madbaker | Saucisson d'Alsace

Next week's Resolution Recipe, posted today because I feel like it: the aforementioned Saucisson d'Alsace.
I tried it because I wanted to do a Fronch-style cured salame rather than the more standard Italian ones.

1000 g pork butt
250 g back fat (I used goat belly fat)
25 g salt
2.5 g curing salt #2
2 g sugar
20 g dry milk
3.75 g white pepper
3 g garlic (I didn't use more. Weird, huh?)
0.625 g nutmeg
0.625 g cloves
0.625 g cinnamon
12.5 ml brandy
1/16 tsp T-SPX culture (or omit)

Chop pork and fat, mix all, stuff into 50-60mm middles, cold smoke overnight with low smoke (i.e. don't add chips - you're looking for heat to jumpstart the fermentation rather than smoke flavor). Hang for two months.

What worked: I thought this would be a pretty boring salame. I was wrong. It's still a fairly basic cured sausage that won't frighten anybody, like a sopressata, but people enjoy it. It had good mouthfeel, in part from the dry milk. In retrospect it makes sense that the milk powder will help it retain some moisture.

What didn't: It lost about 37% of its starting weight - my usual benchmark is 30 to 35% - but it wasn't dried out, and I think I could have let it go another month which would have further developed the flavor.

Will I make it again? Certainly. I'll probably start another batch as my next project. Also since there's no one overwhelming flavor to it, I think it'll make a good base to try other things. I'm thinking about soaking some dried orange peel in whey from the curvy upstairs neighbor's next batch of cheese, and making a fennel-orange salami.