Hi Guys
Thank you for the warm welcome. Well, I will try to take you through the process I followed. In hindsight, I should have joined here before I tried to do it on my own. Well, I bought a carcass and butchered it to our liking and decided to keep the leg whole for Proscuitto seeing that my house here in Hungary has a basement with a pantry I thought this would be an ideal setup.
I started on 18 February 2022, wet weight 10kg (22,05 pounds). Removed it from the salt cure on 12 March 2022. Weight after salt cure 8,835kg. I made a mix with pork fat and black pepper only. Also followed the instruction in Glen's video on youtube (I see you already had another victim from that video).
It was still fairly cold in the basement and I hung it to cure. After a while, I can't remember exactly how long, maybe 1-2 weeks after hanging I smelt something off around the foot. Then only did I see the cut that was made from which the carcass hung after slaughter. I realised I did not press any salt in there like I did the other cavities during the salt curing stage. I removed the foot at the joint to make sure I had no foul tissue in the "good" section of the leg, and washed the area with vinegar just to make sure. Fixed the fat/pepper layer and hung it again. The new weight was 8,5kg (18,74 lbs) due to the removal of the foot.
The temperature was around 16 degrees C and the RH sarted out at 35, but I put a bowl with salt water in the pantry and the RH went up to around 60% and the temp 16-17 degrees C in April. All seemed well, no fowl odour, no visible insects on or nearby the proscuitto. The summer temp ioncreased to around 22-24 degrees C which concerns me the most as I am really scared of botulism. I use Prague salt when I make Bacon, but I did not use any in this process.
A friend bought me a horse bone needle in Italy and at 30 December 2022 all seemed good. I tried to poke it at the 5 places mentioned in a video I found online and the smell was an unknown smell for me, but it sureley was not a fowl smell. It was meaty. Anyhow, we went to South Africa for our annual visit and when I returned I was alarmed. Something looked funny around the femur ball. Upon inspection I found some small maggots there. I immediately started cutting away anything that looked infected and washed with vinegar. I think when I shaped the Proscuitto I wanted to keep it as large as possible and did not expose the femur head properly and this was the gap an opportunistic insect took to get it.
Well, now some of the skin and meat was cut away. I fixed the fat layer and did not weigh it. (In my shocked state I thought all is lost and told my wife I am not going to eat it, I just want to see it through. In my mind it was a lost project therefore I did not even enetertain the idea that it still might be viable.
For this reason I left it way after February until earlier this week. I just saw that there was some white mold growing on it and on the section where I cut the skin away it looked like a grey-ish mold. I thought, well, I am going to toss it anyway and just started hacking away, just to realise the fat looks like butter and is very soft. The inside is not wet or mucky, but it looks like proscuitto. I then decided to scrape/wipe off all the lard/pepper mixture and suddenly it looked "presentable". Now I have only two concerns before trying to end my life. What are the chances of this thing having the botulism bacteria? Can I test for this bacteria in some way? and secondly, was the mold that grew on it during any stage (refer to photographs) poisonous or dangerous for human health? Do you think it is safe to try it from what you can see or read. Your advice will be immensely appreciated. I dried it and wrapped it it plastic film and it is currently in my fridge.
I will annotate the pictures to help you in your assessment.
Thank you for the warm welcome. Well, I will try to take you through the process I followed. In hindsight, I should have joined here before I tried to do it on my own. Well, I bought a carcass and butchered it to our liking and decided to keep the leg whole for Proscuitto seeing that my house here in Hungary has a basement with a pantry I thought this would be an ideal setup.
I started on 18 February 2022, wet weight 10kg (22,05 pounds). Removed it from the salt cure on 12 March 2022. Weight after salt cure 8,835kg. I made a mix with pork fat and black pepper only. Also followed the instruction in Glen's video on youtube (I see you already had another victim from that video).
It was still fairly cold in the basement and I hung it to cure. After a while, I can't remember exactly how long, maybe 1-2 weeks after hanging I smelt something off around the foot. Then only did I see the cut that was made from which the carcass hung after slaughter. I realised I did not press any salt in there like I did the other cavities during the salt curing stage. I removed the foot at the joint to make sure I had no foul tissue in the "good" section of the leg, and washed the area with vinegar just to make sure. Fixed the fat/pepper layer and hung it again. The new weight was 8,5kg (18,74 lbs) due to the removal of the foot.
The temperature was around 16 degrees C and the RH sarted out at 35, but I put a bowl with salt water in the pantry and the RH went up to around 60% and the temp 16-17 degrees C in April. All seemed well, no fowl odour, no visible insects on or nearby the proscuitto. The summer temp ioncreased to around 22-24 degrees C which concerns me the most as I am really scared of botulism. I use Prague salt when I make Bacon, but I did not use any in this process.
A friend bought me a horse bone needle in Italy and at 30 December 2022 all seemed good. I tried to poke it at the 5 places mentioned in a video I found online and the smell was an unknown smell for me, but it sureley was not a fowl smell. It was meaty. Anyhow, we went to South Africa for our annual visit and when I returned I was alarmed. Something looked funny around the femur ball. Upon inspection I found some small maggots there. I immediately started cutting away anything that looked infected and washed with vinegar. I think when I shaped the Proscuitto I wanted to keep it as large as possible and did not expose the femur head properly and this was the gap an opportunistic insect took to get it.
Well, now some of the skin and meat was cut away. I fixed the fat layer and did not weigh it. (In my shocked state I thought all is lost and told my wife I am not going to eat it, I just want to see it through. In my mind it was a lost project therefore I did not even enetertain the idea that it still might be viable.
For this reason I left it way after February until earlier this week. I just saw that there was some white mold growing on it and on the section where I cut the skin away it looked like a grey-ish mold. I thought, well, I am going to toss it anyway and just started hacking away, just to realise the fat looks like butter and is very soft. The inside is not wet or mucky, but it looks like proscuitto. I then decided to scrape/wipe off all the lard/pepper mixture and suddenly it looked "presentable". Now I have only two concerns before trying to end my life. What are the chances of this thing having the botulism bacteria? Can I test for this bacteria in some way? and secondly, was the mold that grew on it during any stage (refer to photographs) poisonous or dangerous for human health? Do you think it is safe to try it from what you can see or read. Your advice will be immensely appreciated. I dried it and wrapped it it plastic film and it is currently in my fridge.
I will annotate the pictures to help you in your assessment.
