Ever wondered where salami comes from? Ed Charles spends a day learning the ropes from a family of winemakers in the Yarra Valley.

Fattened on acorns, the end of three pigs Brick, Stick and Straw was always inevitable. A family meeting of the De Bortoli winemaking clan at their Yarra Valley property brought about a salami making day for winemakers, neighbours and friends and a celebration of wine and pork.

On the second day of salami making, the action begins shortly after dawn with a whole day of butchering, jointing and removing sinew and bone ahead.

The pig is hung from a forklift as the carcass is cleaned and split into two and stripped of its skin and fat.

The best time to make salami is mid-winter when the cold ensures the animals fat remains solid. The salami - a dry cured meat - are cured in a ventilated and insulated meat locker in which buckets of sawdust which help maintain the correct moisture levels. According to the book Preserving The Italian Way, the traditional time of year to make salami is Christmas in “the old country”.

Butchering

A stainless steel kitchen in an outhouse is the scene of the unfolding day, with guests joining family members to strip down the flesh of the porker and remove tendons and other fibrous tissue. It represents the United Nations with a mix of variations generations of Australians originating from across Europe from north to south.

To feed the masses Tim Keenan, head chef at the De Bortoli’s restaurant, starts a spit roast of another brought in pig. He says that with a bit of luck it will be ready for lunch.

Meanwhile, the ribs from the butchered pig are sawn in half and go on to the hot charcoal. Keenan, who has visited every top restaurant in the world, says the best thing he ate was in a little Italian place where they served BBQ’d ribs seasoned simply with salt and pepper. This is his plan today. The finished ribs are eaten in the hands, teeth ripping the seasoned flesh from the bone caveman-style. They taste every bit as good as promised.

The hind legs are hung in an outhouse to dry out and are to be made into proscuitto. After a couple of days it will be packed into a box with 1kg of salt for every kilo of flesh and kept for about ten days. There are no hard and fast rules for the curing of meats and salami making, the process often depending on the ambient temperature and humidity.

The Secret Recipe

Everyone has their own recipe for salami and it isn’t confined to Italians. Steve Loechel has his own recipes with German roots but confesses he’s only recently come to know the detail behind the curing process - basically the fermentation of the meat. The debate today is how many grams of salt and nitrates will be used to cure the salami. Recipes range from 2.5 to 2.8 per cent of the weight of meat of salt (about .93 to 1.04 kg for 37kg) and about 1 gram of saltpetre for every kilogram of meat is prescribed. Not to forget the addition of various herbs, spices, copious amounts of crushed peppercorns and chilli.

Curing

The salt affects the appearance and texture of the salami helping break down fibrous tissues in the meat. As the meat breaks down, according to Harold McGee in his classic tome Food and Cooking, it releases glutamates creating the deep savoury flavours that make salami so tasty.

There is also the divide between those who use nitrates - as all commercial producers are required to - in the curing process and those families who don’t. Nitrates - known as nitrites in the US - ensure deep red colours through a reaction with myoglobin in blood, protect the fat from going rancid and guards against botulism.

Conversely, according to McGee, the exceptional quality of the proscuittos from Parma and San Daniele in Italy is attributed to the lack of nitrates and the breakdown of fats in these hams.

Of course, for years terrorists and mischievous young boys have known that nitrates - potassium nitrate also known as saltpetre - are a key ingredient of explosives. They are now unavailable in their pure form although non-explosive curing salts can be bought from butchers.

Head chef Tim Keenan prepares the bungs - the intestines through which the meat will be forced - for the day. They have been cured in salt for 12 months and cleaned and soaked in water. Keenan says of the lengthy small intestine: “You could wrap this around the building.”

Boning

Boning the hind leg is one of the trickiest parts in butchering the pig, especially removing the pelvic bone. Some 37kg of meat has been removed from over 100kg of pig together with fat for today’s batch. By 9am the wormwood grappa has come out to ward off the cold, together with the sticky plasters for cut and nicked fingers. Thankfully, no cuts are serious but the grappa is. Others are knocking back caffe corettos - coffee with a a shot of grappa. Meanwhile, red and white wine is decanted from wooden barrels into jugs and roasted chestnuts and deep red slices of a previous batch of salami are passed around.

Grinding

Finally, after more debate, the meat is ground with a 10mm grinder piece in preparation for extrusion. The audience titters as condom-like bungs are threaded onto the long nozzle of the sausage making machine and the first giant salamis emerge. It’s a case of surgical rubber gloves and all hands on deck to secure the phallic results with string in preparation for curing.

From the previous day the meat safe is hanging three variations on salami. There is the Metwurst with fennel from Steve Loechel and the HHS and HHHS which stand for Harry’s Hot Salami and Harry’s Hot Hot Salami. Some are mixed with venison. It will take about a four to six weeks to cure this latest batch.