Charcuterie | Wrightfood

Pork and Apple Brandy Rillette

March 16 th 2010

18 Comments

There I was all ready to do a post on a great cabbage salad (vegetarian too!!) and then I go and make a big batch of pork rillette. Not that I have anything against cabbage, but this was a darn sight tastier, so it is getting blogged first. Sorry vegetarians!

Rillette is one of my favorite charcuterie items outside the world of cured meat. The perfect comfort and picnic food, it has a relaxed elegance to it that can really jazz up any lunchtime. Or dinnertime… Or breakfast time (OK gross, but I have done it..). Rillette is tough meat that has been cooked in fat (or sometimes stock, or a mix of stock and fat) until incredibly tender and falling apart. This is strained from said liquid, and torn up into shreds, and mixed back in with some of the cooking liquid and fat. This gets spooned into dishes, and more fat poured on top to make a rich and delicious seal to potted meat that can happily sit in the back of the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Of course, you and I both know it will never last that long.

Posted in Charcuterie | 18 Comments »

Making Salami at home

March 8 th 2010

24 Comments

When I first started down the road of making charcuterie at home, the art of making salami seemed a long way off. It seemed like one of those things best left to the pros, and certainly something that would turn out pretty rubbish if tried at home.

Actually, before I even thought about doing any meat curing however, the idea of curing meat at home seemed like a bad idea, and a potentially dangerous one at that. Somehow you are lead to believe that even though these fine culinary arts started at home, and are practiced at home all over the world today, it is a dangerous thing that is best left up to the big manufacturers that (apparently) have health standards.

Posted in Charcuterie | 24 Comments »

Home Cured Guanciale is finished!

February 10 th 2010

40 Comments

Home cured guanciale recipe

There it is folks. Look at it. Pork jowl that has been salted, then air dried for 2 months…

There are many things that I love about pigs, and it isn’t just that they are pretty darn cute to look at.

They are tasty. Seriously tasty. We all know that. But for me, properly raised pork is much more than that. In my book, more than any other animal that we eat, you can really taste the difference between the various cuts.

You take a pork loin cut – clean, crisp, mild pig flavor. Not much marbling, pretty lean – and lean tasting. You move toward the shoulder and you start talking about muscles that are used more often. They are tougher. They have more fat marbling. They need slower cooking, but yield a much richer flavor.

Posted in Charcuterie | 40 Comments »

meat curing at home – the setup

January 21 st 2010

94 Comments

After the radio interview I did earlier this month for the KCRW Good Food Show I thought I might well just do a post about how gosh darn easy it is to make a little setup at home to cure meat in.

When I first started making moldy meat in my garage over a year ago I figured that it must take very specialist equipment, and a team of well read meat science boffins to make anything resembling a decent cured product. I quite frankly am not a meat science boffin, or have very specialist equipment. Nor do the thousands of other people around the globe that cure meat at home, and make a darn fine product too I should add.

Click to see more on this home meat curing setup

Posted in Charcuterie | 94 Comments »

Home cured Salami – Finished!

December 18 th 2009

35 Comments

You may recall a few posts back now I wrote a little something about the salami that Becky Selengut (some might know her as Chef Reinvented) and I started together. I say started because salami making is a long process. Most of this work is up front. A couple of hours to dice, chop, grind, clean, stuff and finally ferment and hang. Another few hours to make ridiculously childish sausage jokes. From there on in for the next month or so it is about careful monitoring, and daily squeezes of your salami (giggle).

Posted in Charcuterie | 35 Comments »

Home made Dry Cured Salami

November 16 th 2009

22 Comments

I will try and get through this whole post without making ridiculous (and incredibly British) jokes about stuffing sausage.

Honest.

My little dry curing chamber for charctuerie has been empty since I completed the bresaola last month. I actually didn’t have any plans to do any more dry curing for a little while – what with this being holiday season and all that. The fact that I have four salami hanging in there right now, gathering some nice mold is completely down to one person.

Chef, teacher, writer forager Becky. Some might know her as Chef Reinvented.

We have been long time Twitter buddies, often talking about seafood when I should really be working. Well, it turns out that we have another mutual interest – charcuterie. I don’t remember how we started talking about moldy meat, but it turns out that she loves coppa and guanciale – two of my favorite cured meats. So I harp up over twitter “lets make some meat” or something along those lines, and the rest as they say is history.

Posted in Charcuterie | 22 Comments »

Home cured Bresaola is complete!

October 7 th 2009

23 Comments

Home cured Bresaola

It has been a long time hanging. Literally. But today was the day that I pulled the bresaola from the curing chamber, and sliced into it.

I did a post a couple of weeks ago that showed some shots of it hanging in the chamber, and a little bit of information on the process – You can see that here.

Bresaola is an Italian air dried beef eye of round (or often top or bottom round too). The meat is trimmed of excess fat and sinew, then rubbed liberally with salt and mix of spices. It is then left to sit in the fridge for a couple of weeks “curing”. The salt draws out a lot of the moisture from the meat, which helps to preserve it. The herbs and spices are there of course for flavor. Every couple of days the meat gets turned to make sure it is curing evenly. Half way through you rub it with more salt and spices.

Posted in Charcuterie | 23 Comments »

Home Cured Bresaola

September 16 th 2009

16 Comments

Yes folks, its moldy meat drama time again.

