Homemade Sausage Making

Dry curing with the Umai bags has one advantage over using a curing chamber or cellar. Whenever I dried salami in the Umai tubes, it was ready in half the time it tooK for the same product to dry in my curing chamber. So now whenever I make a batch of salami, I case one in the Umai tube. The others get cased in beef middles or protein lined collagen and go into my curing chamber. This way I get a preview of what the product will be like. A good example is this Salame di Sativa that I took out of the fridge a couple of days ago. After four weeks it has lost 42% weight, is very firm and definitely ready. The ones in the curing chamber are still soft and probably need another 3 weeks in there.

I am more than pleased with the flavour of this salami. It has a peppery but smooth taste and while you can detect the marijuana in there, there is nothing unpleasant about it. I think the amount I used does work well in using it as a seasoning. And the salami from the curing chamber will have a more complex flavour, drawing from the mould and proteolytic activity. I'm anxious for it to ripen, because the umai one is pretty darned good!

Looks great!

Question on the umai bags...when you use them I assume you don't need the M600 mold?
Is that correct?

And the mold won't grow on the umai bags, correct? Even if the chamber has other Salumi in natural casings with mold on the?

I sure like the look of the Salumi in the umai bag!

Kind of nice to see the Salumi thru the clear bag, all the nice bring and fat chunks!

And finishing faster is kind of nice as well.

Do you see any downside to the Salumi that come out of the umai bags? Or with the bags themselves?

Thx
Jason

Jason, you don't use mould on the Umai casings as these are supposed to allow moisture to leave but not allow anything to enter. You can actually make a real decent product using the Tublin bags, but my salami from the curing chamber is better in the sense that there are more subtle flavours in it. But it's a great alternative for someone who does not have a curing chamber or cellar. All you need is a fridge and no worries about temperature or humidity. I still intend to comment on my experiences with the Tublin product on that other thread when I can find some of my notes and pictures.

The salami in the pic above does have great fat and meat definition and that is because I took extra care in making sure to avoid fat smearing. I used only lean meat, sinew and soft fat carefully removed, used only hard back fat, froze the fat, semi froze the meat, ground everything together only once and did not over mix.

I did a joint venture with a friend 4 days ago using your recipe.I supplied the meat and equipment.
Because i was eager to try making it and not sure of your results i scrimped on a few things ..Used boneless loins and fibrous casings instead of my preferred butt and beef middles. After the ferment and down to holding temp and humidity the chamber smells amazing. I noticed today that i have some nice white mold forming.Probably residential spores left from my batch of Sopressata that came out last week.
Glad that your happy so far with the results and can't wait for the next 6 weeks to see my results.

Knotfree welcome to the forum, and as far as the flavour of this salami, you won't be disappointed. It actually exceeded my expectations. A few of my friends are also raving about it and for them it was the first time they had ganja in any form. In a couple of weeks I hope to cut into the ones in my chamber. I actually prefer to make salami from loins and lean ham meat and then add nice back fat. Using butts for dried cured products is a heck of a lot of work since I trim out the sinewy intra-muscular fat.

I'm glad you tried the recipe and please post the results when the salami will be ready. Did you also use 2g of bud per kg, or a different amount?