The making of Soppressata

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] all right so everything's been sterilized we're home we have two bags of pork shoulders here t-boned and he sliced them up so they're ready to go into the grinder so the first thing I do is I take a couple of pieces of painters tape and we're gonna weigh each bag and then we also have these stainless pins here that also have they also have blue painters tape on them and what we'll do is we're gonna weigh them and then once we weigh them will mark the blue painters tape on both the stainless bin and the bag so we'll turn this on everything is done in metric by the way so let's change the mode to kilos and this one here is eleven point nine kilos so we mark this is eleven point nine and mark this one is eleven point nine take this one eleven point nine this guy is good makes my job a lot easier eleven point nine at this point the big-scale is done we'll move the big-scale out of the way and we'll start grinding the meat into each one of these bins I'm gonna make them two separate batches at eleven point nine kilos each okay we're back and we have our grinder in place I use a pretty coarse grinding head it's larger than a quarter of an inch diameter and we're going to open up the bag now and we'll take each bag and grind them separately into stainless containers [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay both batches are mixed now and so basically at this point we're pretty much done with the the grinder so the next thing we'll do is just pull up out all the pieces for the grinder and might as well just get that all washed out and once that's all washed up we don't really need this portion of the Machine anymore come apart with that this unscrews that's it so we'll wash these pieces up and we're done with the grinder all right so we have all the meat ground all the parts for the grinder are cleaned up and we're ready to move on so when I started doing this a couple years ago I really looked into it and basically what ended up happening was these in the old time way they would just take a handful of meat and add a handful of salt the you know - to this and this event and they never really knew exactly what they were doing and so when something didn't turn out they didn't understand why so I looked into it a little further because it's obvious that when they're making thirty and forty thousand prosciuttos in parma they're not just guessing especially when a prosciutto takes roughly a year to cure there's more to a science on that so not only that but in the olden days people would slaughter their own page so they knew exactly where the pigs were coming from what they were fed and so these days we don't know whether something has been previously frozen cryovac you know or injected with any other type of things that they do with animals these days so based on that we have a way in knowing how fresh the meat is based on the pH of the meat before we start mixing anything in it so in most cases a slaughtered Pig pH should be in high fives really not much higher than the low sixes so as long as we're in the high fives - low sixes we're pretty safe as we start getting into 6.4 6.5 then that raises another red flag so in the curing process that the key thing here is we're going to introduce a culture no different than like a yogurt because there there is a certain amount of bacteria function going on and there is only going to be one bacteria that wins so if we feed it with a culture that we know is a known good culture were basically by measuring the pH we'll know whether that culture is taking over and making sure that any of the other worst-case-scenario bacterias stay away from the product so we do that by monitoring the pH during the curing and the fermenting cycle so that's why we introduce a curing process what the culture what the culture really does in the fermentation is it drops the pH when the pH drops below five point one is when you really want to start curing at 54 degrees because anything below five point one we've already gotten over the hurdle of two of the three major hazardous bacterias cannot live below five point one so if we can get the meat below five point one we've already jumped a hurdle knowing that we're safe there so that is also the key of the bacteria and the fermentation so in the olden days the old timers didn't know exactly why they were introducing wine into the meat but if you think about it the wine is acidic and technically the wine drops the pH so as much as the old timers would always say that they would add wine for flavor in reality they were they were inserting wine to drop the acidity which brings the pH down more into the safety levels more so than the flavor of the wine itself so that's that's one thing we've noticed so we do not add any wine product in here and by adding wine and depending on what type of wine you don't know how much it's going to drop pH without a pH meter if you start getting your pH below 4.9 the meat is going to be very tangy now some people like a tangy meat but we really want to keep this meat at five point one or five point two when we introduce it into the curing chamber so at this point you'll see that there's a laptop in the screen and I created my own spreadsheet and I made it very simple all of my recipes are on this spreadsheet and there's only one box that I can input anything into it and that one box that I input is the weight of the meat in grams once I input the weight of meat in grams into that box and press the Enter button it automatically generates all of the other percentages of ingredients that I have for every single recipe that I make whether it's a mild whether it's a hot whether it's a fresh sausage whether it's a cured sausage or super SATA I have them all on the spreadsheets running across here with my ingredients on the side so as I input and remember that these what this was eleven point nine kilos which is eleven thousand nine hundred grams where we're measuring everything now to the gram some of these ingredients are literally 0.3% of the actual meat weight so grams are very very accurate so once I inserted the eleven thousand nine hundred grams and here's all my recipes here we're going to go over to a mild super SATA which is this one here and within there it tells me exactly how much salt I'm going to need for this batch how