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Queens birthday weekend is Saturday 6th of June.  Two weeks beforehand is 23rd of May.

Keep the buy in price at $150 per share? Can do multiple shares.

Get an idea of numbers, everyone paid up front by 18th.

Speak to Butcher around the 13th to check they can deliver.  Confirm first weekend order on the 19th/20th.

Depending on numbers, order 3-4 pigs for first weekend and remainder for final.  

Last year we ordered 4 pigs at around 65kgs each, around 250kg total, at $10 per kg.

Other expenses:

$500 on misc items.

$300 vac seal rolls.

$700 cases and ingredients.

$250 on “coffee”.

$1750 of “stuff” before meat.  Last year was nearly $6000 on meat.  So about 1/4 of the cost is non meat stuff.  So working backwards, if the pork is about the same price, one pig is $650 plus costs is around $850, so five to six shares to a pig.

Last year was 52 shares, so $7800.  If we do that again and don’t do the expensive pigs, that’s 9.5 pigs 🙂

Questions : 

Do we set the recipes in advance?

Do we do bacon?  Fat content increases with little effort and one less thing to do?  But people love bacon.

Can we make a roof for my basketball court – I have ideas 🙂

What size casings do we go with?  Big took too long last time.

Do we do mould?  I think it makes for more consistent salami…

You will need:

• 2 litres of UHT apple juice – the stuff off the shelf, not fresh because the UHT stuff is effectively sterile which helps prevent infections.
• Leg of pork, or boneless leg that’s tied or whatever pork pieces you want, up to 10kgs in total for this recipe quantities.

Put both the juice and pork in the fridge to cool overnight.

In a large ( up to 10 litre ) pot add:

• 2 litres of water
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed with the side of a knife, skin and all is fine
• 2 or 3 oranges depending on size – peel and juice, and leave the skins/pith out
• 600g brown sugar
• 550g salt
• 50g #1 curing salt
• 5 bay leaves
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tbsp cloves
• 1 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp cracked pepper
• 1 tbsp mustard seeds
• 10 juniper berries

1. Bring it to a boil while stirring to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom, but don’t let it boil rapidly it will overflow. Then let simmer for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and with a lid on, let it cool overnight.
2. The next morning, strain out all the bits, and add your apple juice, you should then have 5 litres in total, but measure it to make sure.
3. Add enough water to bring the total brine volume to 10 litres.
4. Weigh your ham, if it doesn’t already have a weight on it. For each kilo of meat add 1 litre of brine.
5. With the pork in a large bowl to catch the brine, Inject into the pork lots of times with your meat injector.
6. Collect all the brine, including the stuff you didn’t use, the stuff in the bowl and whatever is coming out of the meat, and put it into either:
   • A large zip lock bag with the air squeezed out – Ikea sells good big ones, but you can get them from food supply places too.
   • Or a bowl that lets you submerge the meat totally in brine. Make sure to put glad wrap on the surface of the water, and a weight on top to hold it under the surface.
7. And put in your fridge.
8. If you want, you can reinject every 2-3 days for the first week, not super critical for smaller pieces, but definitely for larger ones.
9. Leave for 2 weeks total, or longer if for a larger cut or if you’re in a zip lock bag with the air out as it will survive longer that way.
10. After 2 weeks take it out, rinse it under the tap and put it in the fridge on a plate, uncovered, exposed meat side up to dry out for at least 24 and up to 48 hours.
11. Smoke in your smoker of choice at 110 degrees until internal temp reaches 63-65 degrees.
12. Take out and allow to cool and try not to eat it all before Christmas Day.

Faster brine option:

If you want to do the brine all in one day, you can cool it after step 1 with ice. Add your apple juice, and measure the total volume, you should have around 5 litres, but check to make sure. Add the equivalent of 5kgs of ice to bring the total to 10 litres total and no more – eg if you end up with 5.5litres, then you can only add up to 4.5kgs of ice. But this should be enough to bring the temp down below 10 degrees, which is what you need, preferably more like 5 if you can.

In this version I don’t bother straining it because you haven’t left it overnight to cool, and it doesn’t matter if they’re left in the brine and it will help to add flavour but they do get stuck in the injector needle, so can be a pain there.

After you’ve cooled the brine, and made up to 10 litres total, continue with step 4.

Half recipe option:

You could easily halve it to do 5 litres, but also once made you can freeze it and use it in a few weeks. The spices are hardest to do half of, but it doesn’t have to be super precise.

