Curing your own meat

molinari said:
Looks good!

Got myself a nice piece of pork belly from Turner & George at the weekend, which is now curing. Next time I'll put the belly in the sealed bag before adding and rubbing in the curing salt and seasoning, as I did it on a plate this time and there was salt & seasoning left on the plate and my hands. I hope there was enough of the 1.75g of curing salt on the belly!
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I'm sure it'll be fine. It's hard not to lose some of it when you're applying the cure to be honest :)

Looking forward to seeing the results. At the moment all my pork belly curing has been done with rather cheap cuts. I keep meaning to order in some of the rare breed pork from T&G to try out.
 
Today I minced some pork and added ridiculous amounts of various types of chillies to make nduja. They're cold smoking at the moment along with more regular bacon (and a small batch of maple cured bacon).

I've also just discovered salmon candy so I might have to give that a try sometime...
 
molinari said:
You've got a right little meat industry going on FT :).
That Salmon candy sounds awesome. If only I had the time, space and dedication!
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Yeah..I'm a bit obsessed at the moment :p I'm sure in a month or two I'll get bored.

I tend to have an hour or two to kill after work most days so I usually do this in that time. I think soon I will be back to having less spare time though so I won't be able to devote quite so much to this :/
 
That pastrami looks awesome. What was the method you used (assuming you haven't already posted it)? :)

edit: my capicola are pretty much done but I've not really got round to trying them out. I'm feeling a bit ill at the moment so the idea of peeling back all the mould and such isn't really doing it for me.
 
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Sounds great. I still have lots of stuff sitting around. I keep meaning to cut open some of the capicola. Perhaps I'll try that this week.
 
valve90210 said:
My fear with such things is knowing when something is done...ie cured enough?!

I did some Gradvalax a few years back which was delicious but I had no real idea how to tell when it was ready to eat.

Any tips?
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Weigh the food before you hang it to cure. It's done when it has lost approx 30% of it's weight :)
 
PlacidCasual said:
For air drying initial to final weight can be a good indicator. For wetter cures time and recipe are the only way to go, practice and repeat.
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I can't think of any situation where it makes more sense to wet cure rather than equilibrium dry cure. I don't mean to sound arsey - genuine question :)
 
PlacidCasual said:
Gravalax for instance isn't air dried neither is salt beef/pastrami/gammon/wiltshire ham etc.
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I didn't say air dried - I said brining vs dry cure (and equilibrium curing).

In such situations as salt beef and the like you can't use the weight method, yeah. With equilibrium curing you can afford to leave the cure for what would be far too long compared to the excess cure method though.

There are lots of recipes out there that use excess cure and a degree of pot luck due to supposed methods of "leave it for X days" when the amount of time needs to be different based on the thickness/weight of the meat.
 
So... I moved house and a lot of the meat didn't come with me sadly :/ I tried the capicola and it was good though. And I still have some semi-cured super garlicky chorizo in the freezer. The Nduja is still hanging around too. Must get round to trying that.

At the moment I'm making some lamb bacon. should be interesting :)

edit: I've just discovered this recipe for spreadable chorizo. How amazing would that be?
 
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Tried some lamb bacon over the weekend and it is utterly divine. It tastes somewhat similar to the sort of lamb you get with a shawarma. Really good :)
 
DcD said:
For stuff that requires hanging/drying, do you have any tips at to DIY places to hang, FT? I'm a bit limited on space.
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Got any cupboards or other places that remain cool? Though I found I had to be a lot more vigilant of bad mould in such places (not an impossible task though). If you've got an old fridge that can work too though ideally you want to keep the meat at ~11C if I remember correctly. If it weren't summer time I'd suggest hanging in a shed or some such though you would need to use cheese cloth to keep the insects away from the meat.

ganesh said:
How did you manage the long cold smoking process? Would love to replicate this but not sure how I'd manage cold smoking over such a long duration.
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In the past I have used this:

http://www.hotsmoked.co.uk/hot-cold-smokers/proq-cold-smoke-generator/prod_59.html

I ended up having to refill it a couple of times for the nduja. It works very well though.

Regarding that recipe - personally I wouldn't make it unless you *really* like allspice. I found it a bit overpowering. This recipe for spreadable chorizo looks better to me :) http://frombellytobacon.com/2014/02/27/spreadable-chorizo/
 
Yeah, many have more issues with removing than adding. If it is too high at best it will take much longer to cure, at worst it will spoilt. Most likely it will simply take a little longer to cure though. The higher humidity also encourages less good kinds of mould so you'll need to be vigilant about that and clean dodgy spots with vinegar.

If you convert a frost-free fridge you will probably need to add humidity however, at least after the initial phase of drying where the meat loses the initial liquid.
 
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DcD said:
So best to aim for a wine fridge that's got a humidity control built in?
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What kind of humidity control does it have? I'm guessing it's just for removing humidity as much as possible rather than setting an actual humidity level? If so it could work but you may find yourself having to add more humidity in later on.
 
Marvt74 said:
There's a sandwich shop round the corner from my office that does spreadable chorizo for sandwiches. It was fantastic.
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Nice. I spoke to some of the guys at Littlewoods butcher in Heaton Chapel about nduja the other day and they said they would be more than happy to grind up a ton of pork fat in the way it would require. I'm going to get some more beef bungs and make this recipe I think :)
 
Marvt74 said:
I work just over the road from the Hilton on Deansgate. The sandwich shop is above a chippy round the corner on Liverpool road just next to Cask (great bar if you've never been and you can take good from the chippy in with you!)

It was a few months ago I last went in so not sure if it's a regular option but I'll try get in one day next week to check if they still do it.
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Awesome, thanks :) The beer in cask is indeed great. There's a pizza place near there that does nduja pizzas too.
 
Just picked up a 7-8kg (I forget the exact weight) pork leg for curing. Annoyingly I wasn't paying attention and the trotter part got cut off but heyho.

Going to be extremely careful with this one as it will be an expensive mistake if it goes wrong...
 
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