Dry sausage is an easy and versatile snack to take you through the coming summer months. Pack it up in a picnic or your hiking pack, add it to your next charcuterie tray, or pair it with fruit and cheese for a light snack when it's too hot to cook.
But we know you're not here to find out how to eat dry sausage. You're here to make it! UMAi Dry makes it easy to make your own dry sausage to enjoy through the summer and beyond.
Here is how UMAi Dry® Dry Sausage Kit provides everything you need for creating dry sausage at home:
1. Grind 5 lbs of cold (par frozen) meat through a large grinding plate for crispy, defined particles.
2. For the required mixture of 3% salt and 0.25% Instacure #2 (included in the kit), use a digital scale. Or skip the math and use the premixed UMAi Dry® Blend of Curing Salts for 5# Recipe and UMAi Dry® Spice Blend. Alternatively, you can use your own spices recipe. Toss with the still chilled particles of meat for even distribution.
3. Dissolve Bactoferm T-SPX (included) in 3 tbsp. of dechlorinated cool water, and mix thoroughly into the sausage meat.
4. Stuff with dedicated stuffer into UMAi Dry® casing and tie off the ends with zip ties. For dry sausage, a dedicated stuffer is essential to maintain the essential particle definition for good fermentation, drying and attractive finished product. Auger-type attachments generally re-grind the meat into a mash that does not ferment and dry successfully.
5. Weigh several of the links, and make note of both the start weight and the calculated target weight (a loss of 35-40%).
5. Hang in a space that is kept at 65-75F and is protected from air drafts. An unused oven works well for this--but make sure no one turns on the heat! The sausage will ferment for 48-72 hours and should "blush" or brighten when the pH has dropped.
6. After fermentation, place on a wire rack into your regular full-size refrigerator until sausage loses 35-40% of its original weight (for 50mm sausage, approximately 4-6 weeks).
7. The result: traditional fermented dry sausage that you will be proud to share with friends and family. Store in vacuum packaging to preserve the moisture level.