Salt curing refers to a step in the curing process wherein salt is used to lower water activity, and is also often combined with other spices to diffuse flavor throughout the meat. There are two broad methods for salt curing meat products: dry curing and wet curing. They can also be combined.
DRY CURING
Dry curing is the curing process used for most non-cooked charcuterie items, like prosciutto, guanciale, lomo, and more. It involves mixing salt, usually a few spices, often garlic, and sometimes sweetener, and evenly distributing them over the surface of the meat. The meat is left to cure about a day and a half per pound, then rinsed and dried before moving on to the next stage of the process. What is that next stage? Well, it depends on the preparation. After salt curing, many whole muscle cuts go on to be smoked (think bacon) or fermented and dried (think prosciutto).
In whole muscle curing, you’ll be centrally concerned with the ratio of salt to the weight of meat, and that will be the defining factor in your recipe. You’ll also be including a curing salt, whose quantity you’ll fix based on the weight of the meat. All other additions, such as garlic, sweetener, black pepper, cinnamon, or beer for that matter, are determined entirely by the salt and the meat.
In dry curing, salt ranges from 2.5–4% of the weight of the meat product. For products that will eventually be cooked, such as bacon or some hams, settle on a point within this range that suits your taste best. For products that will be fermented and dried such as lomo or prosciutto, figures in the 2.5–3.5% range will be best, so as not to overwhelm the palate, while still providing enough salinity to exclude a host of harmful microbes. As far as ratios are concerned, that is all you need — the weight of the meat, from which you can calculate the amount of salt. Add other seasonings as your creative urges lean. Master recipes are listed below to get you started. You’ll notice that there is an optional sweetener included at exactly half the volume as salt. This is a standard ratio for dry cures that include sweetener in their mix. Remember that sweetener is widely variable. Some recipes require none at all, while sugar-cured hams and other traditional preparations call for as much as twice as much sugar as salt. For recipes where I have included it without noting that it is optional, I am recommending it as a flavoring agent, and including it will get you the familiar flavor you are used to. Feel free to omit it entirely, but when you get to salami recipes in the next chapter, you’ll need to be more careful. Often, in fermented foods, sugar is included as food for the microorganisms, and tampering with it in the recipes will lead to less than optimum results.
Evenly spread the cure mixture over the surface of the meat.
Sodium nitrite (Cure #1) recommended quantities for dry cures are 4 oz. to 100 lb. of meat, or 0.2 oz. for 5 lb. of meat. For whole muscle cures, you can legally use 4 times this much, but I have cured whole muscle safely for years using the minimum recommendation, which is for ground product.
Press the dry cure into the meat’s surface with your hands.
Sirloin with tasso ham dry cure
Sodium nitrate (Cure #2) recommended quantities for dry cures are 3.5 oz. to 100 lb. of meat, or 0.175 oz. per 5 lb. of meat. You can also legally use up to 4 times of Cure #2 for whole muscle preparations.
To prepare a dry cure, weigh all ingredients carefully, then mix thoroughly. Pass the dry cure through a sieve to remove any clumps. Clumps can cause “cure burn,” or points in the meat where a higher concentration of salt produces a more drastic drying effect, which can lead to off flavors, poor texture, and discoloration. Rinse the meat and pat it dry, then lay it on a sheet pan or in another nonreactive container. Carefully tip the container of dry cure to evenly sprinkle the mixture over the surface of the meat, roughly the thickness of a dime. Press the dry cure into the meat’s surface with your hands. Flip the meat over and repeat on the other side, flipping and repeating until you run out of cure mixture. You can also distribute half of the cure over the meat’s surface, and then save the remaining cure to apply later. I call this a “split cure,” and it is traditional in many preparations.
These pork belly cuts have salt cured for 9 days, and are ready for smoking.
Once you’ve applied the cure, you’ll want to label the product with the date, weight, and any other information you’ll want to remember (percent salt content is common). Refrigerate the curing meat for a day and a half per pound, overhauling it (turning it over every day, or at even intervals) to ensure that it cures evenly. If you are planning on a split cure, remove the product after half of the allotted time and administer the remaining cure mixture over its surface, then return it to the refrigerator for the remaining time allotted.
INGREDIENTS
Master Dry Cure Recipe
Per 5 lb. of meat:
2.8 oz. salt
1.4 oz. sweetener (optional)
0.2 oz. Cure #1
Wet Cure for Beef, Lamb, Goat, and Pork
Per gallon of water:
2 lb. kosher salt
Up to 1 lb. sweetener (optional)
Spices (optional)
4.2 oz. Cure #1
Wet Cure for Poultry or Fish
Per gallon of water:
½ lb. kosher salt
¼ lb. sweetener (optional)
Spices (optional)
4.2 oz. Cure #1
When the meat is finished salt curing, you’ll encounter a noticeable difference in its texture and color, finding it much firmer and darker in color. This is a sign of success! Remove it from its container and rinse it thoroughly, then pat it dry and let it rest and dry while you prepare the next phase in the process. Remember that the next step will be determined by your recipe or end goal. At this point, you may go on to smoke the meat, bake it, or hang it to ferment and dehydrate. Remember that after the salt curing step, the meat is not yet finished or shelf stable. I find this is a common misconception in America. Because we have no umbrella term for preserved meats like charcuterie or salumi, we tend to refer to groups of preserved meats as cured meat. This has led more than one beginner to assume that a “salt cure” is all there is to it, when truly, the curing step is only the beginning of the process of meat preservation.
It is best practice to weigh the meat again after it is finished salt curing. Record this weight in the same way you recorded its beginning weight. Tracking weight loss throughout the process is a good way to keep track of the progress of the meat’s eventual dehydration, and thus its successful preservation.
