When it comes to curing meat, especially dry-cured meat, over a few months or more, the aspects of mold are one of the more challenging hurdles I’ve found in the beginning.
There’s not a lot of detail online or in many of the meat curing books that I’ve read about the good mold and the bad mold. So I hope this helps!
KEY POINTS:
- Initially, natural processes for starter cultures were used for meat curing.
- Traditional wisdom and common sense are crucial in dry-cured meat success.
- Mold, particularly penicillin mold, serves a protective role influenced by environmental factors.
- Methods for managing mold include using brushes and vinegar to remove excess.
- Safety is paramount; discard any questionable meat and prioritize caution in preservation.
When I started dry-curing meats, I didn’t use any starter culture, which is one method for inoculating the curing chamber to create the right environment at the start.
I purely followed the natural path and was willing to let nature decide whether things would progress. This was nearly twenty years ago!
Dry-curing meat has been going on for thousands of years, and good old-fashioned common sense plays a big part in successes and failures.
Common sense, logic, and trusting your built-in instincts about whether the food is good or not will help a lot. With all our glorious technologies, including blogs, there is now a lot more detachment from the natural world!
Here is a summary first about molds, and then I will tell you what I have learned about doing it at home.
Bad Molds, Good Molds with Cured Meat
Purpose of Good Mold for Meat Curing
For many dry-cured meat projects, a minimum drying period is a one-month plus. Normally, it takes a couple of days or a week before you start to see blooms of mold on meat, depending on where it was hung (chamber/cellar, etc. )or cold smoked.
Developing a good covering of powdery white penicillin mold on the outside of dry-cured whole muscle meat or dry-cured salami is the goal.
The general environmental factors are temperature, Humidity, Airflow, Existing Mold Culture, and lack of light.
The white mold is a way of protecting the meat for specific recipes.
Other recipes, such as Calabrian pancetta, are covered with pepper and chili/pepperoncino. External spices are used to deter the growth of mold.
Peppercorns & black (I think red, white, etc too) pepper have antibacterial and antifungal properties.
The Funkiness
Dry-cured meats can create what some call the funk.
It’s tough to describe the funk unless you have smelled or tasted it.
I think it would also vary, depending on the environment and how the moldable funk has developed. Mold has a lot to do with the funk!
It’s probably part of why I am still completely fascinated with dry-curing meat after all these years; there are so many subtle variations.
On a side note recently I’ve been thinking about cold-smoking spices and using those for dry-cured meats. I’ll do some research on this and report back on this blog eatcuredmeat.com.
Removing Mold From Cured Meat
If there is excess mold, a soft bristle brush is often used first to remove most of it.
The easiest way to remove the white mold or any other mold on the meat- is to use the acidic of the vinegar. White vinegar is fine, flavored vinegar I’ve also used like malt or red wine vinegar are also suited.
Dilution of vinegar to a 50:50 mixture can also be used. Wiping with a rag or cloth will remove most of the mold. Hanging the meat again to dry again.
The Flavor of Good Molds
From what I know, this is the same kind of mold that is used in medicine and hospitals.
It is that fluffy or powdery white mold known as penicillin.
It can be a purchased starter culture that you then inoculate the meat curing chamber with.
Or a naturally occurring white penicillin mold or good mold.
The taste and smell relate to the type of umami or savory flavor.
One of my friends, whom I taught how to dry-cure meat, loves the flavor of that white powdery mold outside his wild pig guanciale.
Molds and Using Your Senses
I talk a lot about using your senses in my online meat curing course, it is one of those obvious things but like many things, it’s good to be reminded of.
That is, we have an evolutionary, naturally developed ability to work out from smelling and looking at food whether it will be good for us or not (not all the time, but in most cases).
I am guilty of getting my nose right up next to the dry-cured meat and giving it a big sniff. This gives me an indication of how things are going. I will continue to sniff all around that whole piece of meat!
