Kosher Beef Salami (Cooked Deli Style)

This is the salami of the Jewish delicatessen and the grocery chub: all beef, garlic-forward, pink, smoked and cooked, sliced thin for a sandwich with mustard on rye or fried with eggs. It is not an Italian-style dry salami. Hebrew National’s beef salami is labelled fully cooked, and so is the deli version; the hard salami that hangs over the counter is the same sausage, hung for weeks until it dries and firms.

The diagnostic detail is the beef fat. Pork is forbidden, so the fat is brisket or plate fat, which is harder and higher-melting than pork back fat. It grinds cleanly when very cold and smears quickly when warm. The other rule is subtraction: no milk powder binder, because meat and milk do not mix under kashrut.

It exists because Ashkenazi immigrants to New York needed a sausage that kept, sliced and travelled, and the all-beef cured line became a deli cornerstone. Hebrew National was founded on the Lower East Side in 1905; Katz’s told families in World War II to send a salami to their boy in the army.

I have not made this one yet. The formula builds a cooked salami on Marianski’s cooked-salami method, the spice profile of the kosher deli product, and a short fermentation for the tang the commercial product gets from lactate and diacetate. It is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

• 1,700 g (3 lb 12 oz) lean beef chuck, trimmed — 75%
• 570 g (1 lb 4 oz) beef brisket or plate fat, hard white fat only — 25%

CURE AND SEASONING (% of meat weight)

• 50 g salt (2.2%)
• 5.7 g Cure #1 (0.25% = 2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm nitrite)
• 11 g dextrose (0.5%)
• 23 g fresh garlic, finely grated (1.0%)
• 7 g coarse black pepper (0.3%)
• 3.4 g white pepper (0.15%)
• 5.7 g ground coriander (0.25%)
• 6.8 g sweet paprika (0.3%)
• 3.4 g dry mustard powder (0.15%)
• 1.1 g nutmeg (0.05%)
• 180 ml ice water (8%)

STARTER CULTURE

• 0.6 g Bactoferm F-LC (about 0.025%), in 30 ml non-chlorinated water

CASING

• 60 mm beef middles or 63 mm fibrous casing, two 35 cm lengths

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper · Cheese Cultures (Mesophilic & Thermophilic) · Mustard

1. In the collection: Salt, Black Pepper and Mustard. Weigh the cure on a gram scale; 5.7 g of Cure #1 on 2,270 g of meat is 156 ppm nitrite, the USDA ceiling for a comminuted product.
2. Cure arithmetic, shown: Cure #1 is 6.25% sodium nitrite. 5.7 g × 0.0625 = 0.356 g nitrite; 0.356 g ÷ 2.27 kg = 157 mg/kg ≈ 156 ppm. Do not round up.
3. Chill everything hard: cube the beef and fat and freeze them until crunchy at the edges, −2 to 0 °C. Beef fat smears at a lower working temperature than pork fat looks like it should, and smeared fat in a cooked salami becomes grease pockets and a crumbly slice.
4. Grind: beef through a 4.5 mm (3/16”) plate, fat through a 6 mm (1/4”) plate so it shows as small white dots in the slice. Keep the bowl on ice.
5. Mix: dissolve salt, cure and dextrose in the ice water, add the spices and garlic, and pour it over the lean. Mix until the meat is tacky and pulls in strings — the protein extraction that makes a salami slice clean. Add the starter, then the fat, and mix only until it is evenly spread.
6. Taste: fry a small patty. It should taste of garlic first and coriander second, and be a little saltier than you want; smoking and drying concentrate it.
7. Stuff tight: pack the casings with no air, tie, and prick any pockets with a sterile needle. Air pockets turn grey and can grow mould in the hard version.
8. Ferment: hang at 30 °C / 86 °F and 85–90% RH for 18–24 hours, until a calibrated pH meter reads 5.3 or below in the middle of a chub. This gives the deli tang and makes the sausage safer to dry afterwards. If you have no warm, humid place, skip the culture and add 0.5% encapsulated citric acid (11 g) at the end of mixing instead, then go straight to the smoker.
9. Smoke and cook: dry the surface at 55 °C / 130 °F for 1 hour, then smoke with hardwood at 60–65 °C for 2–3 hours, then raise the smoker to 75–80 °C and cook to 71 °C / 160 °F internal. Do not rush the heat; a fast climb pushes fat out of the beef.
10. Shower and chill: cold water for 10 minutes to stop the cooking and keep the casing from wrinkling, then dry and refrigerate overnight before slicing.
11. For hard salami (optional): hang the cooked chubs at 10–15 °C / 50–60 °F and 70–75% RH for 2–4 weeks, until they have lost another 15–20% of their weight and slice firm. White surface mould can be wiped off with vinegar; green or black means the humidity was too high.
12. Decision point: a pale centre means the cure was not mixed in well; a greasy cut face means the fat smeared during grinding or the cook went too hot. The sibling in the collection is Old-Fashioned Bologna, a cooked beef-and-pork emulsion; the dry, uncooked branch of the family is Salami.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s cooked-salami method (Salami Cotto: cure, stuff, cook to 68–70 °C) applied to an all-beef block, with the 75/25 beef-to-brisket-fat ratio from his Kosher Salami. Deviations: (1) Marianski’s Kosher Salami is a dry, fermented, uncooked sausage with Cure #2 — this recipe is the cooked deli product instead; (2) the short F-LC fermentation stands in for the sodium lactate and diacetate on the Hebrew National label, which supply its tang and shelf life; (3) cooking to 71 °C / 160 °F, the USDA figure for ground beef, rather than his 68–70 °C; (4) the spice blend is built from the deli flavour, because no published formula gives the commercial spice weights. I have not made it; it is untested.

