Charcuterie: What if I leave this meat in my fridge for 6 months?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > Charcuterie: What if I leave this meat in my fridge for 6 months?

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

feelz good man posted:

I use the kitchenaid one. I almost guarantee every bad review about it is caused by people not chilling their meat properly before grinding. I got mine used and I love it.

Don't forget to chill/freeze the grinder parts too.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2015 07:20

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 16:09

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

I've got Charcuterie on the way, and will be making a corned beef/pastrami tongue.

My only concern on the tongue pastrami would be the bark. The membrane is usually a bitch to peel off until the tongue has been cooked, but if you were to rub then smoke the tongue 'til done, like SOP, you'd peel the bark off. Is there an easier way to peel the tongue so it can be rubbed then smoked like a proper pastrami right after curing?

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 00:19

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

goodness posted:

Have any of you made beef bacon? Is it even something you would want to do.

Suspect Bucket posted:

I would also like to know about beef bacon. My brother in law can not eat pork (he's got a weird singular protein sensitivity, kinda like how dogs can get), but loves bacon and cured meats. I'd like to make him some cow based charcuterie.

I've purchased commercial beef bacon. It's not bad, it's still not bacon, but its more bacon than turkey bacon is.

However, duck bacon is the poo poo.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2015 17:23

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

If anyone needs a curing fridge, bestbuy/ebay has an 8 bottle cooler for $70.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/322234270959?rmvSB=true

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 16:24

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

I found fresh duck breasts locally ($20/lb :monocle:

Everywhere else only had frozen) and am going to make some prosciutto this weekend.
I'm torn on flavor profiles and wanted to bounce a few ideas.

My 3 profiles are:

Just salt and the dusting of white pepper
Dried unsweetened cherries/crystallized ginger/fennel seed/allspice
Ginger/star anise/black pepper/fennel seed

Thoughts?

# ¿ Dec 16, 2016 00:49

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

lifts cats over head posted:

Yes.

Suspect Bucket posted:

EXPERIMENTS

So it looks like I'm curing one of each breast in bread pans.
I guess I better buy 4 breasts.

I keep my house at around 64 on the thermostat, but don't run a humidifier, should the pantry be ok to hang/cure these guys?

Edit: I also got two pounds of pork belly

toplitzin fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Dec 16, 2016

# ¿ Dec 16, 2016 14:17

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

I have figured out my Four Flavors Four Ways:

Orange/Ginger/Cherry/Clove

Bay/Rosemary/Thyme/Tarragon

Allspice/Fennel/Cardamom/Coriander

Black/White/Sichuan/Green Pepper

Curing commences tomorrow morning!

# ¿ Dec 17, 2016 01:13

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Turns out my oranges were poo poo. So it's cherry clove, ginger.

toplitzin fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Dec 17, 2016

# ¿ Dec 17, 2016 19:52

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 01:30

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

So my breasts are down about 20g each so far, so ~10%. i hope they'll hit 30% loss by xmas.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 17:45

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

i gave up on stable humidity and just let the duck do what it will do in the closet. i'm debating on pulling out the slowly evaporating pie tin of water just to drive the moisture out of the duck a bit faster, they lost another ~3-5% since my last post and are in the mid 170s (grams).

Area humidity is in the 30-50s and the house is set low enough that the heater isn't kicking on that often.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 19:44

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

My hanging breasts seemed to have stalled at 167-172g range the past few days, is there anything I can/should do?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2016 13:18

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

I pulled my breasts today as they finally hit the 30% drop.

I think next time I will keep the reduced salt and double the aromatics. There are only hints of the flavors on each breast.

Pictures in a.m.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 04:56

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

If anyone needs a tiny meat fridge:

http://deals.kinja.com/get-your-own-fancy-rear end-wine-fridge-for-just-70-1792173478

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 17:30

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Let's talk some bacon.

I found a local folk meat market and am going to splurge a bit on belly (5-15lbs).

Besdies the savory Rhulman (Here or Charcuterie/First Post), a the sweet-hot brown sugar bacon (Here), and maybe a pancetta, what are some other cure flavors you guys have come up with?

