I’ve been working on a lot of meat-based projects lately.
It’s beyond long overdue, but I finally got around to hanging my ‘nduja and csabai this past weekend. They were both smoked a few weeks ago, but the lack of opportune curing space in our condo has had me stymied for some time. Up until this point both were sitting in the fridge, contaminating my other foodstuffs with their pungent, smoky aromas. If it weren’t for our household of kitties I would have had the perfect environment for curing in the basement, but unfortunately I’m almost certain that the ammonia smell from their litterboxes would eventually permeate (and ruin) perfectly good meat. After all the work I’ve put into these projects that was not a risk I was willing to take.
In the end I decided to jerry rig a few suspension apparatuses around my kitchen that will (hopefully) be able to withstand the job. So far they seem to be holding up just fine, and the way I figure it, it’s only going to get lighter anyway, as the meat begins to lose it’s moisture.
My apologies for the general crappiness of these pictures; I doubt you’ll be able to discern what it is I was doing. It’s difficult to properly capture ‘nduja hanging suspended from a broomstick just outside the top of a kitchen windowsill. It’s also just below the air conditioning register in the ceiling, which should keep it nicely cooled, I think. Despite the rather bad lighting, I can assure you that after several days of smoking these salamis have taken on a burnished mahogany cast and slightly firmer (but squishier) texture. I originally intended to hang them for about a year, but now that they’re out in the open in my kitchen I may have to rethink that strategy. At the very least I’ll do 6 months, but in the end it’s going to be something I play by ear.
