the collagen casing which is not a natural casing is it doesn't always shrink to the meat that well so sometimes you end up with air pockets when it does shrink it also creates a shrivel on the outer of the casing which almost makes it look like a pepperoni which kind of turned me off because you know it just doesn't look the same so he turned me on to what they call these uh these air dried piercings let's see what this is here is that one labeled on the blue tape miles okay bring that one over here we'll do that one next and get this one out of the way for that so these teeth turn me on to these casings which are what they call air-dried there are 60 millimeters well the one I'm using is a sixty millimeter they come in a bunch of different size it is a natural casing which is kind of cool I'm like wow this could make life a lot easier because as you know beef middles are a massive not fun to deal with and washing them and all that other stuff so it's red um so if you want to grab one of those cases I'll show you what they look like so I ordered like 150 of them and I'm really hoping that they work and he swears by him and so again Frank the sad father bless tree so it's pretty cool and it's funny that he knows some of the same people I do because we're into this about the week we just enjoy doing it so this is the casing there it is it's dried I know looks like a tube sock whatever you want to call it looks like other things whatever but you soak these in cold water for five minutes that's it it's already sealed on the bottom and you fill these things up you can twist them much tighter on the top and I'm going to try to use the clipping machine on these I did have a problem with the clipping machine with the natural casings because the beef metals are very thick and the staples are not big enough and sometimes when the staple goes down it plunges through the beef middle and then you end up with a poke into the beef middle instead of the clip going around the casing what's nice about these is you said you can twist them and the more you twist them they'll get tighter and it'll push the meat tighter into the casing and and the more you twist them the twist gets tighter and I'm hoping that the the staples or the clips will work on the end to these so I'm looking forward to trying him again he said they're great so he offered to come out and help I said that's all right it's not that big of a deal you know so but I did want to shout put a shout out to and you guys so far he's been the real cool guy yep we're all full with staples and we're recording so I got my helper this time because last time was a disaster so it's a lot easier with two people so she took off half of this one batch which was let's see roughly 19 pounds so about half of it nine and a half pounds filled it in the stuffer and we'll put this aside for right now and I took these casings now here's the casings there's the casings and they're just in in cold water for five minutes that's it they're no smell no lemons no washing about a Bing that's it okay still keep a tray out because you still have some moisture but it looks like it's gonna it might work and then the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take a scissors we're going to try this and see how well it works and we're going to create this loop like so like that and my attempt is we're gonna stop these and when we put a staple in it I'm going to try to staple the loop in with it and it's going to be ready to go and if this works this is awesome so we're going to take this for now and we're going to crank this down to get the meat out to the stuff to them to the end of the funnel and we are there and we're ready to go you ready to go okay so let's see what happens here this here goes like this this goes like this a lot easier okay go ahead and I'm gonna pack them real tight and we know that these are gonna be fairly long so Michael hold is will keep it a little short for right now yeah I think that's good you know a little more okay good alright so they're fairly long and we're gonna keep them fairly long and the reason why we're gonna keep them long is because after they're done then I'll cut them in half and like I said this is a first time out so it's possible that this is a learning curve maybe I made it a little too long huh no get a grab on it yeah so we'll take some meat out temporarily take some meat out and give it a good twist like this maybe and we'll see if this will work if you go down put it there to grab me like two or three pieces yeah put it down here like this and like this I'm gonna attempt to put the loop in at the same time go ahead give it a shot it went all the way I did pretty good so it looks like it's pulling when casing dries the lid should shrink with it let's leave that one like that and let's try one differently okay but if that works that's awesome because then you can do everything at the same time okay give a shine right have you had an economist push to her okay that's good see if this works no no tie Oh tie it just put another go down yeah good tight that tight well my time and know this I think so what do you think I think some joke huh I think it's a joke yeah you know what it might take a little more tired doing your hands with those string yeah I know can we see like symbols on your fingers does that look any different totally huh all right so this is all this is getting a better