Homemade Goat Prosciutto (Violino di Capra) Dry Cured Whole Leg or Ham of Mutton with Natural Nitrate

Homemade Goat Prosciutto (Air Dry Cured Whole Goat Leg or Ham)

Homemade Goat Prosciutto, Prosciutto di Capra  or Violino di Capra Recipe. Prosciutto is Italian ham made of bone-in hind leg (usually pork) which marinated in spiced and salt cured then hung to air-dried cured for several months. Capra is Italian word for goat or mutton; so Prosciutto di Capra is air-dried and salt cured (cold smoked) goat leg or ham. This homemade goat prosciutto is also cured without any preservative or curing salt (NO pink salt or salt petre)

Homemade Goat Prosciutto (Air Dry Cured Whole Goat Leg or Ham)

Unpopular Delicacy Goat Prosciutto di Capra

Goat prosciutto is not as well-known as the pork prosciutto, even in Italia it’s rarely served nowdays.  I’ve never seen any deli store here in Indonesia sold any goat prosciutto before and it’s challenging me even more to made it. Eversince I’ve made several whole meat muscles charcuterie before, i think finding the right goat leg for making the prosciutto di capra is my only issue.

Homemade Goat Prosciutto, Nicely Cured Mutton Ham!

Goat Prosciutto a.k.a Violino di Capra

Homemade Goat Prosciutto isn’t that hard to made if you got the passion on home curing charcuterie, i mean any amateur kitchen can made it, but sure it need some patients and precision steps to made the goat ham prosciutto edible. A little bit of passion can create a far better delicious prosciutto than any professional deli store products ever sold. Homemade charcuterie or dry curing is so easy; salting, washing (sometimes cold smoking) and then the final air dry curing. This is some of my previously charcutterie project;

• Homemade Lamb Pancetta di Agnello (Dry Cured Lamb Belly)
• Homemade Beef Bresaola(Dry Cured Beef Tenderloin)
• Homemade Venison Deer Bresaola Di Cervo (Dry Cured Venison Tenderloin)
• Homemade Spanish Chorizo (Dry Cured Smoked Paprika Sausage)
• Homemade Salmon Gravlax
• Homemade Tea Smoked Salmon
• Homemade Smoked Duck Breast
• Homemade Smoked Beef
• Homemade Venison Deer Bresaola Recipe
• Homemade Gravlax (Salt Curing Salmon)
• Homemade Duck Prosciutto (Air Dry-Cured Duck Breast)
• Homemade Tea Smoked Salmon Recipe

Goat Prosciutto (Salt Cured , Cold Smoked, Air Dried Whole Goat Ham)

Prosciutto di Capra

Goat prosciutto is considered delicacy for its mild gamey, sweet and yet tender delicious because it’s made from very young or junvenile goat that unless the prosciutto will be tough and rubbery. Prosciutto di capra usually made from about 6 months to 1-year-old goat hind leg weighed about 1 to 1.5 kg and no more than 2 kg each. Goat prosciutto will be hung to air curing for about two to three months untill it lost about 30% its original weight after salt cured. Goat prosciutto can enjoyed  for a long day since it can last for months or even years. Some would love to inoculate a good white mould in the exposed meat to make it last longer.

Goat Prosciutto; Nicely Vivid Red, Well Done Curing Celery Seed & Juice!!!

To maintain the red meat color and prevent spoiling and poisoning from botulism, prosciutto cured with nitrites like salt peter (sendawa) or potassium nitrit. The nitride oxide bonded and reacted with the remaining myoglobin in the flesh and make a red pigmentation. These process get even better when the water is drained out from the flesh. I used to used salt petre to my charcuterie project, but eversince i’m concerning about the health hence I’m using the natural form of nitrate from celery juice & celery salt for making this goat ham prosciutto.

