I've often wondered if using natural casings when making salami really makes a difference. Let's face it, artificial casings have numerous advantages: they're clean, they're evenly shaped and sized, they are shelf stable, they come in just about any size, and I'm sure I could think of a few other good reasons why artificial collagen casings are advantageous. The disadvantages are that they are more expensive, and they aren't "traditional".
- The salami were in different places in the curing chamber, and therefore their exposure to air and humidity currents was different. Possible but unlikely. They were pretty close to each other.
- The collagen casing slows the moisture loss of the meat mixture more than the natural casing.
In cutting the 2 products they looked identical (I would post a picture but i've vacuum packed the collagen salame already). They were indistinguishable visually, both cut, and uncut. Both had a nice mold bloom.
More importantly...how did they taste? They were indistinguishable. The same, delicious, and equivalent.
So, as far as using beef middles, well, i'll use up what I have, which is about 56 miles of casings, and then i'll move to using 60mm collagen casings. I do have 1 more test of collagen vs. natural casings and that's with a hog bung. Since the hog bung is a very fatty, thick casing, this may slow the drying to be even slower than the collagen one, so it may in fact be better. Only a trial will tell. I will note that the hog bung casings are MUCH more expensive than a collagen one; about 10 times the cost!
So this time, modernity has beat out tradition I'm afraid.
Sorry traditionalists.