bind this way than the other way so yeah I think that's the way we're going to do it this has a little more of a taper and I don't know if we're actually getting air up in here so I think we're just going to do it with the ties yeah I know these things are going fast hmm I think we'll make it right the casings worked well huh yeah left mass less mass no smell no smell that's good so that's the whole process there we go so we'll do the rest of these it looks like we're gonna get these these are monsters but like I said they're 16 inches long so we'll probably get maybe what we'll cut them in half after after they're cured and vacuum pack them so for every one of those we're actually getting two pieces out of it so that's about it we're gonna cut the video these will get hung at 70 degrees at 90 percent humidity for 30 to 36 hours until the pH drops the 5:23 and then we'll transfer them into the chamber when I'm done here I will shoot a small clip of the chamber and show you what's going on in there also so that should do it if you like these videos make sure you like press the like button and also subscribe any other requests just let me know and maybe we'll do another video based on requests lee did a fresh Italian sausage last week because somebody wanted to know how to make a fresh Italian sausage same process different ingredients less salt whatever it is but fun making videos make sure if she loves it so so that's it make sure you hit that like button and press the subscribe button and also again big shout out to Frank bless tree Frank the sad father bless tree for for guiding me through using these casings if they shrink like like he claims they will this is definitely a go they cost a little more to do but man it definitely makes the whole process a lot easier so as much as we think this is fun and easy it's actually more fun and easy to eat them than it is to make them so we'll talk to you guys later thank you alright so this is uh what ended up happening we got I don't even bother counting them I don't know maybe 25 27 pieces you guys can count on me pause the video encounter for one but 25 27 pieces somewhere around there totaling 58 pounds so when we press these and then we're gonna let them dry and then when we're ready to vacuum-pack them on there when we're done we will cut them in half and vacuum pack them in halves because they're they're pretty large just to give you an idea there you go so they're pretty good size we cut these in half that's gonna make a real nice size to pack so out of the 27 pieces that we stuffed we're gonna end up with 54 pieces which worked out great so that's about it I definitely wanted to show you the chamber so I'll unplug it move this also let's see if we can show you the chamber so right now don't have a lot in the chamber but we'll have 58 pounds in there so right now we're showing that we're at 49 point four degrees on the temperature when that gets to 51 degrees the refrigerator will kick on and bring it back to 47 so at any given time the refrigerator stays between 47 and 51 degrees and then right now this is showing 57% humidity and that's obviously because the refrigerator must have kicked on which dehumidifies and that will creep up that normally holds about 75% humidity but for the first five minutes after the compressor kicks on that humidification really drops fast but once we start getting this meat in there the meat will definitely be bringing that humidity up also so here we go in here there's a double it's a double refrigerator it's 42 cubic feet it's on the inside it's roughly five feet high I have a humidifier down here and oh that's why we're down in humidity because I need to replace my humidifier water and then there's a dehumidifier here in case if the humidity gets too high that will kick on this is a loin that's been curing since um September 14th so this is a ways to go this will be probably at least another three to four months this is going to be a killer piece of meat and then this is a Pheo Koh which is one half of the persuit though it's a very small piece but this is gonna be again this was done on nine fourteen also with a little black pepper coarse black pepper and red pepper flakes and then coated and wrapped in a beef bung so that's these two pieces I made a huge pork belly and I took 1/3 of the pork belly and created a patch at dust ASA which is pancetta that's hung it's not rolled like your typical pancetta and and this can be hung and dried it's already cured and you can cut slices off of it any time makes great flavor for carbonara or whatever carbonara most people say use guanciale but the the fat shadow works actually really really good so we're gonna hang the other super Sato's in a different box at 70 degrees for the next 30 hours and there we go I don't know what happened with my white balance but obviously something got confused here because the pictures a little yellow but all right well let any rate you've seen them there we go there's the hot ones so there they're gonna be pretty red in two or three days and then wills and about four or five days we'll start pressing them and then we'll hang them in the other chamber at 47 to 51 degrees see you guys later [Music]

Channel: Lou Santello

Views: 13,328

Keywords: Soppressata, Italian Sausage, Cured Meat, Dried Meat

Id: IF23DAoT9yY

Length: 37min 26sec (2246 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2019