The loins are dry and look wonderful, but I was looking at the recipe for my Spanish version, and it has curing salt, which my recipe for this version didn’t have. The Italian version has it as well. Is it an omission? Or is it optional? Now I’m afraid to eat it.
I guess I should have attacked the humidity sooner. I’ve got mold growing on the loins to varying degrees. Most is the harmless white stuff, but one had some green mold on it and I had to chuck it out.
The others I wiped down with vinegar. I’ve set up the dehumidifier, which is outside the cabinet, to try to bring the humidity down.
For some reason this fall is damper and cooler than normal. As a result I’m having trouble keeping my humidity down. It’s running around 75-80% in the curing cabinet. Hope it drops down soon.
Managed to stuff the loins into casings and hung them up to dry. I’m using “Narrow Beef Middles”, and they’re a tight fit, even though I’m careful to select the thinnest pork tenderloins I can find.
To try to help them along, I let them dry at room temperature for a couple of hours before stuffing them.
With summer holidays and high humidity, I didn’t make anything all summer. The sailing trip was great. The three weeks in Maine were a little hectic - I took too much work with me.
Now my sausage partners are gone - JJ at school in Vermont, and Chris moved out to San Fransisco. Nonetheless, we must move ahead.
I bought six pork tenderloins and put them in individual plastic bags with 15g of salt, 5g dextrose, 2g white pepper and 1g garlic powder (they were about 500g each).
Also, over the weekend I bought a couple ducks and cut them up, serving the breasts for dinner (perfectly cooked if I do say so myself, with an apricot glaze). I mixed the legs with salt, pepper, clove and garlic and let them sit for a couple of days, then confited (is that a verb?) them last night. Unfortunately, the beautiful duck fat I had saved in the freezer and the duck fat I rendered from the trimmings all were thrown away by some over-zealous cleaner, so I had to run out at the last minute and buy some expensive duck fat in the store.
If they’re as good as they were the last time, it’ll be worth it.