much of the culture we also introduced a dextrose and the dextrose is basically a sugar it's only 0.3 percent and what the dextrose does is the culture needs something to feed on so once the culture starts feeding on the dextrose or you can also use sugar when the culture is feeding on the dextrose it releases what-whatever it releases and basically that is really what brings the acidity down that drops that pH level so and then we use a curing agent which is what they call a cure number two it is a sodium nitrate and the cure number two sodium nitrate nitrates are in celery so the cure number two is simply there because salt has not made the same way his salt was in the olden days so salt a lot of times now is sodium chloride and instead of sodium nitrate so we introduce a sodium nitrate which helps on the color of the meat and it gives it an extra little push to know that we're hitting all the safety values through the curing process so here's a pH meter here and we're going to turn the pH meter on and the first thing we'll do is we'll take a clump of meat like this now this is before we mixed anything into it take a clump of meat like this and we'll insert the temperature probe and insert the other probe and at this point we're reading 6.02 so we're just a hair over 5.9 huh it's going down a little depends on where you probe it but yeah we're worried about yeah there you go five point five point nine nine is the pH of the meat we're good to go we know that this has not been previously frozen we know that this has not been fed any antibiotics or cryo jury cryogenically freeze dried or anything like this this is true fresh pork and we're ready to roll so my next thing we'll do now is I wrote down all of the values of our ingredients on this piece of paper I can shut down the laptop I don't need it anymore being that both batches are the same weight this is a good thing we'll start taking all of the small Dixie Cups here and we're gonna load those with the the ingredients for each one so when we're ready to mix we have everything pre measured and and then we're ready to mix the meat so we'll see you soon all right so this this is the original grinder here that we took all the pieces off and cleaned and this company also makes a separate mixing box that connects to the grinder and within the mixing box then there are blades you can see down in there so this makes things a little easier than the old-time basically what we're going to do is we're going to load the meat into the mixing box and we'll load them in eleven point nine kilos at a time and we'll turn the machine on and once the machine is on we will add the salt the curing agent the dextrose the red pepper flake the whole peppercorns and then as far as the culture we the the culture comes frozen there's a lot of different cultures to choose from I use a specific culture that's intended for the southern European type salami z' because it does put out a certain flavor that culture comes frozen in a powder form and you mix it with about a quarter of a cup of distilled water and it activates very simply like similar to yeast so that we want to mix with distilled water for about twenty to thirty minutes before we mix it in with the meat so in about ten minutes or so we'll be loading the meat and adding the ingredients the mix probably doesn't take any more than one and a half two minutes then we'll pull it out of the mixing box I'm going to transfer it back into the same stainless container and put it in the refrigerator again it's very important that everything stays cold and we don't have any fat smearing or anything like that so we keep everything cold once that's done then the next process after that is stuffing them in the casings and netting them now the culture does like to see a specific temperature that it likes to work in so this particular culture likes anywhere from 70 to 73 degrees so the key remember like I told you before the key is to get this pH down to 5.1 and in order to do that this culture needs to activate and eat on the dextrose in order to decrease that pH so what we're going to do have once everything is cased is we hang it at believe-it-or-not 70 to 72 degrees and we will have a small separate neat batch in a Dixie cup that we don't put in a casing that stays with the meat and that becomes our our constant meat that we can measure with the pH and being that I've done this before it will take roughly 24 to 36 hours for that meat to reach 5.1 and pH at that point we weigh them and they go into the curing chamber at 54 degrees at seventy-five to eighty percent humidity until the unit's lose at least 35 percent so once the pH is down and then we lost 35 percent in water activity we've hit every single hurdle and it's safe to eat 35 percent is still kind of mushy and I normally run them anywhere to 45 to 47 percent weight loss and I press them slightly as I go that process normally takes about four to six weeks to lose about 43 to 47 percent you'll but at that point it's it's based on feel and texture that you want again anything over 35 is safe to eat once the product is cured it's never uncured and so at that point once it's cured you can hang it anywhere you want in our situation we don't want it to dry out any more than it already has so we will vacuum pack them we can ship them anywhere if I have a friend in another state it doesn't matter whether it's 80 or 90 or a hundred degrees out I don't have to worry about getting that meat to a specific temperature in order to to ship it once it's cured its cured all right so we're ready to start mixing so plug away [Music] hey compadre Chua Tsunade this is aa fresh kolento ecchymosis on a fiscal 800 fiscally tippity tappity done hey goober Jameson our kisses on our saxophone ecchymosis on who sacked Sephora tu-tu-tu-tu-tu saxophone who frisked a little bit apetito hey goober shavasana hisses ah ah ooh mandelino ecchymosis Ora boo mandelino applying a plain Newman dough into two to two sacks for a free scalability patina hey Shiva Tsunade this is our ROV Olie no ecchymosis on our movie Olie who I think I think we are in a bling bling mandolin two - two - ooh saxophone or fiscal a Dipity dip it in our egg wash Shiva Tsunade Jesus own Allah Trombetta maka Moses or a lot Roberta Papa Papa Paula trumpeter Tinga Tinga arena pling pling new mandolin tu-tu-tu-tu-tu saxophone officially take a