Salami Recipe – How to Making Salami at Home

I’ve often thought that I could live on beef tartare and cured meats alone. But the true testament to my obsession is that I still think that after trying 20 of the country’s most highly rated salumi. In one sitting.

With the possible exception of a whole dry-aged ham, to my mind salami is the highest form of the butcher’s art.

The careful crafting of raw meat, salt, spices and time create something very different from a fresh sausage. It is not crazy to call it alchemy. But making salami is no joke. It takes time, an attention to detail (and sanitation), plus a careful eye to troubleshoot problems. Doing this at home is not for beginners.

But when you do pluck up enough courage to make your own salami at home, this is the recipe you should start with. It is the classic, the “little black dress” of a salami, flavored only with salt, black pepper and a bit of garlic. The meat is the star here, not the spices.

Here are my favorite dry-cured salami that are not only worth their salt hangover, but 100% worth going out of your way to order online if you can’t find them at a specialty shop near you. Though they’re all very different, each one has an excellent porky flavor, a satisfying meaty texture, and a balanced flavor with fresh-tasting spices.

May they bring you salty, smoky, meaty joy, whether you serve them as an antipasto—which literally means “before a meal”—or just for snacking with cheese and wine.

Tip: Slicing salami very thin helps this pricey meat go farther. It’s much easier to slice when very cold, but tastier when the chill lifts, as the fat softens and the flavors open up. For this reason you should slice right out of the refrigerator, but let it sit at room temperature for at least 15 minutes before serving.

FENNEL SALAMI

Finocchiona is a pretty easy salami to make, and an ideal one is very mild with enough fennel flavor (it’s sorta like black licorice) just to make things interesting. I used some excellent Duroc pork for the batch pictured, but wild boar works fine — if it was pretty fatty. If you want to go with another meat, 4 pounds of venison added to 1 pound of pure pork fatback will work, too, or 3 pounds venison plus 2 pounds of fatty pork. Don’t do this with bear meat, as the risk of trichinosis is real.

Keep in mind that while this is an easy salami to make, it’s still salami, not a fresh sausage, so you need to be an experienced sausage maker to try it. Follow the directions below and you should be in good shape.

Once you’ve made your salami, I vacuum seal it and keep it in the fridge, where it will last basically forever. At least a year, probably more.

Makes about 4 pounds of finished salami

Prep Time: 3 days, not including drying time.

Cook Time: n/a

• 5 pounds fatty pork or wild boar shoulder
• 51 grams of kosher salt
• 6 grams of Instacure No. 2
• 10 grams dextrose or 15 grams sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 1 tablespoon ground fennel seeds or fennel pollen
• 1/3 cup ouzo or other anise-flavored liqueur
• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 10 grams FRM-52 or T-SPX starter culture (available here)
• Wide hog casings, 38 to 45 mm (available here)

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1.  Chop the meat and fat into chunks that will fit in your grinder. Remove any especially nasty silverskin and gristle from the pork. Mix the meat and fat with the salt and the Instacure No. 2 and grind through a coarse die; I use 10 mm. Put in the fridge in a covered container overnight.
2. The next day, put about 15 feet of hog casings into some warm water and set aside.
3. Mix all the spices and sugar with the meat and fat. Chill for 1 hour in the freezer, then grind through a medium die, about 6 mm. Note, if you’ve already ground the meat through a die this small, grind only half of it. Check the temperature of the meat: If it’s 35°F or colder, grind half of the mixture through a fine die; I use a 4.5 mm die here. If the meat mixture is warmer, freeze it until it hits the right temperature and then grind. Either way, put the meat into the freezer while you clean up and get ready to stuff the links.
4. Run warm water through your hog casings while the meat is chilling. This flushes them, and will show you any leaks in the casings. Set them back in the warm water when you’re done.
5. Get your starter culture ready. Gently mix the starter culture with the distilled water and let it sit for at least 15 minutes.
6. Once the meat is 32°F or colder, put it in a large bin. Add the ouzo and starter culture and mix everything well with your (very clean) hands for a solid 2 minutes. Your hands should ache with cold as you do this. Alternately, put the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the heavy paddle attachment. Mix everything on the lowest setting for 60 to 90 seconds. Either way. you will see the meat change texture: it will bind together and stick to itself.
7. Put the meat into your sausage stuffer and stuff it into the hog casings. Form links of about 10 inches, leaving at least a 4-inch “tail” of casing on one end, and about 6 inches on the other. You’ll get about six long links. Tie off the short end the first link. Gently compress the meat in the casing. You’ll see lots of air bubbles form. Use a needle or sausage pricker (Heat the tip of the needle over a flame until it glows; this sterilizes it.) and prick out all of the air pockets. Do this gradually and gently or you will rupture the casing. This takes some practice. When each link is nice and firm in the casing, tie off the second, longer end and tie off a loop so you can hang the link from an “s” hook or somesuch.
8. Hang the links on a drying rack — a wooden clothes drying rack is excellent for this. Now you need to ferment the sausage. You will want to tent the hanging sausages with black plastic from some garbage bags (make sure they are not perfumed!), or some other plastic sheeting. If you have one, put a humidifier under the sausages. You really want them to stay moist. Let the sausages hang at 67°F to 80°F for at least 36 hours, and up to 48 hours. Every 6 to 8 hours, spritz them with a spray mister to keep them moist. This is the fermentation stage, the stage where the starter culture you are using defeats any bad bacteria in the sausage.

Instructions