Salami Drying Tracker: Weigh In, See Your Weight Loss
Drying salami is a long game, and the bathroom-scale question ("how much has it lost?") comes up every few days. This tracker does that math for you. Log a dated weight each time you weigh a link, and it shows how much weight the link has lost since your first entry.
New to salami? Start with How to Make Salami at Home, and figure your cure with the cure calculator before you stuff.
What the tracker does
- Takes a list of weigh-ins, each with a date and a weight in grams, pounds or ounces.
- Treats your earliest-dated entry as the starting weight. Make that the weight right after stuffing, the "green weight."
- For every entry, shows the day number (days since the first entry), the weight in grams, and the weight loss % from the starting weight.
- Shows your starting weight and the total weight lost so far up top, above a table with Date, Day, Weight (g) and Weight lost (%).
- Flags any entry that's heavier than the one before it, so you can check the scale or a typo.
What it doesn't do: it doesn't set a target, it doesn't say when a salami is "done," and it doesn't say whether anything is safe to eat. That's on purpose (see the safety notes below).
How to use it, step by step
- Weigh each link right after stuffing. Fill in Date, Weight and Unit, then click Add weigh-in. Track one link per tracker, since every number is figured from that one starting weight.
- Pick a unit for each weigh-in. Every entry has its own Unit choice (g, lb or oz), so you can mix them. The tracker converts everything to grams.
- Weigh on a regular schedule on the same scale, and add each reading with its date. Entries can go in any order, because the tracker sorts them by date.
- One entry per day. If you enter two weights for the same date, the tracker asks you to keep one.
- Watch for flags. A link shouldn't gain weight while drying, so a heavier reading usually means a scale or typing error. Use Remove on a row to fix a bad entry, or Clear all to start a new link.
Your weigh-ins are saved only in this browser on this device, and nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data or switching devices means starting over.
What the numbers mean
Weight loss % = (starting weight − current weight) ÷ starting weight × 100. A 1,000 g link that now weighs 650 g has lost 35%.
For reference points, BC Centre for Disease Control's worked dry-sausage example dries "until 35% weight loss from green weight" (BCCDC 3.13, Appendix 2). USDA FSIS says "Dried sausages range from 60% to 80% of their original weight before drying" (FSIS: Sausages and Food Safety, archived), which is 20% to 40% loss. Our salami guide uses about 35% as a practical target.
Safety notes: weight loss is not a safety test
- Weight loss is only a rough stand-in for water activity. And even a confirmed water activity below 0.85 means shelf stable, not pathogen-free. FSIS says: "It is not enough to only meet degree-hours, follow the minimum number of drying days for eliminating Trichinella, and achieve a final water activity for shelf-stability" (FSIS-GD-2023-0002).
- Thin sticks can hit the number too soon. FSIS: "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).
- Fast loss can mean case hardening. BCCDC: "Humidity that is too low or when there is too much air movement will cause case hardening and potential pathogen growth" (BCCDC 3.13). If a link is dropping fast, raise the humidity and slow the fan.
- Hitting your number doesn't fix earlier steps. Cure dose, pH 5.3 within the degree-hour limit, and clean handling still matter. FSIS: "Fermentation and drying alone are not particularly effective as lethality treatments" (FSIS-GD-2023-0002).
Keep homemade salami refrigerated, and keep uncooked homemade salami away from pregnant women, older adults, young children and anyone immunocompromised. More in is salami raw? and does salami go bad?
Sources
- BC Centre for Disease Control. Fermented Foods Guidance 3.13: Sausage. https://www.bccdc.ca/resource-gallery/Documents/Educational%20Materials/EH/FPS/Food/Fermented/Fermented_Foods_Guidance-3.13_Sausage.pdf
- USDA FSIS. Sausages and Food Safety (archived Feb 16, 2024). http://web.archive.org/web/20240216213407/https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/meat/sausages-and-food-safety
- USDA FSIS. FSIS-GD-2023-0002: RTE Fermented, Salt-Cured, and Dried Products Guideline (archived copy). https://web.archive.org/web/2025id_/https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/documents/FSIS-GD-2023-0002.pdf