Scales

Working with weights is far more accurate and repeatable than working with volumes. This especially holds true when curing and adding curing agents in the correct proportions. This is also important when looking for repeatability in the addition of dried herbs and spices into things like a simple fresh country sausage.

Ideally there are 3 size scales worth having in the kitchen

• 0 - 10kg with an accuracy of 50g or better (most would be better*)
  
  
• 0 - 5kg with an accuracy of 10g (also most are better*) 
  
  
• 0 - 100g with an accuracy of 0.1g (most to 0.01g)

*Just because a scale shows a 1g accuracy on the display. this does not necessarily make it accurate to one gram

Out of all of these and unless you are planning on doing somethign large scale, the only one you can get away without is the 10kg scale.

The last on this list is typically marketed as a jewelers scale and this is why you need it:

Prague powder is a blend of sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate chrystals at somewhere around 10% blended in sodium chloride (table salt) which has been coloured pink for safety - if it weren't coloured and you confuse it with table salt you could very easily kill yourself.

With Prague powder (NOTE this is for the one I purchase, different suppliers may have different blends) you are looking at an addition rate of 0.375% of the mass of the meat. Lets say you are curing a half belly slab of bacon at 1,32kg. This will require the addition of 4.875g Prague powder into the cure. you cannot measure this accurately with a 5kg digital kitchen scale.

Jewelers scale with Prague powder

Another mod I have done with one of my 5kg scales to allow me to weigh hanging meat (like Salami) reducing contact with any contaminating surfaces:

Frame to hang salami under scale

Cabanossi

Having last made a batch of cabanossi cured dried sausage two years ago it was time to do this again.

Cabanossi is a very popular South African snack. This is a variant on "Kabanos" which originates from Poland (Kabanosy -plural). It is a cured and dried sausage snack stick which is also smoked and has a wonderful flavour. Anything this rich and fattening must be good.

My first round of doing this involved making a 7kg batch using a Kenwood Chef with a mincing attachment. Although the end result come out well, this process felt like it took all day and the Kenwood got really hot. The mincing feeder (the spiral screw inside the mincer) also kept jamming up with the fat having to be stripped and cleaned and the fat got more mushed than I would have liked even being kept almost frozen. 

As the flavour was so incredible I used the same mix this round. This involves the use of a Crown National Cabanossi batch pack. This includes all the spices, flavours and curing agent (Prague powder). I may make my own spice mix at some point in time but this is so delicious and easy I stuck with it.

Using a large mincer (TK-12 mincer which does 150kg/h) and decent stuffer (5L vertical) makes this a very easy process. As you mince the batch 3 times, don't attempt this with a large batch and small equipment - trust me, lesson learned. The texture was also better this round with more mincing, less mushing.

What I learned

The main reason for this post is to share what I learned and what the process looks like when it looks wrong but is actually OK. When making the first batch I was sure things were going horribly wrong as the colour was a bland white fatty greasy looking mess. I was worried but had nothing to lose to keep going. I am thankful I did. Going through the process below you will see what I mean and how this turns out in the end (worth it)

Ingredients (7.5kg batch)

1.5kg Pork leg trimmings 80/20 (80% meat, 20% fat)

3.5kg Beef trimmings 90/10

2.25kg Pork back fat (Spek)

Crown Cabanossi batch pack to suit

Sheep skin casings

250ml iced water

Method

This is the fun part. Remember, your meat must be extremely cold and kept that way between grinds. Your back fat should be almost frozen. Your mincing equipment must be freezing cold. The Crown guideline is to return your meat to 0°C between mincing.

Pre-mince your beef and pork trimmings through your 8mm plate into a BIG tub.

Separately mince your back fat through a 5mm plate then put it in the freezer until needed (don't however go out to lunch now, you want the fat semi frozen, not completely frozen).

Add your spice batch with your included prague powder to your minced beef and pork trimmings, mix well then mince this mix through your 5mm mincing plate.

Add your pre-minced back fat to this along with the iced water and mix it through. This is what you should have:

Blend before final mincing (its ±40% fat)

You now mince this batch through your 5mm mincing plate. This leaves you with a rather white and horrid looking mix (through the Kenwood it looked like white slop):

Final mix before stuffing

Stuffing, setting, smoking and drying

Its now time to stuff this lot into sheep skin casings:

Cabanossi before colour setting in on curing

After stuffing, put into a closed container in the fridge overnight to help giving the curing agents a chance to get active then into your cold smoker for around 3 hours.

