Lamb Prosciutto: Part IV

Quick update after we hung the prosciutto to age on Saturday. WE checked it on Monday, Jan 20, after it had been hanging a little less than 48 hours.

I was amazed at how much weight they had already lost, about 0.15 to 0.20 kg each (roughly 2-3 ounces.

Above you can see the reason why. The ambient humidity is far too low. Ideal aging condition is a humidity of 70%. The outside layer of meat is already developing a tough, almost leathery feel, which will rapidly become case hardening.

Since we don’t have the ability to increase the humidity in the basement efficiently (although I am considering putting a humidifier down there), we decided to try to slow the moisture loss by coating the legs in strutto.

Strutto is a 50:50 mix of flour and lard, the purpose of which is to slow down water loss. If the water loss is too rapid, the outside of the leg will dry out first, creating a hard shell (known as “case hardening”) which will prevent adequate water loss from inside the meat. This can result in the inside of the leg being inadequately cured, or in having pockets of unequal texture.

Of course, the long term solution, if we want to keep aging meats, is to build a drying chamber in the basement closed off from the rest of the basement, with its own little humidifier in there. Alternatively we could simply put an old refrigerator down there, with a bowl of salt water and a circulating fan in it. For now, we are going to see how this does.

And so, the experiment continues.