Meat curing chamber

[tracyezzell]

I just built a meat curing chamber and I want to try and do salami. My question is? Can I use my aging chamber as a short term during his chamber at least on this first batch and what is a good recommendation for a 3 to 4 day curing chamber it Hass to be high humidity and 60 to 70°.

[tracyezzell]

I mean to say can I cure in this chamber before I start aging it

[tracyezzell]

And what would be a good and simple cure box for sausage that you’re going to age? Do I need to just get another fridge?

[tracyezzell]

This is in regards to fermentation

[Jonathon]

@Dry-Cured-Sausage Does anyone have an opinion on this? tracyezzell That looks very well built, if you did that yourself I imagine you are a craftsman of some sort!

[tracyezzell]

I get by not a cabinet maker but been in the trades for 40 plus years and I love Ceder I just make things for myself and friends

[glen]

tracyezzell I ferment in the same box. The drawback is technically you can only do one batch at a time.
Having said that I am a little more unconventional than some here and personally would be ok with pulling my drying product out of the chamber and hanging it in the basement for one day while I ferment a new batch
After all you are talking about the same bacteria working the ferment and developing the flavor during the drying phase

[Dave in AZ]

tracyezzell said in Meat curing chamber:

This is in regards to fermentation

Great looking cabinet, and pretty neat to insert a fridge in there

I am going to sum up all your posts to mean that you want to FERMENT in there for 2 or 3 days, prior to AGING. You used the word CURE a few times, then later posted fermentation, so no insult intended but I’m going to go over those in case you’re confused on the two. Just to be clear, in case I’m wrong in what you’re after:

CURE–raw sausage with sodium nitrite mixed in, held in a refrigerator 12 to 24 hrs while the NaNO2 converts to NO gas and reacts withbthe meat, “curing” it. Protects from clostridium botulinum. Turns meat pink and gives hammy flavor.
FERMENT–sausage is mixed with a starter culture of lactic acid bacteria, and held between 65f to 115f, depending on culture used, for bacteria to feed on sugars and create Lactic Acid. Humidity needs to be 90 to 100% relative humidity, easily achieved by wrapping chubbs in plastic wrap. This lowers pH of meat, hopefully to below 5.3, making it resistant to most meat bacterial pathogens growth. Gives an acidic tang flavor. Also colors are accentuated. Must be further protected from pathogen grown by DRYING, known as “salami”, or by COOKING, like Taylor Pork Roll.
AGING-- fermented meat must be dried to an Aw, water activity, of less than 0.93, down to much lower depending on pH, to give additional resistance to bacterial pathogen growth.

So, for ferment all you need us 65 to 115f place, and wrap it in plastic. You can certainly use your aging fridge for this, many do, but the problem is once you start making product, you need to leave the fridge at 50 to 55f and 75 to 85% RH so you don’t mess up your salami. So you can’t really double use that fridge very often, only when empty.

But you really don’t need to. I contacted Christian Hansen, makers of Bactoferm, and got both phone and email replies from 2 separate technical experts for their Bactoferm meat culture lines. Both said o2 was not needed during ferment, and in fact it was desireable to exclude o2 for better flavor and color development during the 1 to 3 day ferment. Both confirmed that sealing the samami in a sous vide bag, and plopping in a nice temperature controlled water bath at proper ferment temp, would work fine.

You can also just wrap with plastic wrap, and leave on counter or sealed container in a room that holds correct temp. You really don’t need anything fancy for the ferment, the desired high RH is achieved by the plastic wrap and works fine.

I built my aging chamber per Eric over at 2GuysAndAcooler on youtube or his blog. He has some good suggestions for small humidifier and dehumidifier, as well as precise temperature control overrides for the small fridge, that you may find useful. I used the inkbird temperature and humidity controls.

Hope that is helpful for you! Good luck, great to see someone getting into salami!

[tracyezzell]

Yes very helpful I will do plastic wrap makes perfect sense till I get 5.3 or below on my Ph

[tracyezzell]

And I made the cabinet for the fridge

[tracyezzell]

And setting my program up back-and-forth is kind of a pain in the butt so wrapping in plastic is a really simple solution

[tracyezzell]

I’m also going to cold smoke before I age

[tracyezzell]

Me too I used the inkbird

[tracyezzell]

The 2 draws fit almost all my curing and sausage spices, casings

[tracyezzell]

Dave you got exactly what I ment about fermentation I had to correct myself. The other ? I have is can I make my sausage recipe into fermented aged meat sticks if I tweak the recipe with culture and .20-.30 percent lactose

[Dave in AZ]

tracyezzell
Yes you can, they are just skinny salami is all. However, they dry very fast because so slim. Usually folks dry to about 35% weight loss, minimum, to get the normal salami texture, and also to be sure it has reached a safe Aw. I personally like 40% weight loss texture a lot better, it is a bit firmer.

It is expensive to get an Aw, available water, meter, so most dried sausage makers just go with known safe weight loss amounts. These equate to safe Aw, but you’re never sure exactly what it is… water gets bound up and becomes UnAvailable for bacterial use, by salt, meat type, amount of fat, sugars, etc.

Anyways, skinny salami meatsticks… often you can make and dry in less than 30 days, allowing use of just cure#1 instead of cure#2. Though cure#2 can give additional flavors from various bacterial, good cultures. You will get the tangy flavor of Slim Jims.

[tracyezzell]

Thank you it gives me a ton of options

[tracyezzell]

What should max moisture read I have high end moisturize meters with and with out probs I own a restoration company not sure if these would work if I new what moisture % I could use

[tracyezzell]

I meant to say moisture meters

[Dave in AZ]

tracyezzell
Lucky you to have a moisture meter! Not sure if ones for wood planks work, but might do.

First though, scroll up 4 posts and fix that downvote you gave me! Hehe, thx!

Marianski has a table of pH, Aw, and pathogens. In his book, The Art of Making Fermented Sausages. So there are 11 common food illnes pathogens or so. You know, E. Coli, Listerium, Salmonella, clostridia Botulinum that makes botulism toxin, etc. Each has a max pH, below which they don’t grow. Each has a max Aw, below which they don’t grow. And let’s say something doesn’t grow well below pH 5.1? Well if you go to 4.7, then you can have a less dry sausage, higher Aw, and be stable. So a broad range of combinations, for 11 or more different bacteria each with their own limits. It’s a zillion datapoints.

Because of this, the USFDA FSIS usually just uses the hardiest, most difficult to stop, pathogen: salmonella. Not always, but most of their tables are based on it. They assume if you are defeating salmonella, then you already stopped everything else.

So I don’t have an exact number. Here is a rough table he has in Home Production, to give you an idea:

Effects of temperature, acidity (pH) and moisture (Aw) on bacteria behavior: Name Temperature in ° C Min pH Min Aw Min Optimum Max Salmonella 7 35-37 45 3.8 0.94 Cl. botulinum 3 18-25 45 5.0 0.97 Cl. perfringens 12 43-47 50 5.5 0.93 Staph. aureus 6 37 48 4.2 0.85 Campylobacter 30 42 45 4.9 0.98 Listeria -1.5 37 45 4.4 0.92 E. coli 7 37 46 4.4 0.95 Shigella 7 35-37 47 4.0 0.91 Bacillus 4 30-37 55 4.3 0.91