Genoa salami is the deli-counter salami of the Italian-American table: a dry, unsmoked, fairly fine-grained pork salami, tangy, garlicky, dotted with whole peppercorns, sliced thin for sandwiches and antipasto. The diagnostic detail is that tang. Italian salami are mostly fermented gently and taste sweet and nutty; Genoa is fermented harder and reads sharp, the opposite pole from a low-acid Spanish chorizo.
The name is an American label rather than a Genoese product. The Ligurian ancestor, salame genovese di Sant’Olcese, is half beef, heavily garlicked and wood-smoked; the American Genoa kept a little beef in some versions, lost the smoke, and became a pork salami defined more by its sourness and peppercorns than by any city.
This is a fermented, dry-cured sausage eaten raw, so it carries the full safety kit: Cure #2, a starter culture, a pH meter, and a weight-loss target. I have not made this one yet; it is built from Marianski’s Genoa formula and the Sant’Olcese description, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1,250 g (2 lb 12 oz) lean pork shoulder, trimmed — 55%
- 455 g (1 lb) lean beef chuck, trimmed — 20%
- 565 g (1 lb 4 oz) pork back fat, frozen hard — 25%
CURE AND SALT (% of meat weight)
- 64 g fine salt (2.8%)
- 5.7 g Cure #2 (2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm nitrite + 100 ppm nitrate)
- 11 g dextrose (0.5%)
- 0.6 g Bactoferm F-LC culture (0.25 g/kg), or T-SPX at 0.12 g/kg for a milder, slower salami
SPICE (% of meat weight)
- 7 g ground white pepper (0.3%)
- 5 g whole black peppercorns (0.2%)
- 7 g fresh garlic, grated to a paste (0.3%)
- 45 ml dry red wine (2%)
- 1 g each ground fennel and coriander (0.05%) — optional
CASING
- 60–65 mm beef middles or protein-lined fibrous casing, 40–50 cm long
- 1 dose Bactoferm Mold-600 for a white bloom — optional
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: Cure #2 and the culture. The general dry-salami method is on Salami; this page adds what makes it Genoa. For the opposite pole — gentle, sweet, low-acid — compare Chorizo Español (Dry-Cured Spanish Chorizo).
- Wake the culture: dissolve it in 30 ml chlorine-free water 30 minutes before use. Boil the wine and cool it, then mix the garlic into it — boiling drives off alcohol that can slow the culture.
- Grind partly frozen: lean pork and beef at −3 to −1 °C through 6 mm; the frozen back fat through 6 mm separately. Frozen fat cuts clean. Smeared fat coats the lean, stops moisture escaping, and produces a hard rim over a wet centre.
- Mix: lean, salt, Cure #2, dextrose and spices first, until tacky; add the culture and wine; fold in the fat and mix only until even. Keep the mass below 2 °C.
- Stuff tight: no air. Prick bubbles with a sterile needle, tie, and weigh each salami. Write the green weight on a tag. If using mould, spray now.
- Ferment: 22–24 °C, 90% RH, 48–72 hours. The pH must reach 5.3 or below within 80 hours at 24 °C (the USDA degree-hours limit); a good F-LC ferment lands at 5.0–5.2 in about two days. Check with a calibrated meter on a sacrificial piece. Not there in time = the batch is not safe to dry; cook and eat it or discard it.
- Dry: 13–15 °C, 80% RH for the first week, then 75%. Weigh weekly. Target 35% weight loss (green 1,000 g → 650 g) — six to ten weeks in a 60 mm casing. Failure looks like a hard dark ring with a soft middle (too dry too fast: raise RH) or slime and off smell (too wet, too warm: discard).
- Finish: when it hits target, vacuum-pack for two weeks to let moisture even out, then slice thin. Do not cook it. A cut face keeps 2–3 weeks wrapped in the fridge.
- Sibling: Homemade Salami Soppressata and Homemade Salame Finocchiona Recipe are the southern and Tuscan cousins.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s Salami Genoa — 40% lean pork, 40% beef chuck, 20% back fat; 2.8% salt; Cure #2 2.5 g/kg; dextrose 0.2% plus sugar 0.3%; white pepper, garlic, red wine; T-SPX 0.12 g/kg; ferment 20 °C, 72 h, 90–85% RH; dry 16→12 °C at 85→80% RH for 2–3 months to 30–35% weight loss. He notes it is also called salami di Alessandria and resembles salami Milano. Deviations: (1) beef cut to 20% to match the mostly-pork American product; (2) back fat raised to 25%; (3) a faster culture (F-LC) at 22–24 °C, because the American Genoa is tangier than an Italian salami and because a faster drop gets through the danger window sooner; (4) whole peppercorns added; (5) a pH checkpoint and degree-hours limit stated. Untested.
Where Genoa salami came from. The Ligurian product is salame genovese di Sant’Olcese, from the hills behind Genoa: fatty pork (about 30%) and lean pork (about 20%) with lean beef (about 50%), garlic, vinegar or wine and herbs, natural casing, and — unlike the American one — smoked over oak or chestnut for several days before ageing. Production is said to have begun about two hundred years ago at Orero, then part of the comune of Sant’Olcese; only a few producers remain. The American Genoa is a separate, later product of Italian-American makers: unsmoked, mostly pork, garlic and peppercorns, a sharper ferment. No US standard of identity fixes its composition.
The name. Genoa is the English name of Genova. The American label tells you the style, not the origin.
Variations. All-pork Genoa (replace the beef with more lean pork). A Sant’Olcese-style version: 50% beef, 30% fatty pork, 20% lean pork, more garlic, and 2–3 days of cold smoke below 25 °C before drying. Finer grind (4.5 mm) brings it toward salami Milano.
Sourcing and gear. Cultures: Bactoferm F-LC (fast, with anti-Listeria strains) or T-SPX (slow, traditional). A pH meter with a spear probe and 4.0/7.0 buffers. A curing chamber that holds 13–15 °C and 75–80% RH, and a scale that reads to 1 g for weekly weigh-ins.
Still open. The date the American name first appears in print is not established. Whether US Genoa ever carried Sant’Olcese’s smoke, and when it dropped it, is not documented.
The photo. The photograph shows a commercial Genoa salami (Volpi) in its netting, from Flickr; it is the sausage, not this recipe’s own batch.
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