Curing your own meat

FrenchTart · 23 Sep 2013 at 21:31

So.. I've been reading up on curing parm ham and the like of late.

Capicola looks like a nice easy one to start with. Fairly short curing time and not much need to mess with anything special. Also using the cheapest cut of pork.

I've just stuck a few cuts of pork shoulder in the fridge with salt, sugar and curing salt. I'll post a few updates at some point once there's something more exciting to show.

Has anyone done anything similar? I've cured bacon before and hams but this seems a bit more interesting/involved

FrenchTart · 30 Sep 2013 at 11:33

I'll get something posted up properly sometime

At least you'll enjoy

Yesterday I moved the cured pork shoulder meat into the casings. Have to say, natural casings are pretty rank - I think beef caps are much worse than the smaller casings you'd use for sausages.

Need to get some pics sorted before everything gets hung up properly. The things should be good to eat around mid December.

FrenchTart · 30 Sep 2013 at 14:04

randomshenans said:
Nice man, I'm going to be trying out your bacon so that I have a ton of it here for Christmas since we dont get it here and I can't rely on people bringing it over.
Also, it's cool being able to have your own!

Rocking. So far I've had quite mixed results with home made bacon. I'm trying a longer cure process (and being more strict with the amount of salt/sugar I use) right now to see if I can get a bit more consistency.

pitchfork said:
I've cured meat, but never cured my own "meat"

Aww man..you've never lived!

FrenchTart · 30 Sep 2013 at 15:04

randomshenans said:
Are you using just a belly for this? Bacon wise? So you'll get streaky? I wonder what cut I'd ask for here to get back, it's filet and belly, but you know these cheese eaters...

I've used belly and shoulder previously. The latest attempt is with belly. After years of preferring back bacon these days I prefer streaky as if I'm honest, the fat part of the bacon is the best bit

FrenchTart · 30 Sep 2013 at 15:28

Glaucus said:
Made salted beef a few times, didnt look great as didnt want to use curing salt, tasted great though.

But no nothing like that, be interested to see the final pics.

I think I remember you posting about that (or someone else perhaps). Personally the lack of decent colour is one of the things that has annoyed me in the past with my bacon curing efforts. I quite like making my food as presentable as possible

FrenchTart · 1 Oct 2013 at 23:51

I'd say that the botulism thing is semi worthwhile (though not with beef I imagine) even though it is a very small risk. That said, I wouldn't worry about it massively if it weren't for the colour retention. For me and most of the people that eat the food I prepare presentation is a reasonable part of the experience so part of my effort goes into that side of things even if a lore more of my effort goes into everything else about the meal. If presentation doesn't matter to you/your dining audience I would say that the reduction of botulism chance from incredibly minuscule to near enough zero might not be enough to justify messing around with extra ingredients.

FrenchTart · 2 Oct 2013 at 10:59

PlacidCasual said:
For bacon it's by the by I agree, for an air dried sausage however where the risk of botulism is significantly higher it's a no brainer for me, use the nitrates.

Yeah..I thought I wrote that in my previous post but clearly not (I was quite tired).

The extended time that the air-dried meat is at room temperature means that nitrates are a really good idea.

FrenchTart · 2 Oct 2013 at 16:54

molinari said:
Hey FT, would you be able to share your recipe and instructions for curing bacon? It's something I think I'd like to have a go at.

Sure. I'll do a proper post if this latest lot turns out well but basically it should be something along the lines of (for sweet-cure bacon):

Grab yourself some pork belly.

Trim the skin off but leave as much fat as possible behind.

For each 1kg of pork belly you need to mix up 30g of salt, 30g of sugar and 1 teaspoon of curing salt ("pink salt"..I use instacure #1). You can also add spices/herbs as you see fit. At the moment I'm just adding a large pinch of white pepper.

Very thoroughly mix your salt/sugar/etc ingredients and then apply them evenly to the surface of the pork belly. You want to have all of this mixture adhering to the surface of the pork.

Place in the fridge on a tray for a week. Turning it once per day. A lot of liquid will come out. This is normal and you don't need to drain it and there's no harm in the pork sitting in it.

