Capicolla - Dry Cured Meat

This will be my second attempt at making a Dry Cured Meat (after previously making a Spanish Lomo).  I was very encouraged by the pretty good results I was able to achieve without a temperature and humidity controlled space (this was done through the use of wraps made for dry aging meat in our home fridge).

Capicolla is an Italian whole muscle based product which uses the very fat rich Pork Shoulder - or, more specifically, one special muscle out of the pork shoulder which is the muscle from the pig's neck (called a Coppa in Italian).  I have cooked with Pork Shoulder quite a bit in the past but had never really spent much energy understanding the mass of different muscles that comprise it.  This video from youtube was an inspiration for me to try this and gives a very helpful demonstration on how to locate this cut (he also provides a procedure which I'm not following for this attempt):

I am salting the meat using the "equilibrium method" where you weigh out the amount of salt you want the meat to absorb and then wait enough time for it to be fully absorbed (this prevents you from over salting the meat no matter how much time you give it).  The alternative is to provide more salt than is needed but carefully limit the amount of time spent in contact the salt to prevent it from being overly salty.  I will salt this to 3% which seems like a fairly standard amount.  I'll give the meat 2 weeks to absorb the salt.

For the drying, I intend to shoot for 40% weight loss.  I'm going to try drying it hanging it my basement in a couple rooms that stay between 52 F and 54 F with a 35-45% humidity.  This is a bit dry for drying meat so I plan to use a dry aged wrap like I did before.  I'm thinking, if it works, this will be a bit nicer than taking up space in a crowded fridge.

This style of dried meat is typically rubbed with spices (paprika being a common one).  I intend to do that as well for this.

Anyway, this should take 2 or 3 months to complete but require a very small amount of actual work (which is my favorite kind of project).  I'm excited to see how this goes and will hope that it will be successful enough to motivate to make a third attempt

Ingredients:

• 1029 g Pork Neck
• 32 g Kosher Salt (was shooting for 3%)
• Spice mix of equal parts covering the meat:
• Spicy Paprika
• Black Pepper
• Garlic Powder

Process Details:

• 11/23/23 - Initial preparation:
• Cut the Neck Muscle out of a pork shoulder roast and trimmed it to be a roughly cylindrical shape

• Measured out about 3% of the weight of the meat in salt for curing
• Put the meat and salt in a zip lock bag.  Tried to evenly coat the meat with it (although this isn't terribly important as the idea is that the salt, over a long curing time, will naturally become evenly distributed through the meat

• Moved it to the fridge to cure over the next couple weeks
• 12/14/23 - Drying preparation
• The meat has been in the fridge absorbing salt for the last 3 weeks.  It has absorbed it all and is now a bit firmer

• Measured out 2 tsp each of Black Pepper, Spicy Paprika, and Garlic Powder.  Covered the roast which maybe took half the spice

• Wrapped the roast in dry aging wraps and then put a netting around it to hold the wrap and shape
• Measured the weight of the roast (1075g).  I will shoot for 40% weight loss (target 645g)

• Moved this down to my cool (High-50s) but fairly dry (35% humidity) basement to dry out.  I will check the weight once a week

• 12/23/23 - Weighed the meat at 842g after a bit more than a week drying (that is a 22% weight loss so far
• 12/29/23 - Down to 778 g after another week (28% weight loss).  It is getting dry around the outside but seems to be fairly squishy in the middle still
• 1/4/24 - The meat is now 735 g (32% weight loss).  So maybe a couple more weeks before it's done based on the current weight loss
• 1/13/24 - Down to 692g (36% weight loss).  It is getting very firm now and there is a hard and dry layer on the outside.  I more week most likely to lose the last 4%
• 1/21/24 - It was down to 661g this morning (39% weight loss).  I decided to call that "good enough".  Removed it from the netting and ran it under some warm water to remove the film (it turns to gelatin with this treatment and is easily removed).  Cut it in the middle and slices some thin pieces with my meat slicer.  It is very salty with the spice rub imparting a lot of flavor as well.  The intermuscular fat is really rich and delicious - the outside feels dry but the meat has nice tenderness and texture