Some long time readers (hi Danika, hi Mum) might remember the saga of me curing a bresaola at home last year. In fact, it was about 10 months ago if memory serves me. Thankfully actually, memory doesn’t have do anything – I have posts on that last emotional episode -

The initial setup

Traumatic update

Trash Can

Back then, the humidity dropped too low, caused case hardening (outside dries out too fast, inside stays wet, develops rot), and ended up in the trash can. Was a bit of an emotional ride for some reason.

After doing that failed bresaola I tried my hand at duck proscuitto. That turned out wonderfully. I might be doing some more of that pretty soon, it was that tasty (and darn right easy).

Posted in Charcuterie | 16 Comments »

Citrus cured copper river salmon

May 29 th 2009

35 Comments

Seems like I have been on a bit of a salmon kick recently, but lets be honest here.. I live in Seattle, Coppper River is in full swing, the sun is shining, the sky is blue.. well, you get the picture.

I have cooked salmon a lot of different ways. Pan seared, roasted, slow roasted, grilled, steamed, poached. I should probably not get into my obsession with raw salmon either… Lets just say, more than once have a put a side of salmon in front of me, ready to fillet up for a party, and trimmed off the entire belly, just so I get that wonderful fatty cut for myself to eat raw whilst I am cooking. Sorry guests, no belly for you.

Continue to see this citrus cured salmon recipe

Posted in Charcuterie, Seafood Recipes | 35 Comments »

My new favorite sandwich

February 26 th 2009

28 Comments

Or.. Duck Prosciutto, fried egg and arugula (rocket) in a baguette.

So I am really making this duck prosciutto I cured stretch. Friends have called me and emailed me saying “so… how is that duck prosciutto?”.. which I am taking to mean “hey, buddy, you call yourself a friend!! – you are hoarding that gold to yourself aren’t you.. come on, share the love, I thought we were friends”.

My rather cheeky sense of humor means that I am going to keep posting photos and recipes of different ways to use the prosciutto until it is all gone! (cue evil laugh).

There really is nothing to this one to be honest – it is all just simply about good quality ingredients. This would taste pretty rubbish if a crappy loaf was used.. if the egg was from some dodgy battery farm, and the duck prosciutto was replaced with a cheap ham. Not to mention some rather bland mass produced arugula (rocket to us Brits).

continue reading about this duck proscuitto, after the jump – with the sandwich recipe

Posted in Charcuterie | 28 Comments »

The home cured duck prosciutto is done!

February 12 th 2009

41 Comments

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Finally. It has taken a while. The book said 1 week (the book that shall remain namless, Ruhlman). It has been closer to 5 to be honest.

I posted a while back about the start of the duck prosciutto. I had decided that after the failure of the bresaola, I had to cure something. So, I chose to cure two different types of duck breasts.

continue reading about home cured duck prosciutto

Posted in Charcuterie | 41 Comments »

Duck and Cognac Rillettes

January 29 th 2009

21 Comments

I got a few requests in both comments and emails for recipes from the meat party that we just hosted.

Some of the recipes are on my blog already, but some are new.

This little bad boy of a rillette is new. So new in fact that I had never cooked it before I did for the party. Heck, this was actually my first time making duck confit.

So what is a rillette? If you ask me it is possibly the best potted food. EVER. The basic rule here is that you take some slowly cooked meat, shread it, and then beat it together with some fat, and often top it with fat (helps seal it you know…). Lets be honest, it is already sounding pretty good.

(more…)

Posted in Charcuterie, Meat Recipes | 21 Comments »

Here we go again (more curing)…. and a MEAT PARTY!!

January 8 th 2009

16 Comments

Did the bresaola in the trash (see last post) damper my spirits for home curing meat? Heck no. The opposite if anything. If I screw something up, I want to get it right. If at first you don’t succeed – try, try again (apparently..)

The bresaola was intended for a party I am hosting in about 10 days from now. Since it takes about 5 weeks to salt and cure, there is no way I could do another one. I might go out and buy some, just for kicks – but there is no way I could cure it myself.

Continue reading about duck prosciutto

Posted in Charcuterie | 16 Comments »

The new home of my Bresaola

December 29 th 2008

28 Comments

I have been working on this Bresaola now for, er, 7 weeks in total. That is the longest time, by a country mile, I have worked on any one piece of food.

Each day, I would go down to the garage and check it. Check temperature, check humidity. Heck, most days I would do it twice.

But, alas. It was not enough. The bresaola now resides in the trash can.

And here is the kicker… It is most likely completely safe to eat. However, most likely isn’t good enough for me when I run the risk of either poisoning or killing myself or guests.

So what happened? What went wrong?

Continue Reading about this Home Cured Beef Bresaola

Posted in Charcuterie | 28 Comments »

Home Cured Bresaola – Update!

December 16 th 2008

19 Comments

A fellow food blogger, and all round lovely person Leah, over at SpicySaltySweet left me a comment asking how the Bresaola was going.

“Well”, I thought, “I should do a blog post on that”. Why? you ask – well, I have learnt quite a bit about meat curing in the last two weeks, and quite a bit about myself in the same period too.

(more…)

Posted in Charcuterie | 19 Comments »