Busy days...

I finally have all of the cuts of pork all in cures. The prosciutto each weighed around 11 pounds each. I used about a pound and a half of salt, with about 5 tablespoons of pink salt and divided that up into 2 batches. Since I left the hoof on, I wanted to wrap in in parchment paper and pack it in salt. I rubbed all around the exposed bone and covered the meat area in about and inch thick layer of salt. After coving the leg, I used a non-reactive pan to prop up the leg from under the thick side, drawing a lot of the moisture from the thicker side, down to help it speed up the process. I referenced several resources and decided, what I thought, would be the best way to cure it. Today I will redistribute the cure and decide if I still want to weigh down the prosciutto to help speed up the process.

The coppa is in the cure and looks good. After 9 days, I will re-distribute the cure over the muscles. The lardo that I have is a little thicker than the last batch I did. It might take just a little longer to cure.

Mangalitsa

I have not blogged in quite a while. It has been a busy past month. Our chef at the restaurant left to another place. With that, they wanted to cut the charcuterie program for a while during the transition into getting a new chef. In that time, I spent a week in Los Angeles staging at a restaurant there that was interested in starting up a charcuterie program. I had a great time while I was there, meeting some new faces and learning a couple things. When I came back, our new chef, a great local talent, was hired and his first move was starting up the cured meats. It took 2 days to get what I had been asking for, for at least 5 months. We received 2 shoulders of mangalitsa pigs, each weighing around 29 lbs. After butchering, I have about 9 lbs of lardo, 6 lbs of coppa, at least 10 lbs for salami, and two 11 lb paletilla's for front leg prosciutto. I'm not quite sure if I'm going to use both for prosciutto, or use one for salami. Here are some pictures of the whole shoulders, then one leg, after butchering, for prosciutto.