In China, sausages date back to the Wei and Jin dynasties (300–500 AD). Lap Cheong (臘腸) is a dried, hard sausage made from pork and pork fat. It is sweetened by candying the fat, which keeps the fat white and makes it translucent when cooked. Lap cheong has no starch, but has alcohol added and is sometimes smoked. Thomas…… Continue reading lap cheong
Category: cured meat
cured pork belly
This is a type of salumi which is generally thinly sliced and eaten as is. The method is the same as for lardo (cured pork fat) which has been made in Italy since Roman times. Traditionally, lardo was cured in Carrara marble boxes for six months. The method I used comes from CHARCUTERIE: THE CRAFT…… Continue reading cured pork belly
home-made pastrami
As a gift I was given CHARCUTERIE The Craft of Salting Smoking and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Bryan Polcyn. It’s packed full of excellent recipes. This is how our home-made pastrami turned out. To make this you will need some beef brisket with most of the fat removed. For a 2¼kg (5 lb) brisket make a…… Continue reading home-made pastrami
home-made prosciutto
Having learned how to make salami recently we were inspired to try a whole prosciutto. The first stage was salting. We’re not experts so we allowed our butcher to give us the correct amount of salt for the 9.5kg (21 lb) leg. We surrounded the leg in the salt for 9 days (with a few spices added for good measure).…… Continue reading home-made prosciutto
salami class
It’s winter here and time to make salami. We hadn’t ventured into salami making before so we decided to take a class run by Costante Imports. The salami was made from coarsely ground pork shoulder with a fat content of 30%. For each kilo (2.2 lbs) of meat we added 30g (1.05 oz) of non-iodised salt, 3g (.1oz) of…… Continue reading salami class
michelle picker cooks 