After the week is up very thoroughly rinse the pork on all sides. If you noob this bit up you'll end up with extremely salty bacon.

Leave the bacon hung up or on a drying tray somewhere for a number of hours until the surface is completely dry. This will form a tacky pellicle which will protect the bacon from the elements and help prevent spoilage.

When it comes time to cut up the bacon you'll need a thin and sharp knife and lots of patience. Place the bacon slab in the freezer for an hour so it firms up. Once this is done you can slice it as thinly as you like/as able. If you have a meat slicer it will probably do a better job than you can by hand

That should be it really. You can also smoke the bacon after the pellicle creation step if you so wish. I've read about people experimenting with hot smoking the bacon but personally I plan to try cold smoking.

edit: 30g not 35g.

FrenchTart · 3 Oct 2013 at 10:52

molinari said:
Excellent, thanks for that. One question; should it be covered in the fridge with clingfilm or foil, or just left uncovered?

It doesn't matter too much to be honest. You can leave it uncovered in a tray or you can put it in a zip-lock bag (as long as you're sure it doesn't leak).

FrenchTart · 18 Oct 2013 at 17:54

So..I don't have pictures of the capicola just yet. To be honest I'm a bit worried about them so I'll hold off on those until the end of the process.

I have a small bit of leg that I'm going to turn into a mini parma ham curing at the moment though and I just picked up a cheap duck crown and have turned the breasts into duck prosciutto. Should be interesting

FrenchTart · 18 Nov 2013 at 23:05

Well, for those few of you that are interested, here are a few pics from the curing 'so far' stuff:

The pork shoulders in their dry cure mix before being made into capicola:

The current contents of my curing fridge. Humidity is a bit too high annoyingly but I've not had time to fix it. The 4 big chunks of meat on the left are capicola (pork shoulder inside a beef bung). The sausages are meant to be chorizo but ended up more like generic salami sadly. I have a better recipe for next time. The small package behind the sausage is duck prosciutto. The far right is a chunk of leg which will end up like a poor man's parma ham.

The first mini-chorizo/salamis that I took down for testing. Mould-tastic

Once peeled the chorizo/salami looked like this. Tasted fairly good but as I wanted chorizo I was a bit disappointed :/

FrenchTart · 18 Nov 2013 at 23:34

jellybeard999 said:
I thought the saltiness in the curing prevented mould?

Nope. Smoking can prevent mould. I plan to make some nduja soon which should resist mould a lot. Hopefully.

For most meat curing the right kind of mould is actually beneficial as it prevents the bad kinds of mould and improves the flavour of the meat. Generally to play it safe white mould is the only one you should keep but some non-white moulds are okay if you know what you're doing - I always wash off non-white mould with vinegar though.

edit:

This is a picture from some deli place that apparently passes food safety inspections :eek:

FrenchTart · 19 Nov 2013 at 17:19

molinari said:
Looks good FT.
I tried curing some pork belly the other week but I was a bit unsure of the end result so didn't want to eat it. I'm getting some more so that I can have another go this weekend. The trouble I have is somewhere to hang the meat to dry it out after the curing process.

Would you like any quantities for salt/etc tips?

I've found that my house actually has perfect humidity for curing - just a shame that I don't have anywhere that is reliably 12C.

Were you curing to make bacon or were you going for something like pancetta/etc?

FrenchTart · 19 Nov 2013 at 18:10

Jonny69 said:
I regularly do bacon out of belly and I've done ham from shoulder and salt beef from brisket a couple of times.

For bacon you dry cure it, so you basically need enough salt to keep it covered in salt, so keep adding it. The level of cure is how long you leave it salting for and I tend to cure it for about 2 days maximum, then wash the excess off and leave it in the fridge for a week wrapped in greaseproof before eating it. It keeps for about 3 weeks but is quite dry by that point, so difficult to cut. If you want to use nitrate, add about 2% by weight to the salt. It does reduce the salty taste in the pork but it's not essential.

