The Beef Salami My Husband Has Been Perfecting for Years

There’s a notebook in our kitchen drawer, and on one of its pages, dated in my husband’s careful handwriting, is a recipe for beef salami — percentages worked out to the decimal point, notes in the margins, an exclamation mark next to “distilled water!”

That notebook tells you everything about the difference between us. I’m the everyday cook in this house — the one getting dinner on the table, the one whose recipes start with “you probably have most of this in your pantry already.” He’s the other kind. The kind who reads about fermentation temperatures for fun, who owns a pH meter, and who bought an actual dry ager so his salami could cure in perfect conditions all year round. When he takes something on, it goes straight to the next level — there’s no halfway.

The salami is his project. But watching it come together in our kitchen has become one of my favourite things — and I finally convinced him to let me share it.

Why beef salami?

Good halal charcuterie is hard to find. There are really two reasons someone looks for a beef salami. Some people don’t eat pork, and are fine with something as long as it contains no pork. Others need it fully halal — not just pork-free, but halal all the way through, including the casing. This recipe fits both. It can be made as a straightforward pork-free beef salami, or fully halal — I’ll show you how, so whichever applies to you, you’re covered. Most traditional salami is pork, and even the beef versions on the shelf often aren’t made the way we’d want. Sausage-making runs deep in Lebanese cooking — think of our Makanik (Lebanese sausages) — but a cured, fermented salami was a whole new challenge. So he did what he always does — decided to make it himself, and then refused to stop until it was right.

This is a proper cured, fermented salami: beef, salt, cure, spice, a starter culture, and time. No shortcuts, no oven tricks. It hangs in a curing environment — preferably 12°C at 82% humidity — for around one months, and he weighs each one like a proud father until it hits its target weight.

How it’s made

The short version — the full recipe with exact quantities is below.

It starts with good beef — rump is the cut to use — about 80% lean and 20% fat, trimmed of every bit of sinew and connective tissue. The meat is diced, then chilled in the freezer for a couple of hours before mincing — cold meat is everything here, because warm meat smears the fat instead of cutting it cleanly.

The night before, the ox casings get their own preparation — washed, trimmed to length, and left to soak overnight in water with a spoonful of bicarb soda. They stay in water right up until the moment they’re used.

Once minced, the salt and the No. 2 Curing Salt are mixed through first, then the spices — garlic, pepper, chilli flakes.

Then comes the hard part: the meat goes into a manual mixer in batches and it’s mixed by hand-crank until your arms remind you this used to be everyone’s job. The pepper paste and the starter culture, dissolved in distilled water, go in as you mix — proportionally, batch by batch. You know the mix is ready when it turns sticky — grab a handful, hold it upside down, and it should stick to the bottom of your hand. The colour changes too, from red to a brownish hue — that’s when you know it’s done.

Then the stuffing — and this is a two-person job. He packs the tube tightly, tests the meat is coming through, feeds the wet casing onto the nozzle, and I’m on the handle. Getting the speed right between the person cranking and the person guiding the casing is… let’s call it a conversation. Every batch, the same conversation.

Once filled, each salami is tied off and pricked all over with a sterilised pin to release any air pockets, then netted, dated and hung.

Then comes the part most people never see: fermentation. For the first two to three days the salamis sit at 24°C and high humidity while the culture does its work and the pH drops. Here’s his trick for checking it: whatever meat is left inside the stuffer nozzle gets wrapped in plastic and ferments right alongside the salamis — that little ball is the pH tester, so you never have to pierce an actual salami to take a reading. Once the pH drops below 5, the tester has done its job and gets thrown away.

After fermentation, they move to the curing environment — cool, humid, patient — for around one months, until each salami has lost 35% of its starting weight. This is why Italians traditionally make their salami in winter: their sheds and cellars naturally hold those cool curing conditions. We use a dry ager, which is the modern version of that cellar — a cabinet that holds the temperature and humidity steady no matter the season, so we’re not waiting for winter to get it right. A salami that goes in at 1kg comes out at 650g, firm and deeply savoury.

Once it hits that target weight, it’s done. The netting and casing come off, and each salami is vacuum-sealed to keep it preserved. We keep ours in the dry ager, but once sealed it’s just as happy in the fridge.

■ A FEW THINGS YOU’LL WANT TO KNOW

This is not a beginner recipe — and it’s not a wing-it recipe. Cured, fermented meat is safe when it’s done properly and dangerous when it isn’t. You need a proper curing salt with nitrate — we use No. 2 Curing Salt — measured accurately by weight, a starter culture, a way to control temperature and humidity (we use a dry ager), and ideally a pH meter. If you can’t control those conditions, please don’t attempt it — unless salami-making already runs in your family, Italian-style or otherwise, and you know exactly what you’re doing.

The percentages matter. Everything is calculated against the weight of the meat — 2.5% salt, 0.25% cure. Weigh everything on digital scales. Never estimate the cure.

The 35% weight loss is your finish line. Weigh and date each salami the day it’s hung. It’s ready when it reaches 65% of that starting weight — not before.

Beef, or fully halal?

These are two different things, and this recipe can be made either way.

No pork. At its simplest, this is a salami made with beef instead of pork — for anyone who just needs it to be pork-free. Use good beef and the rest of the recipe stays the same.