Vivid Red Sliced Goat Prosciutto, Cured with Natural Nitrate of Celery Seed & Celery Juice

Measure the weight of your beef then calculate the sea salt weight (3 %) and the pink salt weight (0,1%) needed to curing the goat leg prosciutto di capra . If  you using salt petre for making prosciutto  it’s recommended ammount is 500 ppm (part per million) or 500 mg for one kg of meat. Unfortunately, i didn’t know about the correct ammount of nitrate on celery salt and juice for properly cured this prosciutto but judging from the satisfying result i guess my recipe is quite correct.

Homemade Goat Prosciutto

Sliced Goat Prosciutto

I mention before that home curing goat prosciutto need a precision; simply because improperly curing process can lead to food bourne poisoning called Botulism and possibly causing death, no kidding!!!. Before you considering to made your homemade lamb pancetta or any other air dry cured meat, you should know about the safety about curing  first. You NEED NITRATE, that’s for sure because it’s the only known additive that effective to prevent the Clostridium botulinum growing.

Prosciutto di Capra, Salt Cured Cold Smoked and Hung Dried Whole Goat Hind Leg

Thinly Sliced Goat Prosciutto

Making homemade goat prosciutto is very fun to me, if you ask me why I’m curing my own goat prosciutto, my simple answer is; why not ? Beside the fact it’s must be very expensive to purchased and imported  genuine Italian prosciutto di capra, i also simply can control all ingredients and adjust the taste according to your own personal licking. For example, i add a little bit Szechuan peppercorn to my homemade prosciutto to satisfied my asian descent taste buds and you won’t get any of it in the store.

Thinly Sliced Goat Prosciutto with Lettuce Salad

Properly prepared goat prosciutto is  save to eaten raw as thinly sliced appetizer on charcuteries platter alongside other homemade cold cut charcuterie. Goat prosciutto  usually served uncooked or raw with greens leaves  salad and vinegar or lemon juice dressing. Beside that, prosciutto can be served as sandwich filling, rolled in the veggies and roasted and many more.

Bruchetta with Goat Prosciutto, Mild Cream Cheese , Kalamata Olives Puree, Preserved Artichoked, Mustard Leaves and Blossom, Crab Clawn Herbs, Pickled Garlic & Green Pepercorn, & Crushed Pink Pepeprcorn

I also made some bruchetta whith my homemade goat prosciutto. Crispy oven toasted french baguette, spread with some mild cream cheese and kalamata olives puree, then topped with  preserved artichoked and finished with some micro greens mustard leaves and blossom, micro crab clawn herbs, pickled garlic & green peppercorn, & crushed Pink pepeprcorn

My grandma won’t eat any uncooked meat, not even my raw delicious cured goat prosciutto, so she decided to crisp up the goat prosciutto by fried it up with some avocado oil and enjoy the crispy proscoutto like a fried goat bacon, lol

Violino di Capra a.k.a Violin of Goat

Violino di Capra or literary translated as violin of goat is the Italian names for goat prosciutto. It ‘a leg of ham made from goat and the name derives not so much from the cured ham shape as from the characteristic way of holding it for slicing. It is placed on the arm like a violin and sliced thinly using the knife as a bow

Slicing Goat Prosciutto

Slicing a goat prosciutto or violino di capra is quite challenging for me. First you need to sharpen your knive to get a thinner sliced prosciutto. I’m using small boning knives, i sharpen it using automatic knife sharpener and it’s almost as sharp as surgical scalpel knives. If you had the prosciutto holder, use it to secure and fixation it, but if you didn’t have any, use your left hand to hold it tight while  you slicing the prosciutto horizontally. Slice the prosciutto as thin as possible with a gentle and confident movement, well my grandma gladly do this job for me; at least for the photograph session, lol

Thinly Carving the Goat Prosciutto

Now this is How I Make My Goat Prosciutto or Violino di Agnello from scratch!!!

