Nduja (pronounced en-DOO-ya) is an Italian spreadable sausage well known in the charcuterie world. Nduja takes the fat level content to an even higher level with recipes calling for 80% to 90% of fat!
You will need some larger diameter casing for this guy, like hog middles or larger!
‘Nduja requires Calabrian pepper powder. You can use the Spanish one, probably will taste just as well, but just won’t be that close to the authentic ones as these pepper are not smoked liked the Spanish ones.
Ingredients:
For a total of 1,000 grams (1 Kg, about 2 lbs) of meat.
800 g of pure back fat.
200 g of lean pork muscle
(Alternatively, you can use softer pork belly fat, if you do so, just use 100% of this pork belly fat as this fat will likely already contain some little muscle tissue at about 10%-20%
40 g table salt (~9 tsp), a little more salt than usual to enhance flavor.
2 g curing salt #2 (~½ tsp)
0.2 g of fermenting starter culture, T-SPX or B-CL-007, about ¼ tsp.
Now to the part that is going to make you question if this recipe has a typo. You will add A LOT of pepper powder.
190 g of “sweet” Calabrian pepper powder. (that’s a lot!)
60 g of “hot” Calabrian pepper powder.
Double grind and mix all the ingredients very well. It will likely take some time for you to mix all this fat paste with that much dry powder, but don’t give up! Once you feel you have mixed this thoroughly you can begin casing into the hog middles.
Once you stuffed and supported these, set to ferment for 2-3 days and then move over to cold smoking for 12-24 hours. The longer the better.
After 24 hours they will have a strong smoke smell, but don’t worry, since these will sit now in your curing chamber for at least 4 months the smell will go down in time and the paste inside will absorb it and it will cure and develop some great texture. If you are in a rush you can harvest them after 2 months.