Fully halal. To make it fully halal, every animal-based part needs to be halal-certified — the beef, and the casing too, since natural casings are also an animal product. Use halal-certified ox casings (or one of the halal alternatives below), and check your cure and starter culture have no non-halal additives.

The ingredients explained

If some of this is new to you, here’s what each thing does and why it matters.

No. 2 Curing Salt is a curing salt that contains sodium nitrate (and nitrite) alongside regular salt. It’s what makes cured meat safe over a long dry-cure — it protects against harmful bacteria (including botulism) and gives salami its characteristic colour and flavour. It’s different from the No. 1 cure used for short cures and cooked sausages; No. 2 is the one for long-aged, air-dried products like salami. Never guess the amount — it’s used in tiny, precise quantities.

Bacto T-SPX (starter culture) is a live culture of good bacteria, a bit like the culture in yoghurt. You add it to the meat and it kick-starts fermentation, feeding on the dextrose and producing lactic acid. That acid drops the pH, which sours and preserves the salami and keeps bad bacteria out. It comes as a powder or freeze-dried granules that you dissolve in distilled water (not tap — chlorine can kill the culture) before mixing in.

Dextrose is simply a fine sugar. It’s not there for sweetness — it’s food for the starter culture. The bacteria eat the dextrose and turn it into the acid that ferments and preserves the meat.

Ox casings are natural beef casings — the traditional casing for a salami this size. Because they’re an animal product, halal matters here just as much as it does for the meat. To make your salami fully halal, use halal-certified casings. A few options:

• Halal-certified ox (beef) casings — the most traditional for salami
• Halal-certified sheep or goat casings — natural and narrower, better for thinner salami
• Beef collagen casings — check the label, as collagen casings come in both beef and pork; choose beef. A reliable option if you can’t source natural halal casings

Halal or not, casings come packed in salt or brine, which is why they need washing and soaking before use, and they’re kept in water so they stay soft and pliable while you work. 

Paprika relish (pepper paste) is the mild capsicum paste that gives colour and a gentle sweetness. It’s added in the mixer rather than with the dry spices so it distributes evenly through the sticky meat.

Netting is the elastic string mesh that holds each salami’s shape while it hangs and dries. Here’s how it goes on: the netting comes as a long tube, and you slide it over a wide plastic or metal cylinder (many stuffers come with one, or you can buy a netting horn). You gather the whole length of net onto the tube like a concertina, feed the tied salami through the middle of the tube, and pull the net off the end so it slips over the salami as it comes out. Tie both ends, and it’s ready to hang. The net also gives you something to hang it from.

I’ve gathered the equipment and ingredients we use — with options at different price points — in my Meat Curing & Sausage Making shop. Everything’s in one place, so you can see exactly what you need before you start.

The recipe

Beef Salami — per 1kg of beef

• 1kg beef rump (80% lean, 20% fat)
• 25g salt (2.5%)
• 2.5g No. 2 Curing Salt (0.25%)
• 1 tbsp mild paprika relish (pepper paste)
• 7g fresh minced garlic (0.7%)
• 5g pepper powder (0.5%)
• 5g chilli flakes (0.5%)
• 5g dextrose (0.5%)
• Bacto T-SPX starter culture, dissolved in distilled water (per packet directions)
• 55/60mm ox casings (halal-certified if needed — see options above) — washed, trimmed to length, soaked overnight in water with 1 tbsp bicarb soda

Method

1. The night before: wash the casings, trim them to length, and soak overnight in water with 1 tbsp bicarb soda. Keep them in water until you use them.
2. Trim the beef of all tendons and connective tissue, then dice.
3. Freeze the diced meat for a couple of hours until very cold.
4. Mince on a 10mm die.
5. Mix the salt and No. 2 Curing Salt evenly through the mince.
6. Add the spices — garlic, pepper powder, chilli flakes and dextrose — and mix through. Hold back the paprika relish for the mixer.
7. Working in batches, transfer the meat to a manual meat mixer. Mix by hand-crank, adding the paprika relish and the dissolved starter culture proportionally as you go.
8. Mix until the meat is sticky — a handful held upside down should stick to the bottom of your hand — and the colour has changed from red to brownish. Finish all your batches.
9. Load the sausage stuffer tube, packing the meat in tightly. Test that the meat is coming through, then tie the wet casing at one end and feed it onto the nozzle. Fill. (This part genuinely needs two people — one on the handle, one guiding the casing. One person can’t do it alone.)
10. Wrap any meat left in the nozzle in plastic wrap — this is your pH tester. It ferments alongside the salamis so you can take pH readings without piercing them. Discard it once the pH drops below 5.
11. Tie off each salami, then prick all over with a sterilised pin to release air pockets.
12. Net each salami (see “The ingredients explained” for how the netting tube works), then weigh it, date it, and hang.
13. Ferment: 24°C at 85% humidity for 48–72 hours, until the pH drops to around 4.85–5 (check using the tester).
14. Cure: 12.2°C at 82% humidity for around 4 weeks, until each salami reaches 65% of its hanging weight (35% weight loss).
15. Finish: Once each salami reaches its target weight, remove the netting and casing, then vacuum-seal. Store in the dry ager or the fridge.

Slice it thin, serve it with olives, pickles and good bread — and know that somewhere in the house, someone is already planning the next batch.

Sahtain!