This homemade salami recipe is the one our street gathers for every June, when the weather turns cold enough to cure properly and someone's garage becomes a factory for a weekend. Pork, fat, salt, a little wine, and more patience than most people expect – by August the links hanging from the rafters have lost a third of their weight and gained the kind of flavour money cannot buy.
We learned from neighbours who have been doing it for fifty winters, and we will say the important thing up front: salami is not difficult, but it is precise. The curing salt must be measured exactly, the temperatures must be respected, and the reward for that discipline is a winter's worth of the best antipasto of your life. The full ingredients list, equipment and method are below, with the safety questions answered at the end.
Last updated October 2026 – this winter's batch is hanging now.
What is homemade salami?
Salami is cured sausage: minced pork (with a good proportion of fat), salt, and spices, stuffed into a casing and matured until it is safe, firm and deeply flavoured. There are two honest ways to make it at home, and you should choose based on your setup, not your ambition:
- Air-dried (true cured) salami is the classic: made with a specialised curing salt, hung in a cool, humid place for weeks or months, and transformed slowly by drying and beneficial fermentation. This is the real thing, and it needs a suitable spot to hang.
- Cooked salami is made the same way but finished in a low oven or smoker until cooked through. It is ready in a day, it is genuinely delicious, and it is the right starting point if you have no cold cellar and no patience for waiting.
The recipe below covers the classic air-dried version in full, with the cooked variation after it.
A winter tradition worth keeping
Salami-making crossed the world with Italian migration and took root in Australian garages and wineries alike, because our winter is tomato season's quiet twin – cold, dry, and perfect for hanging meat. The tradition is older than refrigeration: curing was how families kept a pig's worth of meat through the year, and every region of Italy guards its own spice list.
In our street the ritual is fixed. The meat is ground on a Saturday morning with half the neighbourhood helping, the men argue about fennel, the nonnas inspect every link, and the garage rafters spend the winter holding what looks, to the untrained eye, like a burglary of very heavy candlesticks. Like curing our own olives, it is preserving as a family sport.
Homemade salami ingredients
Servings: about 12 links (60+ slices) | Prep: 3 hours | Cure: 4-8 weeks (air-dried) or 1 day (cooked)
For about 3kg of salami:
- 2kg pork shoulder, kept cold, cut into strips that fit your grinder
- 1kg pork back fat or hard fatback, chilled
- 75g fine sea salt (about 2.5% of the meat weight)
- Curing salt No.2 (Prague Powder #2), measured exactly per the packet for air-dried salami – this is not optional and not interchangeable with ordinary salt
- 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 1/2 cup dry red wine, chilled
- 2 tsp whole fennel seeds, lightly crushed (or cracked black pepper for a Roman style)
- 1 tsp sugar
- Natural hog casings, rinsed and soaked
The golden rule is 2.5% salt by weight, and curing salt measured strictly to the packet's dose for the batch weight – a kitchen scale is the difference between salami and a very bad weekend. Buy curing salt from a reputable supplier and label it clearly; it looks exactly like ordinary salt, and it is not.
Equipment list: what you actually need
- A meat grinder (a stand-mixer attachment is fine)
- A stuffer or funnel for filling casings
- A digital kitchen scale – for the salt and cure, this is the most important tool here
- Butcher's twine and a needle
- A cool, humid place to hang: a cellar, garage, or an old fridge set to about 12-15C with a small bowl of water
Homemade salami recipe method: step by step
1. Keep everything cold
Chill the meat, the fat, the grinder parts and the mixing bowl in the freezer for 30-45 minutes before starting. Warm fat smears instead of grinding, and smeared fat ruins the texture. This is the step that separates good salami from disappointing salami.
2. Grind
Grind the pork through the coarse plate, then the fat through a slightly finer plate, keeping them separate until mixing. A distinct grind – you should see speckles of fat in the finished slice – is the classic look and texture.
3. Mix and season
Dissolve the salt, curing salt and sugar in the chilled wine. Pour over the meat, add the garlic and fennel, and mix with your hands until sticky and uniform – about 3-4 minutes of real mixing. The mixture should feel tacky, almost like it wants to cling to your palm.
4. Test the seasoning
Fry a thumbnail-sized portion of the mix in a pan and taste it once cool. Adjust salt and spice now, because there is no adjusting later. The raw mix should taste slightly over-seasoned, the same principle as our spanakopita filling.
