So it's to announce the winner of the dried sausage throwdown that I setup in a blog post a couple of months back. The test was to create two versions of the same dried sausage recipe with one using pork from Heritage pigs and the second with pork from Costco. The Heritage pork was Dartagnon.com. The recipe used for the side by side was for a Finocchiona. The recipe for the dry cured sausage can be found here.
The taste testing was done by 20 friends, family members, festers of which many I would consider foodies. The taste test was blinded. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of one of the sausages. However, the winner by a 80% to 20% split was the Costco pork version of the recipe. The best response as to the difference was that the with the Costco version more of the spice flavor came across and that was desirable. It also tells me that the meat flavor was muted from the Costco version.
As a consolation to the Heritage pork sausage, it turns out whichever version is put on a plate in front of these folks was devoured in short order.
The results were a surprise to me. I was part of the 20% minority, but my test was not blinded. So I could have been blinded by marketing.... For the near future, I will use Costco pork for the dried sausages since its about 1/4 the cost, and use Heritage cuts of pork for the whole muscle curing that I am doing.
Happy Curing!