Background

I love dried and cured meats. Unfortunately, Prosciutto is not good for the budget and very hard to make. So I have been researching again, and came across something that appears to be simpler – Lonzino.  This is cured and dried pork loin.  The recipe is based on one in the book: Dry Curing Pork by Hector Kent.   Plus the wrapping technique came from Youtube.

This was the start of my Charcuterie adventures.    The drying chamber shown in this post is a low cost way to get started as long as you have a cool area to keep it in.  Over time the recipe has morphed as seen in later posts and I have moved to a refrigerated drying chamber to allow for year round use.

Ingredients

2 KG (about 5 lbs)  pork loin trimmed of all loose pieces and cut in half

The pieces I had came out at 1025 and 1030 grams. This meant I needed for each piece:

  • 30 g salt  (3% of meat weight)
  • 2.6g cure #2   (0.25% of meat weight)
  • These are done by weight percentage, based on actual weight of the meat pieces.   This is much easier doing the weights in metric units – grams than imperial units.

Additionally, there were seasonings needed:

Plain

  • Salt and cure # 2 by weight as above
  • 10 g coarse ground black pepper

Savory

  • Salt and cure # 2 by weight as above
  • 4 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 tsp sweet paprika powder
  • 2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes – no seeds – we grow Super Cayenne peppers
  • 3 tsp freshly crushed fennel seeds

Mixing and refrigeration / curing

For each loin take the salt and cure # 2 and add either the palin or savory spice mix. Rub the pork loin thoroughly with the mixture and place in a zip lock bag in the fridge for 2 weeks turning every few days.    Over this time each piece lost 25 g or so of weight.

Wrapping for drying

After the 2 weeks , the pork is ready for drying.

Each piece is tightly wrapped in 1/2 of a collagen sheet (from the Sausage Maker on Amazon)  and placed in butcher’s netting. It is then dipped in a penicillium mold solution so that healthy white mold will take over the exterior and out-compete nasty intruders.   The wrapped pieces are hung on a 1/2″ dowel inside a rubbermaid bin that is then placed in the basement shop which at floor level, is about 55 degrees in the Wisconsin Winter.    The initial weights were taken and they were 1001 and 1004 grams.

Drying chamber and fan

The proper environment for drying is around 55 degrees F and 75% humidity. Reading the recipes everyone is talking about keeping the humidity high but my drying chamber is a large rubbermaid bin  and the humidity is too high.  I had sanitized the bin with Star San and left it wet before adding the meat.

So I took a 40mm diameter 12v fan, HEPA filter for a respirator, 12v wall wart power supply and the Inkbird humidity controller as the starting point.

The 3d printed pieces hold the dc power connector for the fan and the filter. I gave up trying to make the “ears” to hold the filter on the snoot and settled for hot melt glue.

You can find the files for the parts on Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3329979

So far the humidity level is holding nicely.

When will it be done?

The meat needs to lose 45% of its original weight. Maybe a few weeks.