ARTISAN CRAFT AT HARTGROVE FARM IN DORSET
Throughout the years we have truly been to ‘salami school’, everyday learning and tweaking to establish critical control points that mean our systems and processes result in the creation of cured meat that is as delicious, flavourful, delicately textured and consistent as possible. After over a decade we have deciphered numerous key factors that need to be considered.
Breed, size, muscle choice, conformation, and source is critical. The end result can only be as good as the quality of ingredients you begin with, and we endeavor to make our range of British charcuterie the best in the country.
We can’t give away all of the details, that would be like letting everyone know what's in the ‘secret sauce’, but we can say this.
Our consistency comes from using pork shoulders which we trim in-house. This ensures the muscle going into our mincers is always as lean as we like, before we add in harder back fat to create that marbled look and texture which we are well known for.
We invest in using high welfare British pork, believing in the ethics of farming and appreciating the fact the animals grow and lay down fat slower, resulting in a tastier product.
It sounds relatively straight forward, curing involves adding salt to meat and leaving it for a given time until your meat is ‘cured’. The magic comes from knowing how much salt, what type of salt, how much time, and where to leave it for that given period to actually end up with cured meat that is tasty rather than just safe to eat.
Adding salt to meat initiates an exchange. It is absorbed into the meat and water is lost. You need to add enough salt to cure the meat whilst not adding too much that the end product becomes unenjoyably salty. This is also the point where we add additional herbs and spices to enhance the flavour of our finished products. After much trialing and tweaking, we have mastered the right salt to meat ratio for our whole muscle products, such as our coppa and bresaola. Curing times vary and depend on multiple factors such as fat content, species, weight and diameter of the muscle, but most are left between 4 or 6 weeks ensuring ample time for the salt to penetrate the center of the muscle. This method is called Equilibrium Curing. An alternative is the Salt Box method, where lots of salt is rubbed over the meat and left for a given time, the excess salt is then rubbed and/or washed off before hanging to air-dry. This in our eyes isn’t precise so we opt for the longer, more labour intensive Equilibrium Curing method as it yields more consistent results.
We add salt during the manufacture process of our salamis, chorizos, snacking sticks and pepperoni. We pass the meat through a course 8mm mincing plate before stuffing in to three sizes of sausage casing. Each piece of meat leaving the mincer is therefore so small it cures quickly, internally. The ‘sausages’ are then destined for either the smoker if part of our Wild Venison range, or, straight for fermentation.
Smoking
Smoking is a key step in the process of making charcuterie and serves many purposes. It helps preserve the meat, adding phenols which deter bacteria from growing. Smoking adds flavour and turns the meat into a very attractive deep colour, improving its appearance. Drying is accelerated through smoking, we smoke our entire wild venison range. Smoking can also cook meat, but we cold smoke, not hot smoke, so this doesn’t contribute to our processes but can be harnessed at home if you choose to smoke muscles like duck breasts or fish, at home.
As much a science as it is an art. Fermentation is a key contributor to taste as well as the successful preservation of meat, so we have strict parameters. 4.8pH is our target, this level or acidity inhibits unwanted microorganisms growing within or on the product, but doesn’t create a heavy ‘overly fermented’ tangy taste. We want mould to grow, but only the moulds that are safe, and are strands are unique to us in our moulding rooms ensuring we achieve our stand-alone unique flavour profiles across our range.
Just like in cheese making we use a starter culture for desired bacteria to feed on in a hospitable environment of 26 degrees celcius. They use the dextrose within the culture as energy to multiply, whilst releasing lactic acid and thus lowering the pH as a biproduct of their activity. The presence of this ‘good bacteria’ means there is no resource for ‘bad bacteria’ to live on, resulting in their eradication. That’s the safety of the product sorted, but what about texture? A pH of 4.8 is perfect for the release of water and gelling together of the protein cells in the muscle meat and fat. Gelling is important, as we wouldn’t want a crumbly salami.
The waiting game, but given the right amount of time and a lot of patience, the end result is worth the wait.
Temperature, humidity, air flow, the three key things to consider, but not all the environmental factors that can affect an aging room. Temperature can be set and stabilised quite easily, 13c is perfect for our range. We find anything higher and we risk unwanted moulds encroaching.
A common misconception is that an aging room must be very dry, when in fact, for preserving meat, it is quite the contrary, we keep ours at 75% relative Humidty. Dry enough for unwanted moulds to stay away, but not too dry that the outside of the meat turns too hard that it locks the moisture inside, the middle remaining wet and raw, which will inevitably result in that meat spoiling.
We try and keep these three measures as consistent as possible to result in a uniformed product throughout the year. We may make a product every month, some every three or four, but we always want the final product we create to be the same as the ‘batch’ before.
Movement of air is important, if it were to be stagnant the moisture wouldn’t come away for the products. Too much airflow however and the outside of the product would dry too quickly. Set an airflow and be done with it? That would be simple, but as we take product from an aging room once it is cured and ready to peel, slice and pack, and leave others that aren’t there is then less meat per square meter of room so airflow need to be tweaked in accordance. If we then add freshly made products that have just finished fermenting, the pH in the aging room the humidity then increases, so dehumidifiers need to work harder and airflow needs to be increased to move the moisture away from the fresh products. Another technicality, we need a little air exchange from outside the aging rooms. Some fresh air in, some out, but not too much, otherwise the biome within the room, which is delicate, will be unstable.
If you’d like to learn more technical information about how to make cured meat, why not come along to one of our charcuterie courses.
This is where temperature control becomes more important than ever. Careful monitoring and climatic control are essential for promoting the right type of growth within an ageing space. Our aging rooms are essentially living biomes for micro flora, and therefore need to be looked after, for safety and consistency reasons.
The presence of a biologically active layer of mould, yeast and bacteria on the surface of any cured meat is important as it slows the drying process down. We need the drying to be even to avoid any spoiling. It is influential in flavour also.
It contributes to the breakdown of fat and protein cells as moulds ‘steal’ oxygen and metabolize peroxides which somewhat dictates colour too.
When you walk into our aging rooms the smell greets you before the meat does. Due to the frequency in which we check them we would be able to tell by smell if something wasn’t right in the process before even having to look on the racks.
We have to check their progress often, taking moisture readings, and checking for softness by hand and by eye, having trained ourselves over the years to know what to look for, knowing how to determine the perfect time to start aging.