Young Goat Leg from 8 Months Old Goat Leg Weighed About 1 Kg, The Best Ingredients for Making Goat Prosciutto

1. Select the Goat Leg;

Prosciutto di capra usually made from young goat, i personally order 8 months old goat leg weighed about 1 kg for each of it. DO NOT EVER WASHED THE GOAT LEG WITH WATER or it will be had a very strong gamey aromas. Properly trimming the sinew as much as possible is essential to the rich taste and properly cured prosciutto. Clean the goat leg from any debris or remaining fur and trimmed the remaining blood debris or stain. You can pushed the leg a little bit to drain remaining blood then wipe it out with paper towel.

2. Salt Curing the Goat Leg

Young Goat Leg, Celery Seed-Spices-Salt & Celery Juice = Homemade Goat Prosciutto

The spices and herbs used for making the goat prosciutto differ according to the traditions and your personal preferences. For making my homemade prosciutto do capra i’m using a combinations of nutmeg, celery seed, Szechuan peppercorn, fennel seed, cumin, cardamon, sage, tarragon, juniper berries, black pepper, bay leaf, cloves, thyme, oregano, and rosemary. For the salt, i’m using homemade sea salt that i processed with the spices and herbs until fine powder to made it penetrate better to the meat. The natural nitrate preservatives source for making this goat prosciutto is the celery seed and the celery juice that i added into it.

3. Salt-Dry Curing (Plus Cold Smoked) The Goat Leg

Salt Curing Goat Leg with Natural Nitrate

The hind leg or ham of the goat salted and cured with the celery juice, salt and seasoning for about 14 days, depend on your goat leg size. During this time the goat leg ham is sit in the refrigerator and gently pressed to drain all the blood that remains  in the meat and flipped over every day.  After the curing process, the goat leg is carefully washed in running water,  patted dry and hung in a dark, good-ventilated environment.  At this point, you can cold smoked the cured goat leg a little bit to improved the taste and induced the smokey flavour on it before hung it to air cured. The  humidity and temperature of the enviroment is the key success of making a good quality of goat prosciutto. The best environment for making cured meat is cold climate with low humidity. The goat prosciutto  is then left until dry and loosen  30 percent of it’s weight, so make sure you notes the weight of the cured beef before you hung it and calculate the 30 percent loss from the freshly cured goat leg weight. When you lived in a tropical country with high temperature and humidity, don’t worry about it, as long as you can set your refrigerator in “dry mode” you can made your own dry cured meat or prosciutto.

Recipe Homemade Goat Prosciutto (Violino di Capra)

Recipe Homemade Goat Prosciutto (Violino di Capra) with Natural Nitrate Preservatives (Celery seed & Juice) :

• 1 small goat hind leg (about 1 kg)
• 3% sea salt (30 grams) *add more if necessary
• 1 tsp celery seed
• 50 ml celery juice (from about 1 1/2 cups celery leaves and little stem)
• 1/2 tbsp freshly grounded black peppercorn
• 1 tsp of rosemary
• 1/2 tsp of Szechuan peppercorn *optional
• 1/2 tsp juniper berry, coarsely ground
•  2 tbsp of mix italian herbs
• 1 tbsp brown sugar

How To Make Homemade Goat Prosciutto (Violino di Capra):

• Clean the goat leg from any debris, pushed out the remaining blood and patted it dry with paper towel
•  Rub the celery seed, spices and salt mixture to the goat leg, make sure all the surface is coated with salt mixture evenly
• Pour the celery juice over the goat leg and massage it all over the surface, put it in a ziplock bag and pushed out the air to sealed it properly
• Let the salted goat leg cured for about 14  days, in the refrigerator flip it over every  day.
• Gently press the cured goat leg by putting some weight over the ziplock bag.
• When the curing process is done, your goat leg should be slightly flattened and firm to touch
• Washed the cured goat leg gently in running cold water to dissolved the remaining curing salt
• Pat it dry with clean paper towel
• Washed it a little bit with red wine vinegar*optional
• Rub it with a freshly ground black peppercorn*optional
• Measure and note the weight of your cured goat leg
• Hang it in your refrigerator (make sure you set it in dry mode)
• Ater hung 1 day in the fridge, you can cold smoked for about 2 hour *optional
• Let the goat leg dry cured into prosciutto for about 2 months up to 12 months
• Make sure you watch the weight loss
• Your goat prosciutto or violino di capra  is ready when it loosen 30 percent of it’s freshly cured leg weight, but if you want it develop more flavour let it cured for longer period of times.
• You can either serve it raw on salad or cook it in your pasta, your choice

