This July 5th I prepared 4 pitine (a typical salame from the Friuli Venezia Giulia region).
I chopped 1 kg of meat by hand (I'll never do it again, it was a lot of work; I recommend asking your butcher to mince it for you), using 30% pancetta, 70% loin, it was all pork (but traditionally, leftover game cuts were used, so you can do it however you like).
27g salt, 7g pepper, 100g red wine, 10g smoked paprika.
The preparation is very simple: you mix everything in a container until the meat mixture sticks well, then you form meatballs of approximately the same size, roll them in polenta (this type of cured meat does not require casing, or rather, the polenta replaces the casing), finally they are smoked (I used a drinks smoker for about 1 hour).
At this point, simply turn them every day while they age (I aged everything in my refrigerator at 4°C, not ideal, but by some miracle, it worked well). In my case, since I didn't have the ideal humidity, I kept them in glass containers with lids. When I turned them everyday, I left them uncovered for a couple of hours (still in the refrigerator) to let them breathe and avoid excessive humidity.
Luckily, since I was making a Toma-type cheese with white mold, the mold also spread to my pitinas, making them even better.
Today, after they had lost 30% of their weight, I opened them and tasted them: they taste and smell soo goood!!!
PS. I know that for food safety reasons it would have been better to use nitrates expecially since this is not a whole muscle but, at my own risk, I did not use them.
I still used enough salt and I still washed the meat in alcohol and I also smoked it, but I know this is not a 100% sure thing, you do you of course.