Sausages and sudžuk

In short

• Pork without a negative Trichinella result doesn't go into sausage. Smoking and drying don't kill Trichinella.
• Dry sausage: 26–28 g of salt per 1 kg of mix, of which 13 g is nitrite curing salt (0.6 % nitrite, roughly 80 mg/kg). With Cure #1 (6.25 % nitrite) it's only 1.3 g per kg. Always a ready-made, tested mix, never pure nitrite; check the rules and the packet.
• Meat and fat are minced cold (0–2 °C) and filled tightly, with no air.
• Dry at 12–15 °C (54–59 °F) and 75–85 % humidity until the sausage has lost at least 30–35 % of its weight, kulen 40 %.
• Fresh sausages, black pudding and liver sausage are cooked to 72 °C (160 °F) in the centre and eaten within 2–5 days or frozen.

What's inside

Chapters

1. Types of sausage
2. Dry sausage safety
3. Curing salt: how much and how
4. Casings and kit
5. Meat and fat
6. Recipe: home-made dry sausage
7. Kulen and sudžuk
8. Smoking and drying
9. Fresh sausages, black pudding and liver sausage
10. When something goes wrong
11. Most common mistakes
12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

• Sausage calendar
• Recipe calculator
• Drying date calculator
• Sausage batch log
• Sausage labels