Salami de Arles & Salami de Genoa

Salami de Arles on left, Salami de Genoa on right.

I bought Marianski's The Art of Making Fermented Sausages. Had never even heard of Salami de Arles till I looked at his recipes. It intrigued me, as it seemed like the essence of Salami. Meat, cure, starter culture, salt and sugar. The Genoa, we will see. About 5lbs of each. I decided to get away from the big 3 inch casings. These are 42mm & 50mm dried hog casing, respectively. Tried to stay at about 16 inches, as you can see we pushed the last one.

68° & 85% RH for 72 hours, then. 57° & 75% RH till a loss of 35%. I am hoping half the time of the 3 inch!

Added the Salchichón & Chorizo today. So it's Arles on left, then Salchichon then Chorizo in foreground and Genoa back right! You can already see the Arles & Genoa turing color. Yesterday they were the color of the Salchichón.

I decided if I was going to have a Hobby that could potentially kill people, I better take it as seriously as possible. I bought a Hanna pH meter to get those numbers right! Used it today for the 1st time, easy calibration and also easy to use for readings. The Arles & Genoa are probably gonna take the whole 72 hours of fermentation. They are in the mid 5's. The Salchichon and Chorizo are much closer after 24 hours and are close to 5.3.

Time, cure, fermentation and starter culture all working to change raw meat into and edible product without cooking! Truly amazing! You can start to see the color changes in the meat!

So the Arles is fermenting slower the the other 3. It tests at about 5.43 pH this morning, and the other 3 have hit their numbers. So off to the caves of Mayberry, for I am hoping about 12 hours to get under that magic 5.3 pH. Surprisingly the closet is 67° and 77% RH. so very close to the fermentation numbers.

Now the Genoa, Salchichon & Chorizo have hit their Numbers. 5.04, 5.07 and 4.98 pH respectively! You can see the mold starting on the Genoa. So now the fermentation chamber becomes the Drying Chamber. Temperature goes to 57° and the Relative Humidity goes to 80%!

About 8 days in!

Looks like the mold is gonna take hold on everything!

Day 17. They are all at about 25-30% weight loss right now.

From L to R. Salchichón, Chorizo, Genoa. All are 37% loss or more, but only the Chorizo has the texture that I like the other 2 do not seems as hard. That always makes me worry, did I do something wrong!