Beef Salami Sujuk

1. Use 1 probiotic capsule in place of the starter culture.
2. The total salt in making salami is 3%/kg. So, subtracting cure#2 (0.25%) will give you 2,75% salt. Cure contains salt.
3. I use red wine and probiotic capsules instead of the starter culture.
4. I add all my dry ingredients together except the cure.
5. I mix the cure #2 powder and the contents of the probiotic capsule into the wine, that way it can be more evenly mixed into the meat.
6. I mixed all the dry ingredients into my meat followed by the prepared red wine.
7. The meat is kneaded until it becomes very sticky.
8. I then filled my salami casing very tight, ensuring no air bubbles were visible. I then tied it down and pricked the salami casing with a clean needle to let possible air escape.
9. I weighed the salami and noted it on a tag with the date. Then I let it hang in clear surroundings at room temperature for 48 hours to mature.
10. After 48 hours I hung it in my curing fridge (a fridge I exclusively use for curing food stuff) at a temperature of 10°C to cure. I have a wide bucket of water inside to create a humidity of around 80%. The salami is left like that until it has lost 35% of its weight, and then it is ready to consume.

Notes:

1. For dry-cured sausages (like salami) cure#2 is used.
2. For any sausage that would be cooked (like Poloni) cure#1 is used.
3. Red wine is a very natural starter culture, but I added the contents of One (1) probiotic capsule contains for extra good cultures.
4. I used store-bought beef mince, normally I would buy beef steak and grind it myself, but using ready mince makes it so much easier.
5. The white speckles on the casing are a very good sign of healthy Mold. The white spots inside the salami are beef fat.
6. This salami had taken 52 days to dry. Pork-based salami would take 3 to 4 months easily to dry, depending on the size.
7. This beef salami (Sujuk) tastes like dried sausage (droeë wors – Afrikaans) to me.

Edward wrote:  I made myself some Beef salami called “Sujuk”. Normally, most people making salami would use a starter culture like B-LC-007, but it is expensive and not really necessary. The Italians had used the most basic methods for hundreds of years when such modern cultures were unavailable. Traditionally, most of them still do not make use of these cultures. I have made many salamis over the last 13 years and followed the basic Italian methods with great success. Sujuk is a dry, spicy fermented sausage that is consumed in several Balkan, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian cultures.