Thread: Sausage and Smoke Cooking

This was my first attempt at dry curing a coppa. It was a small one since the shoulder I took it from didn’t have all of it intact. Here are my observations. First, there is case hardening. I’ve vac packed it and will see if it improves in a week or two. I had a fan that was blowing on it too much in the early part of the drying process. Second, 40% weight loss is a MINIMUM. Anything less is not going to be good. This has 40% loss and it still seems a bit wet for my taste. Next time I will push it further. The curing part I paid close attention to. The spices I was more liberal about. After the initial curing of about ten days, I rinsed it clean with water then wine. I then applied a mix of approximately 3 parts ground long pepper, 2 parts ground fennel seeds, 2 parts paprika, and a pinch of cayenne. The spices didn’t get layered on really heavily. A nice coating but not a crust. I wrapped this in collagen sheets and netting. The curing was 2% salt, .25% IC2, 1% brown sugar, and .5% black pepper.