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Homemade Lamb Pancetta di Agnello (Dry Cured Lamb Belly)

Lamb Pancetta di Agnello Recipe

Homemade Lamb Pancetta di Agnello Recipe. Pancetta is Italian bacon made of belly meat (usually pork) which marinated in spiced and salt cured then hung to air dried cured for several months. Agnello is Italian word for lamb; so Pancetta di Agnello is air dried and salt cured lamb belly.

Arrotolata Pancetta “Rolled” Dry Cured Lamb Belly

Rolled Lamb Pancetta di Agnello

Pancetta typically salt cured and seasoned with spices such as nutmeg, fennel, peppercorns, dried ground hot peppers, garlic, rosemarry, thyme, oregano, sage, marojam and juniper berry, then dried for at least one month. There are two basic types of pancetta, the ″arrotolata” (rolled) and “stesa” (flat). The “arrotolata” is mainly used sliced as part of antipasti (cold cut appetizer), the “stesa” is often used chopped as ingredient in many recipes.  The rolled type is typical of northern Italy,while the flat is typical of the center and south.

Pancetta of Lamb Belly

Homemade Lamb Pancetta, Worth All The Effort!!!

Lamb belly pancetta isn’t that hard to made if you got the passion on home curing charcuterie, i mean it’s not impossible to made at any amateur kitchen, but sure it need some patients and precision steps to made the lamb pancetta edible. A litttle bit of passion can create a far better delicious pancetta than any professional deli store products ever sold. Pancetta preparation is  slighly time consuming because the belly it’s needed to salt cured , air dry cured  before it’s ready to eat. Properly dried cured lamb pancetta is  save to eaten raw as thinly sliced appetizer on charuteries platter alongside other homemade cold cut charcuterie which i’ve ever made previously; Homemade Beef Bresaola, Homemade Venison Deer Bresaola Di Cervo, Homemade DuckProsciutto, Homemade Spanish Chorizo (Dry Cured Smoked Paprika Sausage), Homemade Salmon Gravlax, Homemade Tea Smoked Salmon, Homemade Smoked Duck Breast, Homemade Smoked Beef.

Homemade Cold Cut Lamb Pancetta as Antipasti

Beautifull Thinly Sliced Lamb Pancetta Charcuterie

I mention before that home curing pancetta di agnello need a precision; simply because improperly curing process can lead to food bourne poisoning called Botulism and possibly causing death, no kidding!!!. Before you considering to made your homemade lamb pancetta or any other air dry cured meat, you should know about the savety about curing  first. You had to measured the proper ratio of the ingredients, especially the amount of the nitrate preservatives which is the only known additive that effective to prevent the Clostridium botulinum growing.

Dark Red Color of Saltpetre Cured Lamb Belly Pancetta

Insta Cure no.1, also called pink salt, is colored pink and contains 6.25% sodium nitrite and 93.75% salt. Cure no.1 is commonly used in bacon, hotdogs and other products that need less or no drying time. Insta Cure no.2 contains both sodium nitrite (at 6.25%) and nitrate (at 1%), with the remaining 92.75% being salt. Nitrates act as a time-released nitrite. Nitrates are employed in pancetta that requires longer periods of curing and drying. The time-release of nitrite continues to protect the meat over time. If you are making lamb pancetta which will be cooked, you can use cure no.1.  If you intend to make a traditional pancetta arrotolata, which is fully dried and eaten without cooking, you must use cure no.2. Eversince i lived in Indonesia and actually i’ve been too tired pursuing the pink salt, so i used old school saltpetre for  my home curing charcuterie.

