...beginning the next phase

A few months ago, my friend Mia asked if I would make her a leg of prosciutto.  We agreed that if she bought two legs along with the requisite salt and brown sugar, I would cure both, give her one, and keep one for my family.  When the timing finally worked out, she couldn't source the meat that weekend, and our window closed.  The weather was warming up, and the basement wasn't staying quite cool enough.

Get your mind out of the gutter!

I had been kicking around the idea of curing smaller cuts of meat and setting up some kind of drying chamber in the basement - I considered enclosing the deepest, coolest corner of the foundation in some kind of insulated box, and if necessary adding ice and/or an evaporative cooling system.  

One week, my wife and kids were going out of town for a couple of days, so without a drying system plan done yet, I went and bought a big pork loin. 

I put it in the fridge for the night and decided I would be spending the next day searching for lonzino recipes and looking on Craigslist for free or cheap refrigerators...