Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
Bacteria doesn't penetrate beef and pork very well, that's why you are able to dry age steaks and full cuts. Once you mince the meat, however, you are exposing the entirety of the meat to bacteria. I suppose you could dry the meat for a relatively short amount of time (maybe hours instead of days) before putting it into the casing, but I wouldn't go very long. If you add heat or dryness, you also run the risk of cooking the meat.
There are special dry aging fridges you can buy. You can get away with most sausages and cured meats in a regular fridge though by hanging them from a string.
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I agree with the premise of what you're describing.
Maybe what I was thinking about was just leaving the meat in the fridge for 24-48 hours after to mincing, but the minced meat would have to have the seasoning, salts and curing agents. This would be something not too dissimilar to what was mentioned for salting a steak and letting it create brine that keeps getting reabsorbed back into the meat for a deeper flavour. I think the confusion was that I definitely was thinking about there being salt/curing agent along with other meats on the minced sausage meat in the fridge. It's not just plain minced meat in the fridge without preservative which I agree would risk bacteria growth and it isn't recommended.
Personally if I were to make a sausage that I wanted a little drier, I would experiment with letting the "sausage mix" sit in the fridge for a few hours or a day. That's what I seem to recall having read, but I cannot confirm this by finding an article that I had read. Theoretically though, that salt/curing agent/alcohol etc. to address the bacteria would allow for that short window of slightly drying out the meat prior to inserting it into a casing.
Looking back, I agree with you that mincing the meat without a preservative and leaving it in the fridge for a day or two isn't the best approach. It wasn't my intention to suggest that, but I also didn't describe it correctly. My bad.