Curing your own meat

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 :)
 
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:
pork_shoulder_dry_cure.jpg


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.
curing_fridge_contents.jpg


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


Once peeled the chorizo/salami looked like this. Tasted fairly good but as I wanted chorizo I was a bit disappointed :/
salami_tester_peeled.jpg
 
jellybeard999 said:
I thought the saltiness in the curing prevented mould?
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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:

3794395657_ecfa36a026.jpg
 
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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.
 
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.
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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?
 
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.
 
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.
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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 said:
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?
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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?
 
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?
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Slow cooked pork belly is delicious :D 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 :)
 
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!
 
randomshenans said:
want to do a feature for www.randomshenans.com on it? :P


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

Thanks muchly.
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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!
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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 :p
 
FrenchTart said:
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 :p
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Why, of course! I wouldn't dream of not showing La Cuisine.
 
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