petite apetito hagen party Jameson re Jesus or knowledge Epona Micawber see sorna elect Ramona a form of whom Allah trouble Papa Papa palette roommate the thing getting goofy olena bling bling [Music] [Applause] and based on what I'm seeing here I might add a little more black all right this is pretty mixed and you'll see that it's very sticky you'll see that it um there you go it sticks right to your hands this is ready to go we're gonna take this I'm going to transfer it back into the container and put this in the refrigerator and I'll mix the next batch sure alright so um so everything is ready to go meats are packed in like when I took it out of the mixer I made them in small little balls about the size of 16 softballs the casings have been soaking with a little lemon juice and then kept in the refrigerator so the casings are pretty much ready to go this is a new machine that I'm going to try and hopefully it works out real well we'll see how that goes and then this is a stuffer so the mixing machine is completely cleaned up the mixing boxes cleaned up all the grinding tools are coming cleaned up and we're down to the final process of just stuffing so basically what this does is pop this in here like this crank this up and as you print this up we'll see that there's a disc that comes up like that and then this thing folds down like this and you pop your meat in it once you pop your meat in it close this down move it over to the other one that goes a lot slower and then that'll push the meat down through the stuffer and down into the tube and into the casing and this is a clipping tool so you don't have to tie every end there are stainless steel Clips like staples so which is normally what you see on the store-bought salami so I'm looking forward to using this because everybody was getting blisters and burns on their fingers from tying all these things so I'm gonna pause this for a minute and then we're ready to rock out all right so we're ready to stuff I have my helper finally and we're ready to go so she's gonna grab the little meatballs over there there you go pop it in alright start loading it and we load it just like a cannon they the meatballs makes a lot easier it's messy push do one more in there okay good good okay just goes down like this [Music] [Music] okay we're there okay we'll grab a casing let's see how this works not bad I think we can manage okay are we ready it's now this works okay go ahead [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so we have we have I don't know 50 some pieces made here so that's all done the clamping worked really well glad I got it saved a ton of mine so this is a PVC tube I made with a reducer and here's netting and we take the netting put it over the PVC like so that's good enough cut this off like this make the other end [Music] like so there you go sell your time out on that I'm gonna grab the salami or the super sokka's there's three of them linked together right like that we take those I got a small pricker here and basically just go through and prick - super Sato's and basically what you're doing is if there's any air pockets in them that will allow the casing to shrink and get rid of the air pockets air pockets are no good so every time I'm popping this thing I'm popping probably about eight holes in each one so it's about 200 holes per super SOT they're right there and then we take I left a little extra casing on the one end for a reason and we're gonna take this we're gonna run it right through the - right like this have it out on the other end flip it upside down pull through right like that and then she'll throw a tie on it when she double-knotted it we took the casing with it no cutting that in here put a loop in this thing she's matting for the next one and there's my loop and we're ready to hang now these are going to go into I'll explain the refrigerator in a minute all right so I have a refrigerator that is no longer working but I cut it all the shelves out of and I use it specifically for hanging right now and this is the fermentation process by the way this is a cup of the extra meat this goes with the meat and follows the meat because this is where we're going to monitor the pH all right so this refrigerator that I have that's no longer a working refrigerator is strictly for hanging these I have a small little heater in it just to make in it and the heaters on a controller and all that really does is I have this controller set for 73 degrees so if it gets any colder in that non-working refrigerator the heater will only kick on to bring the refrigerator back up to 73 degrees now it sounds high but this culture for them this culture wants 73 degrees to feed the dextrose which is going to bring their pH down so basically you only keep it in this 73 degree temperature you only keep it in this 73 degree temperature and till the pH lowers to 5.1 once the pH lowers the 5.1 then we're going to weigh these and we're going to put a tag on each one so we know what the way it is and then I'm going to transfer them into a refrigerator that is modified to stay at 54 degrees Fahrenheit and I have a humidifier in there also to make sure that that refrigerator maintains 75 to 80 percent of humidity and they will hang in there then until the meat reduces to 35% in weight loss and at that point for cured all right so here's the refrigerator that I said is broken we don't use it as a refrigerator anymore so we hang it in here this is a temperature sensor that senses the internal temperature we need to maintain this this box to a very high humidity at 72 73 degrees until the pH drops down to 5.1 so this is a small little heater that's in here and that heater will kick on if it gets any cooler in here which it's probably not right now it's about 69 or 70 degrees in this room anyway but because of all the cold meat yes it's warming it up right now once it hits 70 that eater will turn off and then we'll keep an eye on the on the pH and then there's a small cup in the tray here and that's the meat that is not encasing and that is our sample to be able to test the pH from once the pH gets the 5.1 we'll transfer this to 54 degrees for the rest of the cure [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Lou Santello

Views: 91,261

Keywords: Charcuterie

Id: 7htTW6ftGDQ

Length: 37min 2sec (2222 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 22 2018