I'm likely going to smoke finish them over apple or cherry (or both).

# ¿ May 9, 2017 13:23

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Errant Gin Monks posted:

I'm skeptical because she is using a dull paring knife to trim the beef and then what looks like a fillet knife to cut it open.

This is irksome.

# ¿ May 9, 2017 20:33

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Woe is me, i got 8 lbs of pork belly for under $3 a lb.
Whatever will I do?

3lb bacon, 3lb pancetta, 2lb fresh pork belly

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 23:29

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Bacon and pancetta are curing.

I've got a cart with a minifridge, ultrasonic humidifier, and temp/humid controller staring at me....

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 02:42

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

My pancetta cure failed pretty hard:

I'm not exactly sure where it went wrong, but after it came out of the cure it looked fine, but by saturday developed the lovely color seen above.

Possible causes:
Bad Cure: Does the coloring of pink salt really matter, it fades to an off yellow over time/storage in the cabinet (doubtful, as the bacon came out A-OK, but it was also hot smoked)
Bad Prep: I left the skin on the belly while it cured then rinsed, removed and stuck the belly in the fridge (no air cure dry, it's summer and my closets are too warm and i don't have a cure fridge set up)
This worked fine for the bacon, should i remove the skin next time before curing?
Should i gt a mini fridge and PID and do the whole cure box and air the fucker for a week?

Something else?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 15:58

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

It's a fabulous green tinge.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 03:34

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

holttho posted:

Is that the whole thing? 1" x 2"? Were you gonna cure something for a month for one serving? That's some dedication right there.

The color in the actual pink salt is just a dye so you don't eat it. The red it causes is a chemical reaction. It might be the cool and damp fridge.

Also for photography for that sort of thing, take a piece of white printer paper and put it right next to it and tell your camera to focus on that. Even a crummy phone camera will balance the color pretty well. Sun light will do wonders as well.

no, it was a 3lb half of belly I had split to store after the cure.
That's about a lb or so.

I tossed the brick from the freezer and called a buddy who had another piece.

The freezer piece still has the skin on but here's a side shot:

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 12:13

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Slimy Hog posted:

Looks like skin fat and meat to me.

yeah, my camera levels are way off, but it was green in patches. like starbucks straw green. smelled fine, but i can always try again.

Here, i poked at the levels a bit more since the cutting board is supposed to be white:

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 14:27

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

I usually am fine with photography.
I just had 3 different light sources and didn't back focus on the white cutting board.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 17:47

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

At least it's not a human leg.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 23:36

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

Mikey Purp posted:

Hi thread, I have always been interested in charcuterie but only after recently buying a house do I have the actual space to do it. Are there any good sites with step-by-step directions for getting a chamber set up? I know it's really just an old fridge, a hygrometer and a temp controller, but I am a cave man who can only put things together if he follows directions exactly to a T.

Also, I plan on putting the chamber in my garage, but I live in Colorado and temperatures can frequently be below freezing for days at a time during the winter. Is that going to make it impossible to keep the fridge at the correct temps? Would a warm mist humidifier help for that purpose?

Join the Salt Cured Pig on Facebook.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2017 21:59

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 16:09

toplitzin: Jun 13, 2003

hakimashou posted:

I've been wondering this actually, if you're in to the charcuterie stuff maybe you can help. I'm a big fan of basically all kinds of charcuterie, sausages both fresh and dry, stinky feet moldy ones, rillettes, confits, fancy spanish ham, prosciutto, stuff from polish sausage shops i don't even know the name of, all of it. Even crazy good stuff like chinese dried scallops shark fins and abalone from hong kong. Basically if it was alive and then you preserve it somehow its gonna be delicious.

I've read this thread for a while and am really thinking about doing some of my own stuff with a little fridge or whatever people do but your post reminded me of something I don't think the thread has covered, do you know or does n e one kno how too maej uncured bacon wit celery?

I can only make celibacy bacon. sorry.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2017 14:48

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