Lamb Pancetta, Air Dried Cured Lamb Belly

Saltpetre Lamb Pancetta with Beautifull Marbling Dark Red Color!!!

The recommendation maximum ammout of saltpetre (Potassium Nitrate, Garam Sendawa in Bahasa) for dry curing meat is 500 ppm (part per million) or 500 mg of salpetre in 1 kg of meat. The total lamb belly weight is about 400 grams. The natural sea salt ammount for dry cured pancetta  is about 3% of the weight, you gotta take a close attention on it, 3% salt means 12 grams seasalt for 400 grams meat and 500 ppm of salpetre means 0,2 grams (200 mg) of salt petre for 400 grams meat. l also added the same ammount of palm sugar with the salt. Here’s the fun part, my digital weight scale can only measure 1 gram (1000 mg), eversince i need only 200 mg of saltpetre, so i need to put the 1 gram of saltpetre in a piece of paper and divided it into five equal part with my atm card  then using one-fifth of the the devided saltpetre. It made me thinking of myself “heck what i’m doing, my mom gonna be going crazy and beat the hell of my head because i seems like a crack addict doing their things ” lol

Marinated Fresh Lamb Belly with Curing Mixture

After measung the ammount of salt and saltpetre for curing the fresh belly, i mixed it all in and rubbed the belly with the spices to make sure all the curing mixture penetrated well into it. Nothing changes for a moment, but some liquid derived from the belly once the salt and sugar dissolved and the natural gamey aromas blend well with the spices, smells delicious already!!!

24 Hours Marinated or Cured Lamb Belly, Note the Ammount of Liquid Derived from the Belly

After the marinated and cured lamb belly sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours and flipped over several times, you may seen the liquid in derived even more now. The color of the meat is darker, while the texture is firmer, i guess 24 hours (one day) for a small 400 grams of lamb belly is enough to curing the pancetta properly, you may need more time for larger piece of belly.

Properly Washed, Drained and Patted Dry Cured Lamb Belly

The cured lamb belly washed gently over cold running water to discard the excess salt and curing mixtures. DO NOT OVER WASHED the lamb belly and NEVER SOAKED it in the water, unless the water penetrated into the meat and possibly spoiling your freshly cured pancetta, a little bit of remaining spices in the surface of the pancetta is just fine. The pancetta then patted dry with clean papper towel to remove the remaining liquid, this flat cured belly also called stesa pancetta di agnello.

Rolled and Thighly Secured Lamb Pancetta Arrotolata

The freshly cured lamb belly then rolled thighly and secured with some sewing twines. Make sure there’s no air pocket beetween the rolled lamb belly. This rolled cured lamb belly also called arrotolata pancetta di agnello. This is rolled lamb pancetta usually served raw as antipasti or appetizer after air dry cure.

Using Clean “Dry Mode” Refrigerator as Dry Curing Chamber, Pancetta Alongside Lap Cheung /Chinese Sausage

The freshly cured lamb pancetta hung to dry in a cold, good-ventilated and dark place, then left until dry and loosen 30% of it’s original weight once it freshly cured. Make sure you notes the weight of the cured pancetta before you hung it and calculate the 30 percent loss from the original freshly cured weight.  In my case, the freshly cured lamb pancetta weight is 360 grams (from 400 grams fresh lamb belly) and the 30% loss is 108 grams, which means my lamb pancetta is ready to be eaten raw when it’s weighed 252 grams.