Cold Smoking for 2,5 to 3 hours (Smoked with European Beech)

After smoking, hang in your biltong drying cabinet. It will take about a week to ten days to cure and dry. The colour shall start going pink after a day of drying. This was a huge relief first time round. When done the skin should crack when bitten or bent and the inside should have a wonderful cured texture and not taste "fatty" on your pallet; this is due to the change the fat undergoes during curing.

Colour starting to set in after 24 hours hanging

When drying and curing, keep your temperatures fairly low; not much above 20°C. This gives your sausage time to cure while drying.

Colour changes

On my first round the fat got slightly over worked and made the initial sausage much whiter than this batch. This was scary as I thought I had wasted a huge amount of time and money.

Fortunately this was not the case. The sausage starts pretty white / bland coloured. There is no change over night in the fridge. There is little to no change when cold smoking. The colour only really starts to set in and go pink after approx 24 hours of hanging and drying. The colour improves over the drying process and the lovely dark pinky brown is only there at the end.

Colour change after 1 week

Salt

As the most important ingredient in curing this deserves some attention.

We cant get "Kosher" Salt in South Africa - well at least not the kosher salt available in the USA and referred to extensively as the salt of choice in curing. This led me towards many a session looking into salt to determine what to use etc.

Three key factors I believe are of utmost importance when selecting the salt to use are:

• Naturally made (i.e by nature not in a chemical factory by man)
• The correct crystal size to distribute evenly through your meat
• Knowing how much salt you are adding. 

Naturally made

All salt found in nature has at some time originated from the dissolved salt mineralisation in the oceans. Natural salt can therefore be sourced from producers evaporating sea water to crystallise salt or from rock salt mined. This salt will have been formed into underground salt formations millions of years back after trapped sea water evaporated over time in trapped caverns - or something like that.

I have read opinions on salt produced from the oceans now risking contamination like radiation from Fukushima and other pollutants etc. I have no real opinion on this at this time.

Man made chemical salt (table salt) has a few problems for me - It's unnatural, the crystals are typically too small and there are usually flowing agents, anti-caking agents and often iodine added. I don't want those.

Crystal size

You need to be able to evenly distribute your salt through your meat when making salami, Chorizo, fresh sausage etc. To do this effectively it is easier to have the right size salt crystals. From what I have read this is the main reason Kosher salt is selected for use.

Not being able to purchase Kosher salt locally I started using Maldon see salt (basically a fleur de sel) which I would lightly crush. This distributes well and is a lovely salt. Unfortunately as this is more of a finishing salt it is expensive to use in curing. Solution - I am now using fine ground Himalayan rock salt. This has a chrystal size similar to Kosher salt. It distributes well and I have found this to work very well.

Addition amount

Adding the correct amount of salt is critical to curing. Too little and you can have unnecessary spoilage. Too much and you will have a salty tasting end product.

The amount of salt required is typically calculated as a percentage of the mass of the final meat product. Hence this is a mass (weight) calculation and not a volumetric calculation.

Different salt's have different bulk density's (weight to volume ratio or say the weight of a teaspoon of salt), a gram of salt will add the same amount of saltiness no matter what salt you choose to use. You should therefore ensure you always calculate the salt requirement on mass and not volume.

Different Salt Crystal Sizes

Pink Salt

Prague powder (also known as pink salt) is something completely different. This is a curing agent to help protect against botulism. Although Himalayan rock salt is pink, this is NOT prague powder. Prague powder is a blend of sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite with table salt and pink colouring for safety. This is poisonous in the wrong concentration (the wrong concentration is not very much). As a safety precaution, do not store this where children or other adults can confuse this as a form of table salt and eat it.

Although some people don't believe in using prague powder in curing, my opinion is that I would rather not risk botulism when giving cured meat to family and friends. Botulism kills; I will protect against that. The active ingredients (nitrites and nitrates) occur in natural food sources too so we consume them eating healthy products anyway. Besides these chemicals break down and dissipate over time through the curing process. Common sense and safety.

