TASSO HAM
INGREDIENTS
Per 5 lb. pork brisket or sirloin:
1.6 oz. salt
0.4 oz. cayenne pepper
1.5 oz. sweet paprika
1 oz. garlic, minced
1.5 oz. black pepper
0.2 oz. ground cinnamon
0.5 oz. ground white pepper
0.5 oz. brown sugar
0.2 oz. Cure #1 (optional)
Tasso is a Cajun tradition, and one of my very favorite ways to prepare pork sirloin. It also suits a pork brisket nicely, if your butcher will cut one for you — from the picnic subprimal.
Method
1. Mix all ingredients and distribute evenly over the surfaces of the meat. Weigh, label, and refrigerate 7–9 days, overhauling at even intervals. When the curing step is complete, remove from the fridge and rinse, then place in front of a box fan to dry while you prepare your smoker. Smoke tasso at temperatures no higher than 200°F, until the ham reaches an internal temperature of 145°F. Rest before slicing and serving. You can win friends (and men) with this. I have no idea how I know these things.
PORK SHANK CONFIT
INGREDIENTS
1 pork shank with or without trotter
1 pig tail
1 whole corm of garlic, with the top ¼ inch sliced off to expose all the cloves
2–3 pounds of pork fat, cut into cubes
1–2 Tbsp quatre épices
0.7 oz. salt
Use this recipe to confit anything (which is the preservative process of cooking and storing bone-in joints in fat). My latest interest is pork shank, trotter, and tail confit. The skin makes for great texture, and the sinewy meat of the shank lends itself well to a slow braise in fat and garlic. Use the finished product in your Chutney & Confit Terrine (page 39).
Quatre épices is French for “four spices.” Make your own by combining ⅔ cup white peppercorns, 3 whole nutmegs, a heaping tablespoon of whole clove, and 3 tsp ground ginger in a sturdy spice grinder. Store in an airtight, opaque container where you keep your spices.
Method
1. Mix the salt and quatre épices and distribute over the leg and tail. You may choose to run a knife under the skin of the pork shank, just to loosen the skin slightly (don’t take it all the way off!). This way you can work the salt and quatre épices into the meat more thoroughly. Place in a nonreactive bag or other container labeled with the date, for 24–48 hours.
2. When the time is up, rinse the leg and tail, pat them dry and place them in a large cast-iron skillet. Place the garlic, cut-side down, into the skillet as well. Surround everything with the pork fat, as much as you can muster. Place the skillet on the stove top over low heat, and slowly melt the fat. Preheat the oven to 300°F.
3. As the leg and tail brown slightly, and the fat begins to melt (you may choose to add a tiny bit of water to keep the fat from browning as it melts), remove the skillet from the burner and place it in the oven. Leave it until the pork leg has bent at all its joints, the bones are breaking through the skin, and the meat pulls gently off of the bone. Remove from the oven, take the garlic out to use as a special spread or pizza topping, and move the leg and tail to a ceramic crock or other deep container, pouring the fat in around them. Allow the crock to sit and the fat to solidify. You will then store the Crock in the fridge, with the leg and tail sealed safely under the seasoned fat.
4. To serve, remove the tail and leg from the fat and warm in the oven. Flake off pieces to use in handpies, on pizza, in pasta, or in sauces. The seasoned fat can be saved for other applications, such as frying eggs or searing fish.
Finished coppa
COPPA OR CAPICOLA
INGREDIENTS
2.5 lb. coppa cut
1.2 oz. kosher salt
0.2 oz. Cure #2
0.6 oz. cane sugar
0.5 oz. black pepper
0.2 oz. ground coriander
0.2 oz. minced garlic
0.1 oz. grated nutmeg
0.05 oz. ground cinnamon
0.1 oz. orange zest
0.1 oz. ground juniper
Coppa, capicola, or capocollo is made with many different muscles, but the collar muscle group is favored more widely. This is a group of four muscles in the shoulder, at the top near the neck. To cut out the coppa, start with a bone-in Boston butt, then lift the ribs and spine from the meat. You’ll be able to see the coppa group pretty much right under the spinous processes (those tall, flat bones that wing off the top of the spinal column). Making sure you have all four muscles that form the round coppa, roll it off of the muscles underneath it.
Note This recipe calls for fermentation, and curing in a climate-controlled charcuterie cabinet. Read Chapter 5 before continuing.
Method
1. Mix the dry cure ingredients together and sieve if needed. Distribute the cure mix evenly over the entire surface of the coppa. Weigh, record weight, and transfer to the fridge to cure for 7–10 days, overhauling at even intervals. When salt curing is finished, rinse the coppa and set aside. Rinse a beef bung cap thoroughly, and trim to accommodate the coppa. Stuff the coppa into the beef bung by hand. Tie the end of the bung in a double knot. Using twine, tie up the coppa (see sidebar on tying for hanging and smoking, page 80). Record the weight of the coppa, then hang it up in your charcuterie cabinet, keeping it between 50–60°F and from 65–75% relative humidity until it has lost 40–50% of its weight.
