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I have been getting a lot of requests for my lonzino recipe, and I thought I would celebrate this happy fact by letting you know that this particular air-cured pork loin is cured! Cured, I say! It is now living in perfect health in my refrigerator and will do so for some time.
I hung the loin in my yippie-skippie Meat & Wine Fridge, which was a 1970s chill chest I bought on craigslist for $50, plus a special refrigerator temperature regulator for another $50: For $100, I can now keep a fridge at 55 degrees, and the “freezer” around 40. Take that, spendy wine fridges! White wines up top, reds in with the hanging pig parts.
Lonzino can hang for ages, but I set this one swinging for three weeks. How was it? It was starting to dry at the edges, but was still fairly moist in the center. It’s mild, like a young air-cured ham. And it will taste perfect with my very own Tempranillo, which I am just now beginning to bottle. More on that later…
Frank: Uh, no. Not normal at all. When you say curing, do you really mean hanging? The cured is all in the salting (with nitrate), and is all done in the fridge — you should never get mold in this step.
If you are getting green mold in the hanging stage, I would think you either had sanitation issues or your curing box is too humid. Either way, you can wipe the mold off with a paper towel soaked in vinegar.
I’m curing a Lonzino for the past 8 days.
Yesterday I noticed some white rings with green collor in the center. Is this normal? Do you have any suggestion?
You have a great blog.
Jim: No, the rest at room temperature does not ferment the meat so much as get it conditioned for the curing stage. I too have skipped this step in the past, with no real difference that I can detect. I need to check out exactly what is going on in that step…
You also mentioned casings: I don’t case my whole meat cuts. I prefer to use sausage netting or just simple twine to truss the meat. I have had bad experiences casing whole cuts.
Curious about the 12-18 hours at 70-80 degrees before drying. Does that ferment the meat, as some sausage recipes do? I’ve been making dried pork loin with tenderloin (reason: I only have small casings), but without the intermediate step before drying and they turn out fine.
Peter from Qui si Mangia Bene: Bresaola is pretty similar to this, only using different spices and beef instead of pork. And I am trying to find jowls for this year’s guanciale…
Peter from Kalofagas: Yep, I bought a whole loin (not tenderloin), trimmed off the chain and cut it into a 2-foot length. We ate the rest fried in lard!
This sounds wonderful and doable. Last year I did a “saucisson of pork tenderloin” off of a Jacques Pepin recipe..similar procedure but you’re using a large loin, correct?
That looks great. I’ve done duck prosciutto and guanciale. Lardo is under way. This might be next, or maybe bresaola…
Hank, I really must thank you. There are a few recipes in the cookbook that call for curing, and I had no idea how I was going to cure anything in this Texas weather. I’m going to pick one of those regulators up, and throw it on my old fridge. Hooray! One less worry!