Chunky brine option:

You don’t have to strain it, you can leave all the bits in. I think it makes it less likely to get infections like mould etc but if you’re in a zip lock it should be fine.

So our end results of 2025 salami are :

• 33 People put in money this year.
• They bought in total 52 $150 shares of pork, will Bill winning the award of most shares with 4.
  • One share was roughly equivalent to a half last year, making this into a “1” share was simpler.
• We spent :
  • $520 on misc stuff, ice, bags, rolls, bacon eggs, rib supplies etc.
  • $389 on a new crimper – which broke and I still have to take back.
  • $370 on a second wooden table and legs so we can do more salami in a day 🙂
  • $300 on vac seal rolls
  • $700 on casings, spices, capsicum etc and various ingredient sundries
  • $250 on booze for the all important breakfast cocktails
  • And ….
  • $5900 on pork.
    • One massive pig from Amber Creek farm – $2000
    • One only slightly less massive pig from Yarra Valley – $1250
    • Four small pigs – from Maxi.
• We made
  • Ribs we ate on the day.
  • Ribs we’ll eat on Saturday
  • Bacon : should be enough for 1-1.5 kg piece each to take home.
  • Pork Crackle – two massive bags.
  • About 650 sticks of salami 🙂

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• We made 9 different types of salami – each one is numbered, so if you need to know what you’re eating :
  • Every Batch contains : Salt, Pepper, Red Wine And Cure.
  • #1 – Maxi Pig – Chilli, Fennel, 1 Garlic Jar.
  • #2 – Amber Creek Pig – Chilli, Fennel, 1 Garlic
  • #3 – Amber Creek Pig – Plain
  • #4 – Amber Creek Pig – 1 Sweet Capsicum, 1 Hot
  • #5 – Maxi Pig – 2 Hot Capsicum, 1 Sweet, Dried Garlic
  • #6 – Maxi Pig – 1 Hot Capsicum, 2 Sweet, 120g Garlic
  • #7 – Maxi Pig – 4 jars 400g Garlic, Fennel
  • #8 – YV Pig – 4 jars 400g Garlic, Fennel
  • #9 – YV Pig – 120g Dried Garlic, 400g Chilli

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You’ll get a random-ish mix of stuff, but everyone should get at least one of each.

Some didn’t work as well as others, there’s a few that had holes, but overall it was good to try new recipes.

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Our Notes for 2026 :

• Not sure about the really big pigs. The Amber Creek one was interesting, but expensive. Hard to know yet if it made a difference to the end result.
• Hanging was odd this year, the day 1 stuff didn’t grow any mould at all, day 2 did normal.
• Some of them were a bit soft when we started to wrap them, we marked a few as “soft” on the package, they’ll make better cooked salami than sliced for the table, but give it a go anyway.
• Some seemed soft but just had a lot of fat – perhaps we had our ratio too high for some. This meant we hung them longer, so the meat ended up too dry, which meant an odd mix of soft fat and dry meat. I’m guessing they’ll improve with time, but I think we reduce fat content next year and better control ratios.
• Having a mix of large and small casings was harder to manage, meaning the larger ones took too long to hang and weren’t done till September. Even though they were too soft, another 2 weeks in late August / early September was probably too long, so now may be over dry ( 3, 4 and 9 ).
• So next year maybe all just small casings, or do large on first day only.
• We need to either use mould in the casing soak or use the preservative to avoid mould altogether.
• We did 4 jars of capsicum paste and it was probably too much, maybe half that next time – 1 jar per 10kg of meat.
• We need to keep the meat colder – need a big chest freezer.

So same setup as previous years, probably with some changes to location because my place is too small.

Some things remain the same :

• You need to turn up to at least one of the days – it’s all about having fun on the day – if you really really want salami but can’t make it, find someone to take your spot and have them be there on the day, and pay them – perhaps in salami ? 🙂
• Need to have transferred money into the account prior to the day – details for the account on the WhatsApp group.

Things to bring :

• Apron
• Sharp knife – boning knives are good
• Something to drink if you want, beer wine etc
• Decent shoes that don’t mind a bit of dropped pork fat

Things supplied :

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Cocktails
• Snacks
• All the salami stuff

Basic outline :

• We pickup the pork either that morning, or the day before.
• Start around 9am, and go until we finish – hopefully by 5, but has been later, and has been earlier
• Process for the day is :
  • Cut the meat off the bones and dice
  • Mince
  • Add spices and mix
  • Stuff into casings
  • Hang them in the shed
• We all then come back in 6-8 weeks :
  • Remove the casing
  • Vacuum seal
  • Divide up amongst everyone
  • More eating, drinking and being merry
• Take your salami home and eat 🙂

All the previous years were that we did a 1/4 pig per share, and the pigs were around 65-70 kgs, so we got about 25-30 salami out of that ( plus lunch ribs, bones for smoking and stock, perhaps bacon too, pork skin for crackle all day ).