Quite a bit of complexity can happen with the smell of salami or of a whole muscle piece of charcuterie while it develops; again, this is why I find this craft so fascinating!
Natural Molds and Lab Mold
Supposedly good old penicillin is floating everywhere, once you have finished curing with salt.
Depending on your environment, your piece of meat has a chance that the naturally occurring penicillin will start on the meat. I’ve done this several times over the years with the new DIY meat curing chamber I’ve put together.
But of course, this is not guaranteed.
Commercial producers of dry-cured real salami, the stuff that takes months to make, not the tangy acidic stuff that is made in a few days, often use this culture to ensure consistent outcomes.
They buy stuff and inoculate the salami or whole-muscle meats themselves.
Mold 600 – Bactoferm
Home charcuterie makers and many other producers use CHR Hansen mold 600 for whole muscle meat curing inoculation.
There are plenty of starter cultures, but many perform a similar function for, say, salami: acidification (a key tool for preserving salami and creating good outcomes).
Mold 600 is more about the outside of the meat while it’s drying.
I have it sitting in my freezer now, you can’t get it in every country be most countries in the Western world. There are probably also other names it may have.
Guys have contacted me through the blog about trying to ‘scrap’ commercial traditional salami they buy to inoculate their DIY curing chambers!
When using it, I take half a teaspoon to half a cup of water. The water should ideally be distilled, but I’ve used filtered water, which has also worked.
Then, you leave it on the bench for eight hours after giving it a bit of a shake, and then you spread it in the chamber onto cured meat. Within a few days, you should start to see the spores of white mold developing.
Check out mold 600 from Amazon here.
Development of White Molds Over Time
A lot of people talk about powdery mold, but when you start learning more about dry-cured meats, you’ll notice that at first, you might get fluffy mold.
But really, underneath that fluffy white mold is powdery mold. It’s just the way that it grows.
Then, as the mold ages, there is a green mold related to the spores of the white penicillin mold.
Dark green mold in a commercial environment down the bottom of Italy in Calabria.
Here is a video I made about cured meats and mold:
Molds I Can Deal With
Now, I have had some funky molds going on. Here are a few examples of things that were not good, not bad, but also what you don’t want.
When it’s developing on a case, it’s not so big a deal because you’ve obviously got some protection on the meat.
When you’re using no casing and going natural, which I often do because I like to see exactly what’s going on, using vinegar and wiping the mold off or even giving it a blast of cold smoke for a few hours can knock back some of this unwanted multi-colored mold.
Bad Molds – Black
There is a certain smell and a look that I’ve only had a couple of times over a few decades: the ominous black mold.
It looked a little bit translucent, and it was on some exotic spices that I used. Whether this was a factor or not, I do not know.
Spices like star anise, coriander, cumin, and galangal were used. And there was this patch of what I would consider black mold.
The smell was very offputting, and instantly, my olfactory system said it needed to go straight into the rubbish bin.
Mold – Final Notes
I try really hard in my online meat curing course to go over mold and pictures and smells in the videos. But also at the end of the day, you need to go through and have your own experiences about what the good stuff should look like.
Always be cautious and keep it safe! If you have to question it, it’s probably not worth risking it for the biscuit!
Put differently, if you have any doubts about anything you’re making, it’s not worth getting sick from, and you should always be on the side of conservatism.
If you’re not completely happy with what you produce,, throw it in the bin!
Something I’ve also noticed is that when I had a dry curing chamber power cut, it reset to a fridge temperature. The Hungarian salami that was hanging did have some white mold since I didn’t notice the wrong drying temperature.
I changed it back, and after a day, the white mold was gone (back to 12C or 55F approximately). Lower temperature could be used to knock back mold that isn’t wanted!
Tom Mueller
For decades, immersed in studying, working, learning, and teaching the craft of meat curing, sharing the passion and showcasing the world of charcuterie and smoked meat. Read More