This was my first dry cure. So, I followed Ruhlman’s suggestion and used sheep casings for our saucisson sec. The idea is it’ll take less time to cure. We bought three pounds of pork shoulder from Ferguson Farms at the Greenbelt Farmers Market that had been flash frozen below -10 F for three weeks. The back fat was from Rohrer Farms and had been in our freezer for over a month. After thawing in the fridge for a couple of days we ground, seasoned and stuffed in said sheep casings from butcher-packer.com. Weighed, tagged, and hung in a wine fridge, we held our breath.

Well we didn’t have to hold it too long. The links had lost 30% of their weight in ten days. We sliced and ate and couldn’t believe the sensation in our mouth. OMG, this is good. Small in diameter we named these dime-sized jewels meat candy. I immediately wrapped one of the links and took it over to some very happy neighbors. There were also some happy colleagues at work the next week. We’ll be doing this and all sorts of dry cures in the future.

p.s. The wine fridge was also home this past month to flat pancetta and bresaola, but that is for another post in a few days. <grin>