How salami is made
Classic salami is never cooked. Friendly bacteria sour the meat and drying does the rest.
- stations
- 6
- things upstream
- 12
- raw sources
- 8
- steps from the ground
- 3
The short version
Pork or beef is coarsely ground and mixed with salt, sugar, spices and a starter culture of lactic acid bacteria. The mixture is stuffed into casings and hung in a warm, humid room for a day or three, so the bacteria make acid. Then it hangs in a cool, humid room to dry slowly until it is firm.
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Grind coarse
Raw pork or beef is ground coarsely, so you can still see fat and lean in the slice.
Goes in -
Mix with salt and culture
Salt, sugar, spices and pepper go in. So does a starter culture of lactic acid bacteria, which replaced the wine that early makers used to encourage friendly microbes.
Goes in -
Stuff the casing
The mixture is stuffed into natural or cellulose casings of the size the style calls for. A casing is chosen to match the drying speed, since the climate and casing size set how long curing takes.
Goes in -
Ferment warm and damp
The salami hangs in a warm, humid room. Bacteria feed on added sugar and make lactic acid. The acid lowers the pH and coagulates the proteins, making the meat inhospitable to harmful bacteria and giving the tang that sets salami apart from plain dried pork.
1 to 3 days
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Dry slowly in the cool
After fermentation the sausage is moved to a cool, humid room to dry. The casing turns from water-permeable to reasonably airtight. A white coat of mold or flour protects the meat from light and keeps fat from going rancid.
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Inspect and pack
Finished salami is checked, then sold whole or sliced. Although it is uncooked, it is not raw, because it has been cured.
Worth repeating
- Some recipes warm the salami to about 40 °C to speed fermentation and drying, and higher heat stops fermentation once the right pH is reached.
- Makers often treat the casings with an edible Penicillium mold, which adds flavor and helps drying.
- Hungarian salami is intensively smoked and then its surface is inoculated with mold starters.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and salami starts as these 8 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How salami is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/salami