The recipe for Ardèche saucisson
For a very long time, the Ardèche has been a land of dry-cured charcuterie (saucisson, ham), because its mountain climate (dry and windy) lends itself to this way of preserving pork. This traditional, ancestral savoir-faire, dating back to the 16th century, has been added to the inventory of France's culinary heritage. Since 2011, it has been protected by a PGI (Protected Geographical Indication), a label that guarantees consumers a recipe inspired by Ardèche tradition, as agreed by the Ardèche charcutiers who belong to this PGI.
Here we take you through the different stages in the making of our saucissons, our Ardèche charcuterie speciality.
The ingredients of our saucissons
- The meat
We use only fresh French pork for the making of Ardèche dry-cured saucisson.
The shoulder (the muscle of the pig's front leg), which provides the lean part of the meat, and the belly, which provides the fat and which we prefer to back fat because it is tastier and more flavoursome. This is also the fat used to make bacon and lardons.
- Seasoning the meat
Since we took over the charcuterie, we have kept and respected the original recipe of our Ardèche specialities:
- salt, pepper, a pinch of garlic
- lactose and lactic ferments (very similar to those in yoghurts and cheeses), because saucisson is dried, fermented meat
- potassium nitrate (saltpetre) to protect against botulism
- red wine from the Cave des Rosières (located 50 metres from the workshop, on the other side of the river)
- a lot of love...
- and THAT'S ALL!
Making the mêlée
The shoulder and belly are weighed to give a 200 kg mix of meat. It then goes through the mincer, which cuts it into small pieces before the seasoning is added. Next comes the mixing stage, which produces seasoned sausage meat that is left to rest in the cold for several hours.
Filling the casings (or stuffing)
We use only natural casings, that is to say pig intestines cleaned in specialist casing works, and each saucisson has its own casing.
The cleaned casings are filled with the mêlée using a sausage stuffer. The mêlée is pushed into the casing, avoiding any air pockets that would cause the meat to spoil.
Traditionally in the Ardèche, at the time of the pig slaughter (the "tuade"), the casings were washed in the river.
Seeding the surface bloom
Our Ardèche saucissons have a natural bloom that is passed down from generation to generation... of saucissons! This bloom is collected from matured saucissons. It is used to prepare a "bloom bath" into which the freshly filled saucissons are dipped. In this way, the old pass their bloom on to the young, who will in turn pass it on to the next batches.
Étuvage (the warm fermentation stage)
This stage of production, which lasts 24 to 48 hours, starts the drying of the Ardèche saucissons and gets fermentation under way. A flow of warm air at 20–25 °C allows the small amount of sugar naturally present in the meat and the added lactose to be converted during fermentation into lactic acid, which prevents unwanted bacteria from multiplying, preserves the meat and naturally binds the fat and the lean.
By the end of étuvage, the dry-cured saucissons have lost 10 to 15% of their initial weight (water loss).
Drying
It lasts 5 to 7 weeks depending on the diameter of the dry-cured saucisson. The surface bloom and the flavour develop over time (for more details, see the article: how our saucissons are dried).
Find out more about drying saucissons
Packaging
We deliver our dry-cured saucissons "naked", with a label around the string showing the packer code on one side and the type of saucisson on the other, to avoid over-packaging. All the product information (ingredients, nutritional values, etc.) can be found on the product pages of the website.
