Now the wait. These will hang for about 30 days, til they lose about 30% of their weight. I had to lick my fingers a few times, and these are tangy, spicy, and with just the right amount of salt.
I moved the chubs out to the 1/2 root cellar, where they will hang for about a month. I weight one of the lighter chubs (25 ounces) and after 24 hours it has lost an ounce so far.
One simple tool I made to accelerate the cure dry, and should make for more uniform drying, was to take sewing needles and duct taped them to a wine cork. With about 15 to 20 needles I was able to quickly and completely prick the casings. Attempts in past years, I did without such a tool, and I am sure my casing piercings were halfhearted.
2 weeks since these got started. 12% done. Slower then past years, but we have been unseasonably cool and humid. Should start to gain some speed. Chubs are quite tacky. I think that is due to the slow dry-cure and the pin pricked casings, as the chubs are uniform in density. In the past the ends would be more firm now. I am optimistic that these are going to be great.
4 weeks and about 8.5 Oz of weight lose is accomplished. For chub shown -- target loss is 11.43 Oz for a final weight of 26.7 Oz.
Chubs are growing mold nicely, tacky feeling is nearly all gone, and the squeeze test is showing these to be firming up uniformly. Another 2 weeks? Maybe.
Nearly 6 weeks and they are done or an ounce or less away from being done. Very firm, and juicy. Not sure why they appear so wet, but I did use a different recipe, so maybe. Bottom line, what really matters, is they are delicious. I freeze these and pull them out when desired. The freezing does complete the process -- makes them more firm and does remove some of the surface wetness.
Had a meat lovers calzone with ham, salami, cheese, mushrooms, pepperoni, meatballs it was awesome. I haven’t had a loaded pizza in 50 years, the eight of us were drag racing and had $1.25 each left. We bought a large pizza loaded with eight cans of coke, we were broke after taking the dates home. Lol memories.
The slab bacon gets an outside mold. We washed it good, scrapped the first slice. I wonder if pepperoni would do the same thing?
What did they do to store this stuff before fridges? Cool basements.?