Start Here

Step 1: Learn the process

How to make salami at home. Our step-by-step guide, including the safety limits of home curing and drying.

Step 2: Do the cure math

Cure calculator. Enter your meat weight and cure, and get the cure amount in grams, checked against the federal nitrite limit.

Step 3: Track the drying

Once your salami is stuffed and fermented, it hangs to dry. This is the long, quiet part, and the scale is your best friend.

Drying tracker. Log your weigh-ins and see how much weight your salami has lost since its starting weight. It does the math; it doesn't tell you when a salami is done or safe to eat.

Here's how we'd use it:

1. Weigh each link right after stuffing. That's the "green weight," and it goes in as your first entry.
2. Weigh again on a regular schedule, on the same scale, and log each reading with its date.
3. Watch the percent go up. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) says "Dried sausages range from 60% to 80% of their original weight before drying" (FSIS: Sausages and Food Safety, archived), which works out to 20% to 40% loss. BC Centre for Disease Control's worked example dries "until 35% weight loss from green weight" (BCCDC 3.13, Appendix 2).

This part's serious. Hitting your number doesn't make a salami safe. FSIS says "Fermentation and drying alone are not particularly effective as lethality treatments" (FSIS-GD-2023-0002, archived). Skinny sticks are a trap, too: "smaller diameter products tend to dry faster than large diameter products, and the shorter drying time is often not enough time to achieve the same reductions in bacteria" (FSIS-GD-2023-0002, archived). So the tracker is a log, not a finish line. Chamber settings and what can go wrong are in Drying salami.

Step 4: Know how long it keeps

Does salami go bad? How long it lasts in the pantry, fridge and freezer, and when white mold is fine.

The quick version, for store-bought hard or dry sausage, straight from the FSIS chart: "Whole, 6 weeks in pantry; indefinitely in refrigerator," 3 weeks in the fridge once it's opened, and 1 to 2 months in the freezer (FSIS: Sausages and Food Safety, archived). FSIS also says "All sausage — except dry sausage — is perishable and therefore must be kept refrigerated" (FSIS, archived).

Two heads-ups. Cooked salami (cotto) "must be refrigerated" (FSIS, archived). And homemade salami doesn't get the pantry pass. Keep homemade salami refrigerated. That's our rule, not a USDA time; no source gives storage times for homemade salami (Does salami go bad?). If the label says "Keep Refrigerated," keep it refrigerated.

When in doubt, throw it out.

Just here to eat it?

That works too. Head to Eat & Explore for types of salami, pepperoni and salami roses.

CellarCure is for general education, not professional food-safety advice. See our full disclaimer.