5. Stuff the casings
Thread the soaked casing onto the stuffer and fill slowly and firmly, avoiding air pockets – prick any bubbles you can see with the needle. Twist into 25-30cm links, tie with twine, and weigh every link, writing the weight on a tag. The drying target is a 30-35% weight loss, and your tags are how you will know when they get there.
6. Hang and cure
Hang the links with space between them in your cool, humid spot, away from direct airflow. For the first 48 hours keep the conditions slightly warmer and more humid (about 20C) to help the beneficial fermentation start, then drop to 12-15C and 75-80% humidity for the long rest.
From week two, weigh a tagged link every few days. When a link has lost 30-35% of its starting weight, it is done – firm to a squeeze like a firm plum, sliceable without weeping. Depending on thickness and conditions, that is 4-8 weeks.
7. Slice and store
Wipe the casing if dusty (a white bloom is good mould and perfectly normal; green, black or fuzzy is not – those links get discarded). Slice paper-thin with a sharp knife or a proper slicer and eat at room temperature.
The cooked variation (no curing room needed)
Make the mix identically but use curing salt No.1 per the packet dose instead of No.2. Stuff, then rest the links in the fridge overnight. Bake on a rack at 90-110C until the internal temperature reaches 68C – roughly 2-3 hours – adding a handful of wood chips to a smoker if you have one. Cool, then refrigerate. It keeps three weeks refrigerated and tastes like the salami from a good deli, because that is exactly what it is.
What to serve with homemade salami
The honest answer is bread, olives and cheese, eaten standing up with a glass of wine – salami is the anchor of any antipasto board alongside our home-cured olives. Thin-sliced with aged provolone and some pickled vegetables from the summer jars, it is a complete meal that never sees a stove.
In the kitchen, a few slices lift everything they touch: rendered into the base of a Sunday sugo, scattered over a simple fresh pasta, or folded through a frittata. A little goes further than you think, which is fortunate, because a batch is a lot of salami.
Storing homemade salami
Whole, air-dried links keep for months in a cool spot or the fridge, wrapped in paper rather than plastic – plastic traps moisture and softens the casing. Once cut, wrap the cut face in baking paper and refrigerate, using slices within a couple of weeks. Cooked salami keeps about three weeks refrigerated. Whole links also freeze well for up to three months with minimal loss of texture.
Troubleshooting salami problems
- Fat smears during grinding. The meat was too warm. Refreeze everything for 20 minutes and continue; next batch, chill longer.
- Casings burst while stuffing. Too much pressure or dry casing. Keep the casing wet on the funnel and stuff with a steady, gentle hand.
- White powder on the casing. Likely good mould bloom or dried salt – wipe gently. Anything coloured or fuzzy gets thrown out without debate.
- Salami tastes flat. Undersalted mix or a skipped tasting step. Weigh the salt next batch; 2.5% is the rule.
- Links dried unevenly. Uneven thickness or one link in a draft. Rotate positions weekly and keep diameters consistent when stuffing.
FAQ
Is homemade salami safe to make at home?
Yes, when curing salt is measured exactly to the packet dose and the drying conditions are respected. Curing salt (No.2 for air-dried, No.1 for cooked) exists specifically to prevent the dangerous problems, and a kitchen scale is the tool that keeps you safe. The cooked version removes virtually all risk for beginners.
Can I make salami without curing salt?
For air-dried salami, no – curing salt is what makes slow drying safe, and skipping it is the one unforgivable mistake in curing. For a cooked salami, the same rule applies to the version sold as deli-style, but a simple seasoned pork sausage cooked through is safe without any curing salt at all; it just is not salami.
What cut of pork is best for salami?
Pork shoulder is the classic because it carries roughly the right lean-to-fat balance and grinds beautifully, with separate back fat added to reach about 30% fat overall. The shoulder from a well-raised pig needs nothing else.
How long does homemade salami take to cure?
Air-dried salami needs 4-8 weeks depending on diameter and conditions, judged by weight loss of 30-35% rather than the calendar. The cooked version is ready the next day once chilled. Plan the air-dried batch for early winter so it matures in the coolest weeks.
Can I make salami without a casing?
You can roll the mix into a foil-wrapped log and cook it low and slow (the version some call faux salami), and it makes excellent sandwich meat – but it is not the same thing, and no amount of seasoning will make it so. Casings are inexpensive and worth using properly.
Why did my salami turn out dry and hard?
It dried too fast or hung in low humidity, so the outside hardened into a shell before the inside matured – the classic case-hardening problem. Keep humidity around 75-80%, keep links out of direct airflow, and slice any affected links finely for cooking rather than eating plain.