Recipes

Fuet

A thin (34–36 mm) Catalan dry sausage, chalk-white with surface mold, seasoned with pepper and no paprika — essentially a small, fast salchichón. The name means "whip," which is what it looks like. Fuet is where the paprika line stops: travel west from Catalonia and every dry sausage is red; in Catalonia, salchichón and fuet are pale. and it carries the most important cure correction in this whole set.

Sausage · Spanish · Cured · Fermented

Fuet
Prep 1 hour, plus a 48–72 h ferment
Cook None — dry-cured, eaten raw
Serves About 5 lb / 2.3 kg green weight — several thin links
Level Medium-Hard (the fastest of these — 2–3 weeks)

A thin (34–36 mm) Catalan dry sausage, chalk-white with surface mold, seasoned with pepper and no paprika — essentially a small, fast salchichón. The name means “whip,” which is what it looks like. Fuet is where the paprika line stops: travel west from Catalonia and every dry sausage is red; in Catalonia, salchichón and fuet are pale. and it carries the most important cure correction in this whole set.

Ingredients

  • MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb green), % of total meat weight:
  • 1,362 g (3 lb) lean pork — 60%
  • 908 g (2 lb) skinless pork belly — 40%
  • 57 g salt (2.5%)
  • 5.7 g Cure #2 (0.25%) 🔴 — the source says Cure #1; that is wrong for a dried, raw-eaten sausage (see notes)
  • 7 g white pepper (0.3%)
  • 11 g sugar (0.5%), 4.5 g dextrose (0.2%)
  • 4.5 g minced garlic (0.2%) — optional
  • 0.27 g T-SPX (0.012%) — or none, the traditional Catalan route

Mold-600 — NOT optional for a real fuet

  • 34–36 mm hog casing, straight links

Directions

  1. Key ingredients: fuet vs Salchichón de Vic is purely a caliber distinction — same recipe family, 36 mm instead of a 60 mm bung, two weeks instead of two months.
  2. Grind: 6–8 mm.
  3. Stuff: 34–36 mm hog casing, straight links. Thin is the entire identity — a fat fuet is a salchichón.
  4. Ferment: 20 °C, 90→85% RH, 48–72 h to pH 5.2–5.4 (low-acid; traditional Catalan fuet uses no culture at all — salt, a cool cellar, native flora).
  5. The mold is required, not decorative: on a casing this thin the dense white Penicillium bloom regulates moisture — without it a 36 mm sausage case-hardens (outside seals, inside stays wet) in days.
  6. Dry: 14–15 °C / 57–59 °F, 75–80% RH.
  7. Weigh, do not count days: target 30–35% weight loss. Fuet is the fastest of these — 2–3 weeks where saucisson takes 6–8 — but in a 36 mm casing that’s nearer 18–25 days, not the 12 the source implies. Weigh it.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Marianski’s Fuet de Barcelona with two corrections; Hank Shaw’s cure/culture choices are the sanity check that flagged the first.

Correction 1 — the cure. The source specifies Cure #1; that’s the wrong choice for a product dried and eaten raw. Cure #1’s nitrite is consumed within days and leaves nothing protecting the sausage for the rest of its life. Cure #2 at 2.5 g/kg is what belongs here, and it’s what every OTHER fermented recipe on the same site uses. I believe the page has an error.

Correction 2 — the schedule. 12 days at 14–15 °C will not get a 36 mm sausage to a safe weight loss. Weigh to 30–35%, don’t go by the calendar.

The teaching point. Fuet is where the paprika line stops. The pale/red boundary maps onto the Catalan/Castilian divide, not onto anything about the pigs. And fuet vs salchichón is the third appearance of “caliber decides everything” (merguez, rosette, fuet).

Still open. Ruhlman & Polcyn’s Charcuterie is on my shelf; Len Poli worth a look for the fermented ones.