There are a number of reasons people choose to buy farmer raised pork instead of commercially farmed pork, but for me, the most important is the flavor difference. Eating a farmer raised heirloom pork chop makes you wonder what you've been eating all these years. It is much juicier, and "meatier" tasting, really night and day. The image to the right shows both types. Right is farmer, left is Costco.
So, I've been wondering if that difference would be appreciable in a salame. It would only make sense that it would be. In order to test this theory I made a very simple salame keeping everything the same except the meat used. For commercial pork I used pork shoulders from Costco, which generally has good meat. The farmer pork was raised by a local farm here in Georgia.
To really taste the difference between the two porks, I decided to make a super simple salame. I would call this a cacciatorino even though it isn't of the appropriate shape for that name. It is made only of meat, fat, salt, pepper, and garlic infused wine (and starter culture and dextrose). The formula I used is as follows. The quantities are for the farmer salami I made, but using the % you can scale as you need.
Ingredient | Quantity(g) | % of Meat+Fat |
Pork Shoulder | 810 | 70% |
Fat(belly) | 342 | 30% |
Salt | 31.2 | 2.72% |
Black Pepper | 3 | 0.26% |
Cure #2 | 2.8 | 0.24% |
Dextrose | 5.6 | 0.5% |
F-RM-52 Starter | 1 | 0.09% |
Reduced wine | 36 | 3.13% |

As usual, this was trimmed, and cubed, removing as much sinew as possible.




I mixed this on the lowest speed on the Kitchenaid mixer for 1 minute. Added everything except the starter culture. I mixed the meat and spices for about 1.5 minutes. (see finocchietto recipe for reduced wine/garlic info). Then added the starter culture which had been dissolved in 30g of distilled water 10 minutes prior. I mixed for another 30-45 seconds.


They were fermented at 83 deg. F for 26 hours for the 43mm, and 28 hours for the 60mm.
They were then put into the curing chamber held at 54 deg.F and 70% RH.
I'm trying a little higher RH than I have in the past to try to slow down the drying to develop more flavor.
The Kichenaid mixer is great for mixing small quantities for salame paste, pretty much what I made with the finocchietto, that is about 1 KG of meat/fat is the max it can handle. If you have more, as I did when making the Costco pork salame, you'll need to grind into a large bowl, and mix everything with a cutting and folding motion with your hands or a spatula. I'm demonstrating this in the movie below.
4 comments:
Jason,
I love your blog as much as I love pork. That is to say - A LOT.
Your salami looks like it went damn well.
It's going to be awesome to see more cured meats coming out of your incubator.
Keep up the excellent level of detail. I am very keen to create my own setup too.
Good day to you
Thanks Porco Rosso. The last batch of salame disappeared in gifts, and being eating rather rapidly!
Where can I find the results of your experiment?
thanks
Found it! Sorry. very fasinating and thanks for sharing your results
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