Making Salami

Natascha, Jason, Joy and I went to Armandino Batali's cured meats class on Friday night. It was awesome and one of my favorite things he taught us was this salami that can be made in the afternoon and eaten that evening (it's cooked rather than dry cured). He served it sliced thin as hors d'oeuvres, but you could easily make this for an amazing sandwich meat too.

He makes 15 lbs at a time, which is a little much for the home cook. 5 lbs is more reasonable per my charcuterie book, so I've shrunk the volumes accordingly. It's super easy (pretty much mix meat A with spices B and cook). The only tricky part is griding the meat and finding the sausage casings/curing salt. Here's the recipe:

Armandino Batali's Quick Salami
4.3 lbs Pork Butt
10.7 oz back fat (available from your butcher)
2.3 oz kosher salt
0.34 oz ground white pepper
0.17 oz ground nutmeg
2 oz mace
0.4 oz nonfat dry milk (it serves as a tenderizer)
0.5 oz whole peppercorns
0.17 oz curing salt (aka pink salt which is a premade mix of sodium nitrite and salt. it gives the meat a pink color when cooked and contributes a little to the flavor. he insists on it -- even though this is a quick salami.)

Grind pork butt and pork fat very coarsely (a coarser grind produces better texture that is more tender; a kitchen aid mixer with sausage attachment will do the trick.) Combine all other ingredients and then fold in with the meat. Extrude into a fiber casing (see details below) and cook low and slow in the oven (he said lower the better, I'm guessing around 200-250). He cooks it approximately 30 min or until the internal temperature hits 150.

He lets it cool, removes the inedible fiber casing and slices it thin when ready to eat. Shelf life is around 6 weeks.

*Fiber casings are best for the oven and can be purchased from www.butcher-packer.com or www.sausagemaker.com (Batali prefers the first place).

P.S. he also gave out the recipe for a corned beef recipe he really likes that doesn't take any special equipment (besides the pink salt/saltpeter/sodium nitrite)