Kosher is a process, not a recipe. Following this formula does not make a kosher salami. The meat must come from a kosher-slaughtered animal, be soaked and salted to draw the blood, be cut from the forequarter unless the hindquarter has been porged, and be handled with kosher equipment under supervision. Pork casings are out; beef middles or fibrous casings are in. Milk powder, a common binder in cooked sausages, is out. Call it kosher-style unless it is supervised.

Where the kosher salami came from. All-beef cured sausage was made by Jewish butchers in Central and Eastern Europe, and came to New York with the two million Jewish immigrants who arrived between 1880 and 1924. Katz’s Delicatessen opened in 1888. The Hebrew National Kosher Sausage Factory was founded in 1905 by Theodore Krainin on East Broadway; its slogan ‘We answer to a higher authority’ dates from 1965, and ConAgra has owned the brand since 1993. In World War II Katz’s and other delis promoted sending kosher hard salami to Jewish servicemen: ‘Send a salami to your boy in the army.’ A hard salami keeps without refrigeration once dried, which is why it was a care-package food.

Soft and hard. The grocery chub is the soft, freshly cooked salami. The deli ‘hard salami’ is the same cooked sausage left hanging until it dries; Katz’s own care instructions say to unwrap it and hang it in a cool dry cupboard, where ‘it will age over time and become harder.’ Neither is the Italian-style raw-fermented dry salami.

Variations. Beef fry (cured, smoked beef belly), beef bologna and the larger ‘deli roll’ use the same cure and spice. Some makers add a little sugar or a splash of sweet kosher wine — Marianski uses Manischewitz in his dry version.

Sourcing and gear. Brisket point fat or plate fat; ask a kosher butcher for hard trim. Bactoferm F-LC (Chr. Hansen) is a fast, warm-fermenting culture; keep it frozen. A pH meter calibrated with 4.0 and 7.0 buffers before each use. A 60 mm fibrous casing is the easiest to stuff and peel.

Still open. No published formula gives Hebrew National’s or Katz’s spice weights. How long Katz’s hangs its salamis before sale is reported only secondhand.

The photo. No open-licensed photograph of a kosher beef salami exists; the photograph is Katz’s Delicatessen on Houston Street, where it hangs.

Read more on the site. Kosher and Halal