Can I make my own salami

1 Sep 2015.

For years I've been considering making my own salami, however I've always fallen at the first few hurdles 'how do I maintain the correct temperature to cure the sausage', 'am I going to die from Botulism poisoning'? The years have rolled on and the thought of meeting my maker without having cured a sausage does not sit well with me, so over the next few months I plan to have a go at the impossible and document the process along the way.

The basic process is, as I understand it:

1. Mince some pork meat, pork fat add curing salt, any additional flavours eg garlic, pepper, wine.
2. Mix the whole lot up.
3. Squeeze into a sausage skin.
4. Cure in a controlled environment until the sausage has lost a set percentage of it's original weight, and you're done!!!!!!.

When put like that, apart from the last in the list it seems fairly straightforward.

I thought that I'd address the last in the list first and as luck would have it I found a fantastic article on tinterweb which shows exactly how to resolve the problems of temperature and humidity which if you fancy giving this a go is a must read http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?e=780 . For my fridge I am going to try cutting corners and for my first effort I am going to rely on automated temperature control alone and then try and manage the humidity on an adhoc basis, I have ordered a humidity controller from Ebay which is coming from China and if necessary will put in a humidifier, but I will initially just use it as a means of monitoring humidity.  Another corner I am cutting is the additional use of a dedicated relay to turn the mains on and off to the fridge, I understand why they were used but I feel the temperature controller should be capable of handling the current and as it was cheap as chips, if I'm wrong it's no massive loss, time will tell.

So first off temperature control, with controller in hand I set about re-configuring the supply to the fridge to go through the controller, without going into too much detail the controller is supplied with a permanent supply and as the fridge temperature rises above the set point on the controller (in my case 12C) the controller switches the supply on to the fridge and as it drops below the set point it takes the fridge supply away.  The wire in the photo below that goes from the controller in through the door at the top is the controller's thermocouple (temperature sensor), it just dangles at about mid height in the fridge.