Dry Cured Sausage: How to Make It with T-SPX Starter Culture
Posted by Walton's on 13th Nov 2026
Did you know many of our favorite deli meats like salami, prosciutto, and capocollo are never cooked? Instead, they’re dry-cured, an ancient preservation method that’s still trusted today. The result is a product that’s safe, flavorful, and delicious.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the whole process of making dry-cured sausage with Bactoferm T-SPX starter culture, from grinding pork butts to checking pH, doing the degree hour math, and drying to your target weight.
Dry-cured sausage never sees a cooking temperature. The safety comes not from heat, but from two things:
- Lowering the meat’s pH with a starter culture
- Carefully controlling temperature and humidity while it dries
T-SPX is a slow-acting culture that works well at lower temperatures, making it perfect for beginners and for long, traditional-style cures.
Soak inedible collagen casings for 15 minutes in 15°C (59°F) water with a 15% salt solution.
Gather your supplies
The first step in making dry-cured sausage is gathering the right supplies and equipment. For beginners, we recommend Bactoferm T-SPX Meat Starter Culture, which is crucial for achieving the pH drop that makes the meat safe to eat.
Next, choose a classic seasoning like our Salami Seasoning. You can enhance the flavor with extra black peppercorns or a splash of dry red wine for added authenticity.
Pick the right pork
Pork is widely regarded as the best choice for dry-cured sausage, and pork butts are ideal thanks to their fat content. Pick pork butts with good fat caps and minimal purge in the vacuum package, or buy them fresh from a local butcher for the best results.
Grind for the right particle size
Particle size is a big part of what makes dry-cured sausage look special. Trim off the fat cap and any other large portions of fat and grind them separately from the lean.
- Grind the fat once through a 3/8 in plate to create nice, large fat chunks in the finished product
- Grind the lean pork twice: first through a 3/8 in plate, then through a 3/16 in plate
- Use the 3/16 in plate instead of the 1/8 in plate. Slightly larger particles make it easier for moisture to move from the inside of the sausage to the surface, where it can evaporate
Wake up the culture
While you grind, mix the correct amount of T-SPX for your batch in lukewarm water (70 to 100°F). Let it sit for at least 20 minutes. This starts to wake the culture up and activate it.
Mix and stuff
Add the T-SPX, seasoning, and Sure Cure to the meat and mix with a meat mixer.
Stuff the mixture into your casing of choice. We recommend inedible collagen casings. They take more prep, but they have the ideal transfer rate to make sure the meat dries correctly. Remember the Rule of 15s when you prep them: 15 minutes in 15°C (59°F) water with a 15% salt solution.
Mix until just before you reach protein extraction, the point where the meat gets sticky. You want it just tacky, not fully bound.
Ferment in the chamber
Hang the sausage in the dry curing chamber, like our 135L Drying Cabinet, at 72°F with the humidity as high as possible, around 85%.
T-SPX is a slower-acting culture, but it also has the lowest optimal growth temperature. That lets you do the entire process in the curing chamber, where other cultures might need a smoker or another device that can reach temperatures above 100°F.
Check pH and do the math
After about 3.5 days, check your sausage. Your goal is a pH below 5.3.
Now for a little math, but the formula is easy. Degree hours = the degrees above 60°F × the number of hours it took to reach your target pH. Stay under the limit for your fermentation temperature.
72°F is 12° above 60°F. 12 × 84 hours (3.5 days) = 1,008 degree hours, safely under the 1,200 limit.
Dry to your target
Once you hit a pH below 5.3, change the temperature and humidity to dry the sausage. Lower the temperature to around 60°F (54 to 66°F is acceptable) and set the humidity around 65%.
The humidity needs to swing, sometimes up around 72% and sometimes down into the high 50s. Those swings draw moisture from the interior of the sausage and let it evaporate off the casing. Without them, the sausage won’t dry correctly.
Slice and enjoy
Once the sausage has lost 25 to 50% of its weight, pull it from the cabinet, slice it, and enjoy!
- Store finished sausage in vacuum packages
- Keep it in the fridge for extended shelf life
- It’s perfectly fine to grab some for a long backpacking trip without refrigeration
Dry-cured sausage takes patience, but the process comes down to a few numbers: a pH below 5.3, degree hours under your limit, and 25 to 50% weight loss. T-SPX makes it approachable for beginners because the whole cure can happen right in your curing chamber.