A beef bung cap
Stuffed coppa, ready for tying
Tying for Hanging and Smoking
Using butcher’s twine, pass the twine under the top knot of your ham or coppa (or nduja, as pictured here). With the hand that is holding the bound end (the end connected to the roll of twine, pictured here in my right hand), develop a loop around your fingers.
Now, pass the loop under the free end of the string, so that it looks like a sideways capital “A.”
Next, pass the free end of the string around the “legs” of the “A.”
Then send the free end of the string through the “head” of the “A.”
The untightened slip knot should look kind of like a pretzel.
Now you should be able to slide the knot down onto the meat, ensuring it is nice and tight.
Turn the meat around, so your slipknot is facing your belly. Extend the string out with your leading hand, and twist it to make a loop.
Twist the same loop again.
Pass the loop over the entire meat package, situating it where you want it and tightening it down by pulling on the string.
Make another loop, twist it twice, and pass it over the meat, situating it about 2 inches from the first loop, then tighten it down.
Continue making these loops and passing them over the meat, situating 2 inches apart until you have reached the end of the casing. Flip the meat over. Pass the free end of your string up underneath the back of your last loop. Then pass it under again. This will tether it to the fixed loops. You are now making your way back up to the knot at the top of the casing.
Continue looping the lead string around the fixed loops until you have made your way back to the top, where you started.
When you get to the top, send the string around the bubble knot in the casing, then pass it back under the nearest fixed loop, to the right of the central vertical string.
Pass the string over the central vertical strand, then back up under the fixed loop on the left side of the vertical strand. You’ll end up with your free end facing the casing’s top knot again, and you’ll want to pass it around the back.
Tie a slip knot, just as you did in steps 1–5, to finish the masterpiece. Now you’re ready to hang for smoking or air curing!
Black Pepper Culatello
INGREDIENTS
6.72 oz. sea salt
2 oz. black pepper
0.48 oz. Cure #2
additional black pepper, for use after curing
One 12-pound culatello (if your butcher is not familiar with this cut, ask for the top rou
nd, bottom round, eye of round and knuckle all connected together; if you get the ball tip meat too, that’s also fine)
Culatello is an Italian butchery term, and is the principal accepted means for obtaining a whole boneless ham in the charcuterie world. I’ve heard that it means “belt,” although this is not a direct translation. It is a helpful insinuation, however, as cutting culatello involves unwrapping all the leg muscles from the femur bone without splitting them apart. The result is a 12–16-pound boneless ham.
Please note Do not attempt this recipe before reading Chapter 5, which details the fermentation and curing required for finishing this preparation.
Of all the things I have ever made using just salt and pepper, this culatello has made more people swoon than anything else.
Method
1. Rinse the culatello by unfurling it and running cold water over the inside and the outside of the muscles. Pat dry. Mix the cure ingredients and sieve if necessary. Distribute the cure mix evenly over all the surfaces of the culatello, both inside and out. “Roll” it back up, place in a nonreactive bag or container, weigh, and place in the refrigerator to cure. I have cured a culatello for 3 months before, but 18–20 days will do. When the time is up, rinse the culatello thoroughly, inside and out, and weigh it. Then grind up the additional black pepper, and spread it evenly over the outside of the culatello only. Stuff into a hog bladder or wrap in cheesecloth and hang in a climate-controlled charcuterie chamber, labeled, until it has lost 40–50% of its weight. I have had one culatello ready as soon as 18 months, and have left another one hanging for 2.5 years before cutting and serving.
2. To serve, unwrap and slice paper thin. To store, dust pepper over the cut end of the culatello, then re-wrap, and hang until you need it again.
A hog’s bladder. Rinse and soak and get ready to stretch considerably.
Variation Make speck. Speck is a German cured ham, and one of my favorite things in the world. It is produced by salt curing a culatello, fermenting it (see Chapter 5), cold smoking it with beech wood (see Chapter 6), then hanging it up and drying it until it reaches 30–50% weight loss. You could follow the Black Pepper Culatello recipe exactly, you’d just add a cold smoking step in there, and maybe omit at least some of that black pepper. Beginners, be sure to read the next two chapters before attempting this recipe at all.
ON COLLABORATION
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
WALT WHITMAN Song of Myself (1855)
AT THE HEART of charcuterie practice is dynamic collaboration with nature and her infinite mysteries and possibilities. Embedded into every inch of dynamism that we can see with the naked eye, from the soil under the pig’s feet to the feed stuffs, to the muscle and the fat and the earth-made salt, there are unseen forces colluding. Microscopic forces. Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and other microorganisms, and interactions between them, are crucial players in creating an excellent product, chiefly as they exist in the soil, which supports animals in life, and also as they exist in the fermenting meat on its way to cured perfection. In this way, curing meats truly punctuates a full-circle craft. I think this is one of my favorite things about charcuterie — the microorganisms, and the fact that they are the clear main players at the very beginning and the very end of a well-hewn process. This is some kind of sweet extra knowledge that settles my art neatly into form.