Salt beef and ham needs a wet cure, so you immerse it in brine. The important thing is to make sure the brine is saturated, i.e. no more salt will dissolve, so just keep adding salt to the amount of water you're using until no more will dissolve. Again, 2% salt petre if you're using it. I do it in a freezer bag with the air squeezed out and tied at the top. This way you don't have to stand a plate on top and keep turning the meat like you do if doing it in a large bowl.

All of those I've done as two parts salt to one part soft brown sugar except salt beef which is just salt and nitrate.

Yeah. I think it may have been your post on here that first got me on the curing road with some bacon.

I've tried the excess salt method that you use and the "equilibrium cure" method and I've found that I've had much more reliable results with the equilibrium cure. I personally think this is better for someone new as you can take the guess work out things and end up with a reasonable amount of salt even if you leave your meat (har har) in the cure too long. I'm sure if you know what you're doing with the excess cure method you can get just as good results though.

My personal recipe for belly bacon at the moment is as follows:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SnJSWAfLFg35IK7nRXW4TAk7gdpGlXTAJ42J9GJ-KBU/edit?usp=sharing

FrenchTart · 19 Nov 2013 at 21:39

Glaucus said:
This is just pure awesome, well done Sir, well done.

Thanks

It's still early days. Hopefully the capicola and duck prosciutto will turn out well.

FrenchTart · 20 Nov 2013 at 10:56

molinari said:
I was going for bacon, and I used your instructions from #18 of this thread . I have some pork belly in the fridge but that won't last until the weekend, so I may have to slow cook that this evening and eat it all D!). I'll get some more to cure at the weekend.
I've just got your Google Docs instructions which I'll use (thanks). Once it's rinsed and left to dry for 12 hours, I take it I can cover it and leave it in the fridge until i chose to use it? Will it get the white mould whilst drying, or is that something that comes after several days of being dry?

Slow cooked pork belly is delicious

nom nom

Once you've dried it you should store it covered in the fridge, yeah. You won't get any white mould at all - that's more something you would get with salami and slower cured stuff.

My instructions on post #18 were okay but I've since refined the method quite a bit so definitely go for the google doc instructions this time instead, yeah

FrenchTart · 20 Nov 2013 at 11:00

randomshenans said:
SEND ME GOOOOOOOOGLE DOC PLZZZZZZZZZ

Do you have a gmail address? I could share all my recipe stuff with you if you like.

Otherwise, the bacon one is:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SnJSWAfLFg35IK7nRXW4TAk7gdpGlXTAJ42J9GJ-KBU/edit?usp=sharing

FrenchTart · 20 Nov 2013 at 11:26

randomshenans said:
want to do a feature for www.randomshenans.com on it?

I do have a gmail account, it's my hosted [email protected] account

Thanks muchly.

I've given you view access to the google folder. It's still work in progress as I've just been writing bits and pieces of stuff down as I get spare time in work

A piece on your website would be really awesome actually. My photography abilities are awful though... perhaps I could get a friend to take some pictures of things for me in the next few weeks.

DcD said:
Waiting for payday to buy a nice sized piece of beef for curing my own pastrami.

I've got salts for bacon too but I don't think I can get away with having both hunks of meat curing in the house at the same time. Perhaps I need a dedicated fridge like FrenchTart!

I've never made pastrami. Will you be posting in La Cuisine with your results?

The curing fridge is great for things like the chorizo and capicola but I just use vacuum seal bags and my normal fridge for bacon and the like. The bags make it kind of feel like you've not got a few kgs of uncooked meat just mouldering away

FrenchTart · 20 Nov 2013 at 14:13

DcD said:
Why, of course! I wouldn't dream of not showing La Cuisine.

Awesome. Looking forward to it

FrenchTart · 22 Nov 2013 at 18:13

Duck Prosciutto is good to go:

Duck breasts out of the curing chamber:

(I started cutting into them before I remembered to take pics - hence the incision marks)

One breast sliced:

A "baggy" of some of the duck prosciutto slices that I will be giving to a friend to sample:

One of my cats enjoying the leftover scraps