Nice Shaped Rolled Lamb Pancetta

The rolled lamb pancetta then hung to air dry curing in the room temperature in a subtropical or even better in a cold climates country. If you living in  a tropical country like indonesia, i guess it’s impossible to left the freshly cured pancetta hung to dry curing in room temperature because it’s too hot and too humid. Hence you must use your refrigerator to dry curing it, just made sure you cleaned out your fridge before using it as a curing chamber. Simply left the pancetta hung undisturbed in the fridge door in the ideal fridge temperature (about 1– 4°C or 33 – 39°F) and the fridge humidity in “dry mode”. Do NOT OPEN THE FRIDGE TOO OFTEN since the temperature will fluctuated and made the pancetta taste funny.

Dry Cured Pancetta Losing 30% Weight, Note the the Loose Twines Due Curing Shringkage

Ready to Eaten Pancetta di Agnello

This is my lamb pancetta look a like after air dry cured in the fridge after 20 days. The lamb pancetta meat had a nice dark red colour with creamy white and firm fat covering. Nice gamey aromas with distinct spices smells comes out of it and the taste just perfect for my licking; mild gamey, fatty and sweet. The lamb meat has shrunk a lot, but i guess the fat didn’t shrunk much.

Slicing the Lamb Pancetta Thinly!

Thinly Sliced Pancetta di Agnello

To store the homemade lamb pancetta, you can kept hung in in the fridge as long as you want before it’s turn harden,or spoiled and become inedible. If you want to store the pancetta  for longer than 2 – 3 weeks, best in freezer. I don’t really know if it will go mouldy or turn racid if you leave it in the fridge for too long, but i guaranteed that i won’t be last than longer before ended out in my tummy.

Nice Fatty Lamb Belly Pancetta

Thinly Sliced Saltpetre Cured Lamb Pancetta, Ready to Eaten Raw

Fried Lamb Pancetta USING VERY-VERY LOW HEAT

Maybe you heard that nitrate are toxic, infact nitrosamines did but the nitrate all blamed for that. Nitrosamine formed when nitrate transform into nitrite then react with amino acids or very high heat. Nitrosamines are known to be powerful DNA damaging chemicals and resulting cell mutation and cancer. But don’t really bother about it, infact a single portion of spinach or celery contain more nitrosamines than you can imagine. So don’t be affraid to use salpetre once you follow the recomendation ammount consentration in your homemade pancetta because you don’t want to risk your life, but i suggest if you want to FRIYING the SALTPETRE (nitrate) CURED PANCETTA, please USE THE LOWEST GENTLE HEAT as possible to prevent the nitrosamine formation, so  NEVER  CHARRED the SALTPETRE (nitrate) CURED PANCETTA.

Recipe Homemade Lamb Pancetta di Agnello Arrotolata

Recipe Homemade Lamb Pancetta di Agnello Arrotolata

Ingredients: (Measured the ingredients according your lamb belly weight)

• 1 kg lamb belly (1.000 grams)
• 3 % salt (15 grams) 
• 3% palm sugar (15 grams)
• 500 ppm (part per million) Saltpetre  {(500:1.000.000) x 1.000 grams} = 0,5 grams (500 mg)
• 4 tablespoons Homemade Garam Marsala Powder
• 2 tablespoons    mix Italian herbs powder ( Rosemarry, Thyme, Oregano, Sage, Bayleaves and Marojam)
• 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
• 5 juniper berries, crushed

How To Make Lamb Pancetta

How To Make Pancetta of Lamb Belly

• Measure the weight of each pancetta ingredients properly
• Clean out and sterilize all of the utensils
• Mix and rub the curing salt and spices mixture to lamb belly, let is marinated about 24 hours in the fridge
• washed it gently under running water
•  drain in properly, patted dry with paper towel, set aside
• Roll the lamb belly pancetta, make sure there’s no air pocked inside, secure with butcher twines
• Note the date and measure the weight of freshly cured pancetta arrotolata
• Hang the pancetta to dry in a well ventilated place until dehyrated and losen it’s 30 percent of it’s original weight (i’m using clean, “dry mode” refrigerator)
• Thinly sliced the Lamb Belly Pancetta di Agnello and served it as charcuterie appetizer

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