As a guide, last year we did 5.5 pigs, and spent :

• $4200 on pork.
• $1200 on skins, spices and vac seal bags.
• $300 on misc bits and pieces ( breakfast, sugar, wine, cocktails )
• $500 on a bench top and some tubs

We had a bit leftover from last year, and so this year we’d like to get a bench top crimper if there’s any left over, but the free range pork will be more expensive. Going with about the same cost as last year as a guess.

This year :

• We’ve split it into two options :
  • “Regular Share” – equivalent to roughly the same as last year so about 1/4 pig – $300
  • “Half Share” – equivalent to half of that – $150
• It won’t be exactly 1/4 of a pig, as we’ll try to get larger ones, so 120+ kgs, but I’ll work it out to be around the same as last year, kg wise.
• We may do some bacon or may not depending on how the larger pigs end up looking like, or may even add in extra so we have bacon as well.

We’re not locked into a recipe, and usually vary it a bit. Quite often traditional southern with fennel, but we also do some without, and capsicum paste was popular last year, so will do more of that.

Ham Day this year is Saturday, 30th of November. Start time is 10am, at Brett’s place. The first stage is just making the brine and watching it boil, so not everyone is required, if you are busy, coming early to mid afternoon is fine, enough time to inject your pork. If you can only come to pickup your pork and brine, that is fine too, as long as you can inject your pork yourself.

Cost is $125 for a half and $250 for a whole leg. Includes pork, spices and lunch. New bank details will come on WhatsApp. Money needs to be paid by the Monday 25th, I’m ordering on the 26th.

Everyone needs to bring :

• A bag of ice – perhaps an esky in case we have extras.
• Your meat injector if you have one.
• Tub to take your pork home in – best not to get cheap plastic if you can avoid it. Food grade is better.
  • For a full leg you’ll need around 30 litres.
  • For a half leg, 15+ litres.
  • These are the ones we got for salami day, in Dandenong :
    • https://www.equip2go.com.au/33l-plastic-crate-large-tote-box-432-x-324-x-305mm~37592
    • https://www.equip2go.com.au/21l-plastic-crate-medium-tote-box-432-x-324-x-203m~37594
    • They sell the lids separately – make sure you get one of those.

Everyone needs to :

• Take your pork home on Saturday – we don’t have room to store 150 kgs or pork and 150 litres of brine.
• Inject your own pork. We will have injectors on Saturday, but if you can’t hang around you’ll need to have your own or plan to borrow one. If you search for “ofargo meat injector”, there’s heaps of options, mostly on amazon. Make sure it’s stainless steel.
• Keep your pork in the fridge for three weeks. Turning or re-injecting if you feel like it. You need to keep it submerged, so you can push the water level up without diluting it by adding a zip lock bag full of water – don’t dilute it. Keep the pork below the water level, put a plate or weight on top if it helps.
• Smoke your ham either the weekend before Christmas or whenever after that you have time.

Outline of the process :

We buy whole and half legs of pork, and make up a brine. The brine has all the spices, salt and sugar in it, and is boiled and then cooled down with ice. Everyone gets their pork and injects it with the brine. Then it cures for three weeks. Can go a bit shorter or longer if needed. If you’re keen re-inject, as often as you can will help. Then take it out of the brine 24 hours before, rinse it off and put it in the fridge for 24 hours uncovered. Then hot smoke at 110 to internal temp of 65 degrees – could take most of a day. You can glaze it during smoking if you want. You need sample it straight out of the smoker, it’s delicious just then. You can then carve and eat straight away or chill and have cold, or reheat in the oven.

Recipe for 50 kgs of pork :

• 20 gloves of garlic, crushed.
• 15 oranges, slices, skin on.
• 2.7 kgs salt.
• 300g curing salt.
• 25 bay leaves.
• 3 kgs brown sugar.
• 10 cinnamon sticks.
• 5 tbsp cloves.
• 5 tbsp coriander seeds.
• 5 tbsp mustard seeds.
• 50g cracked pepper.
• 50 juniper berries.

Bring to the boil with enough water to dissolve everything. Then cool with ice, and :

• 10 litres apple juice.

And bring to 50 litres in total.

Each cut of pork gets 1 litre of bring for each 1kg of pork.