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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Lonzino Affumicato

So now I dive into my first attempt at curing whole muscles, I have sausages down for the most part, but now want to expand my horizons.  I decided on Lonzino mostly for its simplicity but also because my wife is from Lithuania, and after spending quite a bit of time there I fell in love with the farm made cold smoked pork loins or kumpiukai as my wife's family calls them.  They are usually pork loins cured in salt and bay leaves and smoked for days, they are the taste is similar to our own country hams, earthy, smoky, and salty.  Slicing paper thin is a must.  So that brings me to where I'm at now, Lonzino Affumicato.  Over the Christmas holidays I built a smokehouse mainly for the purpose of smoking bacon, sausage, and cheese, but after smoking all of the aforementioned I decided that if I was ever going to see a return on my investment I was going to have to do more than sausage and cheese twice a year.  so thus the affumicato.  I researched quite a bit using every available resource, and after that took the basic rules and made it mine.  So while this may not be a traditional Lonzino it’s my variation. 

Lonzino Affumicato
Pork Loin (unprocessed- no additional brine added) 1,635 grams
Salt 64 grams 3.3%
Black Pepper 19 grams 1%
Cure #2 5 grams 0.25%
Fennel Seed 6 grams 0.27%
Bay Leaf 4 leaves
Clove 3 grams 0.15%
Rinse and dry (completely) pork loin.  Combine the black pepper, fennel seed, cloves, and bay leaves and grind in a spice grinder.  Combine ground spices with cure#2 and Salt.  Completely coat the pork loin with your cure mixture and place in a zip top bag, removing as much excess air as possible.  Place the loin in a Tupperware container just in case your bag springs a leak.  I have a dedicated bin in the fridge so I place them directly in the Veggie section.  Rotate, and massage the loin every other day, this will ensure even distribution of the cure. Cure for twelve days in the fridge.
Lonzino Affumicato (1 of 9)
Pork Loin after Rinsing
Lonzino Affumicato (3 of 9)
Double bagged and ready for the fridge
Lonzino Affumicato (4 of 9)
Into the fridge

After twelve days of curing the loin should be considerably firmer than the fresh loin.  Remove the loin from the bag and rinse off the cure.  allow to dry completely (this could take a while).

Lonzino Affumicato (5 of 9)
Loin after curing pre-rinse
Lonzino Affumicato (8 of 9)
Drying off

Lonzino is usually (from what I've read) cased in beef bungs, since I didn’t have any readily available I used 100 mil collagen casings, poked the loin with a toothpick to remove air pockets and allow some air exchange. Tied them up and off to the smokehouse.

Lonzino Affumicato (9 of 9) 
All tied up and ready to go
Lonzino Affumicato (10 of 1)
After twenty four hours of cold smoke.  I’ll probably let them go another four hours then off to the curing chamber until they decrease their weight by 35 to 37% .  Tasting notes fourth coming.

2 comments:

  1. Ah, this post is so inspiring! I came by to thank you for putting a link to my blog from yours --I'm really honored :-) I'm hoping when I move into my new flat (soon) that I can quickly build a DIY refrigerator curing chamber so I can do things like this Lonzino. Really an amazing job you've done, and beautifully illustrated as well. Cheers :-)

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  2. Glad you like it. Thanks for checking it out.

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