Hi everyone, I’m scrodumb and I am a retail butcher and sausage maker in Toronto, Canada.

My culinary experience extends far beyond that but these days my specific interests are mostly meat and meat processing. Starting to get into charcuterie and expanding my sausage repertoire into fermented, cured, smoked and emulsified products. Will be making my first coppa and pancetta this coming week. Have some Cantonese style lap cheong drying too.

I’m happy to help with any meat related questions or troubleshooting, feel free to ask here or message me directly. Love bouncing ideas back and forth especially with other foodheads.

A couple weeks ago I ordered a half hog of Meishan pork for myself and made a bunch of sausages for my friends and family. The pic is my personal versions of Barese sausage (coiled) and Chipolatas (breakfast sized links). Both are super popular and I’m happy to share the formulations if anyone is interested. I have dozens more sausage formulations too, just ask. I can turn nearly any red sauce pizza recipe into a sausage. Hawaiian absolutely SLAPS. Other dishes too. I created a Cubano sausage that tastes just like the sandwich.

I’ll try to post every week or two but seriously if you have any meat related queries hit me up I’m always happy to help. Next post will likely be some tips and tricks I’ve learned and discovered in my journey.

    • scrodumb@lemmy.caOP
      111·
      19 days ago

      Learn what cuts make good cured versions. Pork belly is an excellent starting point.

      Get cure salt and optionally a cure accelerator. I use sodium erythorbate but it isn’t required.

      Tons of tutorials and recipes online, I’m just getting into it so I can’t recommend one over another but Two Guys And A Cooler (website and YT channel) is where I began.

      You’ll need some consumables, whether it’s natural or synthetic casing or a collagen dry aging wrap. You can also get dry aging vac bags but they’re not the greatest.

      Then finally a cure chamber. For some stuff I’ll use the cold cellar at my dad’s house, for others a standard refrigerator is just fine.

      Curing meat is scientific and you MUST be precise with ratios of cure salt, accelerator as well as everything else. Learning the difference between a recipe and a formulation is beneficial as the latter you can tailor to any raw weight and reproduce the same result time and time again. Everything is a percentage or ratio based on raw weight. Cure #1 is 0.25% to 0.3% depending on region. Sodium erythorbate is half that. Everything else has wiggle room based on personal tastes. In my experience less is often “more”.