Saturday, May 23, 2009

N'Duja

Put a little bit of tripe in something and you'll make most peruvians smile. In this case it's chef G-Mo. He is holding a bung cap filled with N'duja, a Calabrian salami that is the italian version of the french andouille only much hotter due to the 1.5 kg of hot chili pepper that went into this recipe. The thing that makes this salami unique from most others is that it is spreadable rather then your typical sliced cured meat. This would kick off the beginning to an italian meal with some toasted bread and cheese to wake up the senses. 
We used honey comb tripe for this recipe. We brought it up in hot water, then changed the water and brought it up to a simmer for another hour or so till it was par cooked.
We let it cool down before we diced it up  and froze it for grinding and the smell of poached tripe was making the whole kitchen wheezy, even the peruvian. 

This salami also contained about 5 jowls, 1/2 a pigs belly, and some nice berkshire shoulder meat. The presence of fatty goodness is a must if you want it to spread nicely. The mound of red stuff is the hot chili pepper. I was very weary about the amount that went into it. Just a bit on the tip of my finger sent me running for water. It was the toughest salami i've mixed by hand due to the amount of dry ingredients. 
After stuffing it, we dried it for a day to form a pellicle on the casing, which will help the salami take on smoke in the smoker. It's a first for the BH kitchen, were excited as much as we are scared to taste it. 

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I hope you had enough presence of mind to wear gloves while you mixed it by hand!

I didn't; and it's been a few days now and the tops of my hands are still tingling from all that insanity pepper.

Yours looks really good. I'm looking forward to a taste-off!

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook said...

So....how was it? Nduja is all the rage right now, and I am fascinated to see how everyone's experience has been.

scott said...

WOW, another fine looking n'duja. Seems this salame has gotten really popular. Wish I could participate in the taste-off. Have a look at mine:

http://sausagedebauchery.blogspot.com/2009/05/nduja-fever.html

Grant van Gameren said...

Im not sure how it is, still a good chunk of time to cure.