Dry-cured sausages

Dry-cured sausages, also called raw-fermented or dry sausages, are uncooked mixtures of lean meat and fat with salt, nitrite, sugars and spices stuffed into casings. Fermentation gives them flavour, firm texture and red cured colour, and long drying makes them keep. By FAO's definition they are never heat-treated during processing and are mostly eaten raw. ¹

From winter store to climate chamber. Such sausages have been made for centuries in moderate climates, traditionally in the cold season, and before refrigeration they served as a reserve of animal protein. Fermentation here means bacteria breaking sugars down mainly to lactic acid; makers once relied on the meat's own flora at about 20 °C, while today climate-controlled chambers allow production even in the tropics. ¹

Meat and fat. Lean meat may come from cattle, pigs, horses, donkeys, camels, sheep or goats, ideally from older animals with less water, chilled until its pH falls to 5.4–5.5 for beef or 5.7–5.8 for pork. As a rule the mix is 65–80% lean and 20–35% fat, mostly fresh chilled pork back fat, firm and slow to turn rancid; soft fat is left out. Traditional Mediterranean salamis are cut coarse, 6–12 mm, while most sausages are cut 2–5 mm. ¹

Salt, nitrite and cultures. Salt is added at 26–30 g/kg and never below 26 g; as the sausage dries, the final product holds 3–4.5%. Nitrite gives the red colour and inhibits pathogens, while nitrate, which bacteria must first reduce to nitrite, suits only long-ripened sausages; sugars feed the fermentation. Starter cultures of Lactobacillus acidify fast, Pediococcus more gently, and Staphylococcus fixes the colour and slows rancidity, so thick sausages of 70–100 mm get more Staphylococcus. ¹

In the drying chamber. Fat is diced to 10–20 mm and frozen at −12 °C so it cuts cleanly, the mix is ground at 3–6 mm and stuffed into natural, fibrous or collagen casings that let water vapour through. After about three hours at room temperature the sausages go into a chamber at +22 °C falling to +19 °C, with humidity dropping from 92–94% to 82–84%; a 65 mm sausage reaches its lowest pH, 4.9–5.4, in 5–6 days. Ripening then continues below +16 °C at 75–78% humidity, for up to 90 days, though most are ready in 3–4 weeks, with under 35% water and a water activity of 0.90 or less. ¹

Smoke and white mould. If humidity drops too fast a hard crust forms and the centre cracks; if mould or yeast appears it can be brushed off, and cold smoke below +22 °C from day 3–5 is recommended as extra protection. Unsmoked «air-dried» types develop a yeasty, cheesy flavour, often with a deliberate thin white coat grown from Penicillium cultures, though some wild moulds produce toxins. USDA FSIS calls surface mould on hard salami normal for these shelf-stable products and advises scrubbing it off. ¹⁷

Spanish and Italian rules. Spain's standard defines chorizo by paprika and salchichón by pepper; salchichón includes fuet and salami, which shows red and white specks under 3 mm, and an extra-category salami may hold at most 68% fat in the dry matter. Italy's Salamini italiani alla cacciatora PDO come from heavy pigs of 160 kg ±10%, at least nine months old, from eleven regions; they are ground at 3–8 mm, stuffed into casings of up to 75 mm, dried at 18–25 °C and ripened at least 10 days at 10–15 °C, ending about 60 mm thick, 200 mm long and 350 g, sweet and never acid. ²⁴

Protected sausages. Chorizo de Cantimpalos cures 21–40 days with at least 25% weight loss and no preservatives; Salchichón de Vic, from a plain shrouded in mist on about 225 days a year, cures 30–45 days to a water activity below 0.92. Slavonski kulen, or kulin, from Croatia was registered as a PGI in 2017 despite an opposition from Slovenia. Since 9 October 2025 EU rules allow at most 80 mg/kg of added nitrite in such sausages, down from 150, and up to 110 mg/kg of nitrate in those made without nitrite. ³⁵⁶⁹

Why it matters to you. An even white coat is normal, and a whole dry sausage keeps 6 weeks in the pantry and 3 weeks in the fridge once opened; FAO notes that finished sausages keep over a year at 20 °C and 70–75% humidity. More on Chorizo, Fuet, Salami and Noble mould on dry sausages, the hams on Dry-cured hams and shoulders, and the whole theme on Cured meats & charcuterie. ¹⁷⁸ WHO classes processed meat, including cured sausages, as carcinogenic to humans, with risk rising with the amount eaten. ¹⁰