Pork Sausages One

This last weekend was time to make some more sausages. I followed two recipes this round and then cold smoked half of the second recipe. This is an experiment to see how much smoke flavour I can get into a pork sausage.

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE WITH FRESH GINGER AND SAGE

The first recipe was "BREAKFAST SAUSAGE WITH FRESH GINGER AND SAGE" from the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. see books tab.

Unfortunately I could not find fresh sage and mine has not survived the winter or the puppies so I had to substitute with dried sage. For the rest I followed the recipe closely and must say this is a delicious sausage. I do believe the fresh herb would add another dimension to the flavour - next time.

THYME FLAVOURED SAUSAGE - Half smoked

The second recipe was a simple sausage focusing on a strong thyme flavour. I also cold smoked half this batch.

Ingredients:
3kg 80:20 pork shoulder
1tsp garlic powder
8g white pepper
53g salt (I used fine ground Himalayan rock salt)
3Tbsp Dried Sage
2tsp onion powder
3g dried thyme
300ml iced water

After blending the dry spices with the chopped meat I ground this through the mincer small plate then mixed for about 2 minutes in the electric mixer (Kenwood) adding the water until this was all looking nice and sticky. This was then stuffed into hog casings and linked.

Half this batch was then put into the cold smoker for 2 hours of cold smoke contact. After this the sausages are bagged, tagged and left in the fridge for a day for the smoke and flavours to blend.

The thyme flavour is well pronounced in this sausage. The cold smoke also penetrated well giving this an interesting additional flavour for a fresh sausage. Adding smoke like this to a bacon and cheese sausage would work very well.

The smoke was not a dominant or overpowering flavour but also tamed the thyme somewhat. The cold smoke also didn't make the sausages very rich like I find hot smoking them does.

The texture and flavour here was wonderful and I will definitely add a splash of cold smoke to sausages on occasion going forward.

Cold Smoke Generator

Cold smoking requires little more than a cardboard box and a way to generate cold smoke. The idea is to be able to expose your cured bacon, salmon or other delicacy to smoke without any heat being added.

I have made a couple of different cold smoke generators and having pulled different ideas together would recommend following the sketch below. this allows the most flexibility between free standing or clipping onto the side of you smoker box (you would need a wooden or steel cabinet for this).

As far as materials of construction; Stainless steel is first prize but is expensive. Mild steel is perfectly alright. You can also use copper in the construction. Stay clear of galvanised (Zinc coated) materials for any of it as this can be poisonous.

You need a source of pressurised air connected onto the thin inner tube. The air blowing out the end of the inner pipe causes a venturi suction and pulls air up through your smoldering wood chips and blows the cool smoke out the front.

Having tried both a large compressor at one extreme and a basic fish pond air pump on the other. The fish pond pump is SIGNIFICANTLY better. I was hesitant at first and thought it wouldn't supply enough air flow however in practice still had to slow the pump down as it produced too much air flow.

Another option is a simple T piece on top of the unit out of copper pipe as per the photo below. I used this successfully on some of my units built. You can see the inner pipe on this too. made of thinner copper tube. Don't get too caught up in exact measurements. I have found that anything close to the scale above that looks right is bound to work.

Another basic tin option:

Connection to a compressor is not even effective when throttling the air with a ball valve. You can use a compressor as per the photo below to generate a huge amount of smoke. This is however completely unnecessary and also has the disadvantage that you burn lots of wood chips and generate a huge amount of tannin / creosote which are bitter from the high temperature of the wood burning.

My current setup - based on the operational principle of the diagram at the beginning of this post is as follows with a basic cardboard box smoking cabinet:

Below is a video with the smoke generator running as I use it (fairly well turned down):

You don't need anything fancy as the smoking cabinet although I would like to build something that I can store outdoors to minimise setup and pack up time. here is an earlier smaller box:

Bacon on the go

Here is some added info on the wood chips I use. I use a lot of beech wood chips. they have a nice well balanced smoke flavour. these are what I use:

Here is a link to the GOLDSPAN site where they have some interesting information on humidity etc. in your smoking chamber. I need to play with humidity a bit I think

beech smoking chips

close up showing chip size - perfect