Decide to try this instead of guanciale as I had a few pieces of a belly left from a previous project. I came across a million different takes on the spices involved, so I picked two that seemed good to me and did these two pieces up. These went in the cure 14 days ago today.
I rinsed off the spices, poked a hole thru them with a double loop of kitchen twine, gave them a nice grind all over of my favorite peppercorn mixture, weighed and ready to go.
Here's another shot just because.
And into the drying chamber. I'm going to try the drying schedule for the guanciale recipe over at taste of artisan. It goes like this:
I put this wine fridge together just for this. This is going to be an experiment and if it works put I'm going to turn my bigger wine fridge into the drying / fermenting chamber when I get a bigger fridge / freezer to make a more better sized maturing chamber.
I moved the piece on the left after taking that pic as I didn't want it that close to the heated mat. I'll weigh them at the end of the 7 day cycle and record that for tracking the weight loss over the next few months in the maturing chamber.
Thanks for looking!
I rinsed off the spices, poked a hole thru them with a double loop of kitchen twine, gave them a nice grind all over of my favorite peppercorn mixture, weighed and ready to go.
Here's another shot just because.
And into the drying chamber. I'm going to try the drying schedule for the guanciale recipe over at taste of artisan. It goes like this:
Stage | Duration | Temp | RH |
---|---|---|---|
Warming | 6 hours | 77F (25C) | < 99 % |
Drying | 18 hours | 73F (23C) | 75-80 % |
Drying | 24 hours | 71F (22C) | 72-76 % |
Drying | 24 hours | 68F (20C) | 68-72 % |
Drying | 24 hours | 64F (18C) | 65-75 % |
Drying | 24 hours | 61F (16C) | 72-76 % |
Drying | 24 hours | 59F (15C) | 75-80 % |
I put this wine fridge together just for this. This is going to be an experiment and if it works put I'm going to turn my bigger wine fridge into the drying / fermenting chamber when I get a bigger fridge / freezer to make a more better sized maturing chamber.
I moved the piece on the left after taking that pic as I didn't want it that close to the heated mat. I'll weigh them at the end of the 7 day cycle and record that for tracking the weight loss over the next few months in the maturing chamber.
Thanks for looking!