What happens to a piece of meat that is never cooked, once it has been salt cured and seasoned? What makes it possible for us to safely consume such a product, and preserve it without refrigeration? The answer is fermentation, and a sister process we refer to as “drying,” though that word hardly seems to do it justice. That’s because both fermentation and “drying” in the sense of “completing the cure” don’t simply refer to dehydration, but also to a biological process informed by none other than microorganisms.
From left to right: prosciutto, coppa, pancetta, culatello
Fermentation is the metabolic process by which sugars, both simple and complex, are metabolized by microorganisms into lactic acids and alcohols. It doesn’t matter if you are making sauerkraut, yogurt, wine or salami, this is the process you are working with, and for its success, you will depend largely on two chief genera of bacteria: Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. As you craft a lomo (page 112) or a Calabrese Salami (page 107), you will provide a proper environment and food for these bacteria, both in the complex sugars naturally present in the meat, and in added sugars that you include in the recipe. Temperature and sugar content are the chief drivers of their activity. (The hotter and sweeter it is, the faster they work, and the more drastic their effect on flavor.) Depending on quantity, added sugars can be included simply to fuel fermenting bacteria, or to add sweetness during the eating experience. These bacteria consume the sugars, breaking them down to produce alcohols and acids, which accomplishes two notable things: 1) It produces the sourly flavor that we associate with fermented food products, and 2) It lowers the pH (relative acidity) of the product, thereby making it inhospitable to harmful organisms and attractive to other genera of bacteria that will continue the work of dehydration and curing.
This is where the dynamism gets even more mind-blowing. When the fermentation bacteria begin to run out of sugar, they start to die. In my imagination, this used to consist of a slow fading of productivity and a decline in population, almost like the fade to white or fuzz at the end of a good tune. Then I would picture the beneficial “finisher” bacteria, the Staphylococcus and Kocuria genera, coming in gradually, like a rising sun, slowly going about the work of flavoring, coloring, and completing the cured product by interacting with the proteins in the meat, and with nitrite. And while this is somewhat correct, it is too tidy a picture, and doesn’t convey the fiery side of the transition. It turns out that when those fermenting critters approach the end of their tenure, they might actually explode, over-stuffed, and the enzymatic soup of their fantastic deaths is just as much responsible for the flavor we experience as is the work of their “finisher” bacteria symbionts. Isn’t that fascinating, and fine? Again, nature offers us a supreme example of the utility in death, and the partnership between death and life. The parallel between the life and death of domesticated livestock, and the life and death of the incredible microorganisms that allow for sustainable preservation, is too beautiful to ignore.
Finally, an understanding of the science of the microorganisms behind charcuterie gives us further support for the case for pure charcuterie. Mass-produced cured meats have been designed to fit with the system of mechanized food production, with quick turnarounds and cheap prices. The industry simply can’t afford to foster pure curing techniques, because they take too long. Old World flavors and pure technique require patience and simplicity, allowing nature to work her magic. If you are concerned with producing a high volume of salami as fast as you possibly can, you will be required to pump it with human-isolated strains of bacteria to ensure inoculation. You will be tempted to add far too much sweetener, and kick temperatures up very high to speed fermentation reactions. Fast fermentation produces too sour a product for sale, prompting you to add more sweeteners. And, to get the product off the line even faster, you’ll cut short the work of the finisher microorganisms by adding synthetic stabilizers, coloring agents, and other preservatives in their stead.
Armed with this knowledge, you now know that you will never, ever be able to get the real thing from the supermarket. You won’t get the flavor or the character, and you won’t get the purity of something you can make at home. Furthermore, any claims you have heard about cured meats posing a threat to your health should be attributed to the products that dominate mainstream outlets — mass-produced cured meats, pumped full of genetically modified sweeteners, preservatives, colorants, and more. Making your own deli meats and salamis at home, using clean ingredients, enjoyment for the process, and patience toward the outcome poses few negatives to your system.
I assure you it will enrich your life, your plate, and your view on the world, as you welcome some of the most fascinating work of nature into your home kitchen.
You’re already familiar with salt curing, which we covered in the last chapter, so what comes next? For those preparations from Chapter 4 such as lardo and culatello, as well as a host of new recipes in this chapter, you’ll learn next to collaborate with microbes to ferment and dry your salt-cured projects. In addition, we will cover fermented dry sausages, taking your sausage-making and suspensions skills to another dimension. Lastly, we will discuss creating a climate-controlled charcuterie cabinet for fermentation and curing, and using starter cultures and beneficial molds to better ferment and preserve your meat products.
FERMENTED DRY SAUSAGES
The process for making dry sausages isn’t much different from the process for making fresh sausages and suspensions, which you learned in Chapters 2 and 3. The difference, as you might have guessed, lies in the ratios of the recipe. Additionally, while fresh sausages don’t include a nitrate or a curing step, many dry sausages and salamis do. As such, we won’t spend a lot of time talking about mixing and grinding. You can refer to the specific recipes for details on that, and the sausage-making primer in Chapter 2. The best advice I can give you on crafting fermented dry sausages lies in ratio adjustment.
Pure Charcuterie: The Craft & Poetry of Curing Meat at Home Page 7
