Homemade 'Nduja recipe

‘Nduja is a spicy, spreadable pork salume from Italy. It’s made with pork belly or shoulder, a number of spices, often Calabrian chillies, and sometimes smoked. It’s seriously delicious and fatty and it’s great to spread on crusty bread, with clams and pasta, and my favourite: baked with honey!

This recipe doesn’t include smoking and doesn’t include Calabrian chillies (not as easy to find as you might think). I’ll put together a more traditional one with the above included soon.

This salume is quite unique in that we are not relying on water loss (drying) to make it safe from bad bacteria. We are relying solely on lowering the PH to the degree that makes it inhospitable for bad bacteria. This is why we add a lot more dextrose than normal, to feed the lactic acid producing bacteria from the T-SPX culture, producing lactic acid and lowering the PH. It’s really important to get the PH low, quickly, to minimalise the chance of bad bacteria.

I use the following PH meter from Hanna (Hanna Instruments Meat PH meter)

• 300 g pork shoulder, diced
• 300 g pork fat, diced
• 6 g dried chillies, finely chopped
• 14 g sweet smoked paprika
• 16 g salt
• 1/2 meter beef middles
• 15 ml distilled water
• 10 g dextrose
• 1 g Bactoferm T-SPX culture
• 1.5 g cure #2

• Soak the beef casings for at least an hour and run some water through to clean thoroughly  
• Chill your grinder in the fridge, along with the diced pork shoulder.
• Put the fat in the freezer.  
• Add the Bactoferm to 15 ml distilled water at room temperature and leave for 30 mins  
• Assemble your grinder, and when the fat is frozen, roughly dice it and put through a course grind along with the diced pork shoulder  
• Add all of the ingredients above, mix thoroughly and pass through the grinder on a smaller plate (3mm should be fine)
• Add to stuffer and churn out a number of 3 inch lengths  
• Try to keep one of the sausages small, so you can use it for PH testing
• To start the fermentation, add to your drying chamber at 95RH and 23c for 48 hours  
• Check PH is well below 5 after 48 hours. I usually get around 4.6
• Then switch to 75RH at 12c for the rest of the process, about a week

It’s great to spread on crusty bread, with clams and pasta, and my favourite: baked with honey!