Hello from Finland

[podzap]

Hello,

I have been interested in the topic of sausage making every since I started summer vacationing in the island of Tinos, Greece and simply fell in love with the Tinos Sausage (quite similar to Italian Salsiccia, except that it is air dried and requires sodium nitrite, I suppose).

Wanting to taste some of my favorite sausage that is not available in Finland, I decided to take up sausage making as a hobby. So, I bought this machine:

https://www.bosch-home.com/ne/product-l ... r/MFW68660

So far, I have made 8kg of sausage with it and I like it quite well except for one thing: the fuselage? has a few millimeters of play e.g. it moves back and forth slightly while you are stuffing mince down the hopper tube. It's pretty OK for hobby use, but if I were doing this as a full-time job then I definitely would want a machine where the fuselage does not move at all.

After my wife and I have the sausage made, she uses a vacuum sealer to package the product and then we generally toss it into one of our freezers (and leave one of each type for cooking after the rest is in the freezer).

I haven't tried air drying yet because I heard from a pro that this is quite dangerous if the conditions are not right. On Tinos, the conditions are: hot and powerfully windy. Maybe this makes it safe to do there, not sure. Would be really interesting to hear the science behind this from those of you with a proper amount of experience.

[NCPaul]

Welcome to the forum. Making dry cured sausages does have some requirements to be safe. I always recommend the book "Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages" by Marianskis.

[wheels]

+1 for the Marianski's book.

Welcome.

Phil

[podzap]

Thanks to both of you. I will order the book.