WET CURING
Wet curing is similar to dry curing in its ultimate action on the meat, but it simply diffuses the salt, sweetener, and spice mixture into water or other liquid. Many people refer to this process as “brining” the meat, so you may hear it referred to this way. However, be aware that there is brining used strictly to tenderize and flavor meat and brining used to salt-cure meat. Curing brines and flavoring brines differ drastically in their salt content, so in general I strive to refer to curing brines as “wet cures” and flavoring brines as just “brines.” You will most often find both words used in curing applications.
Wet cures can be mixed up in a bucket and the meat submerged into them, or they can be pumped into the meat using meat syringes. It is also possible to pump a wet cure into a muscle, and rub it on the outside with a dry cure. I call this a “combo cure” — a combination of wet and dry curing techniques.
Wet curing uses many different ratios of salt to liquid medium, based on the type of meat being cured and the desired cure time. This is the best thing about wet curing: the saltier the brine, the faster the cure. This saved my skin a few times when I owned my own shop. Oops! Easter is around the corner and we forgot to brine the hams! No worries, jack up the salt in those wet cures and get the hams ready in no time. Salt in any liquid solution is measured in degrees of salinity, using a tool called a salometer. Professionals who use these tools can tweak salt in many ways depending on how they want the cure to perform. Luckily for you, different degrees of wet cure have been pre-recorded and wid
ely shared, so you only need to search “brine tables” or “brining tables” online to find a host of different approaches to creating wet cures. The simplest forms of these tables will tell you, per gallon of water, how much salt and how much nitrite to add to create a specific degree wet cure. I tend toward 70-degree wet cures for most red meats and pork and 20-degree wet cures for poultry and fish. Note that the “water” can also be stock, beer, or other liquid.
A trimmed beef heart, with wet cure ready
Beef heart in wet cure
Nitrite quantities for wet cures are based on the amount of salt you are adding to the cure, as well as regulations on parts per million for food safety parameters. The “pick-up” — #1 the amount of the wet cure the meat actually absorbs — can also vary based on the technique used to expose it to the cure. In the industry, meat is injected with needles, pumped, tumbled, or simply immersed. Each of these techniques can alter pick-up. For this reason, I won’t go into much detail about pick-up and nitrite conversion. The vast majority of homesteaders are immersion curing (submerging meat in a bucket of brine) or, less frequently, pumping, and in both of those cases we can assume a 10% pick-up of the cure, for which the recommended nitrite quantities are listed below.
Method
1. To prepare a wet cure, gently heat the smallest amount of water you need in order to dissolve the salt and any sweetener you’ve included in the recipe. Meanwhile, pour the remaining liquid into the bucket or bin that you’ll use for the meat, and add the curing salts plus any spices or other ingredients. Set the bucket aside. When the salt and sweetener are dissolved in the heated water, remove the pot from the heat and allow it to cool completely to room temperature. You may add ice to speed the process, but note that this will dilute the cure, so you must factor that in. When the water is cooled completely, pour it into the bucket with the remaining ingredients, then transfer the bucket to the refrigerator. You want the wet cure to be completely chilled before you introduce the meat to it. Placing raw meat in warm liquid alters the proteins on the outside of the meat surface, in a sense par-cooking or poaching the outside of the cut, which is not what you want.
2. Once the wet cure is chilled completely, you can add the meat. Weigh it down with a plate or other object to keep it entirely submerged in the wet cure. Every day, or at regular intervals, remove the weight and turn the meat to ensure it is evenly curing. If you are using the recipes from above, you’ll keep the meat in cure one to one and a half days per pound before removing it, rinsing, and drying. Weight the meat once again, recording its weight after wet curing, and then proceed to the next step in the recipe or process, which could be smoking or fermenting and drying.
BACON
INGREDIENTS
Per 5 lb. piece of pork belly, skin on:
2.8 oz. salt
1.4 oz. brown sugar
0.7 oz. fresh ground black pepper
0.2 oz. Cure #1 (optional, because you will cook the bacon before eating it)
Bacon can be made with any part of the hog, but in America we tend toward the belly. Canadian bacon is made from the loin cut, and many folks are partial to shoulder bacon, produced from the collar. Leave the skin on during the cure and while smoking. This achieves two things: ensures the bacon isn’t too salty and makes sure the skin will keep moisture in the meat while it cooks.
What differentiates bacon from pancetta is that it is cooked. You can bake it in the oven and it will still be bacon. Traditionally, however, bacon is salt cured and then smoked. For best results, cold smoke it. (More info on smoking in Chapter 6.)
You will need to use a nitrite, in the form of Cure #1, ONLY if you do not plan to cook the bacon to temperature at any point during the process. This is because cooking a product to temperature kills botulism bacteria, so if you hot smoke the bacon, or even if you plan to slice it and fry it as is traditional in America, you can omit the nitrate all together. If you plan to cold smoke the bacon, or if there are any applications for that cold-smoked product that do not call for cooking the bacon, you must use Cure #1 to ensure the product’s safety.
Method
1. Mix the cure ingredients evenly, and sieve if necessary. Distribute over the belly evenly, and place in a nonreactive container, labeled clearly with the weight of the cut and the date. Cure a 5-lb. cut in the refrigerator for 7–8 days, then remove it, rinse, and weigh again. Allow the meat to dry as you prepare the smoker. You can even set a box fan in front of it to get it extra dry. The drier a piece of meat is, the more readily smoke will adhere to it. If hot smoking, smoke the bacon at temperatures no higher than 200°F, until the internal temperature of the meat is 140°F. Cool to room temperature, then store in the fridge until ready to serve. To serve, peel back the skin, slice off strips, and fry on medium heat until perfectly crispy.
2. If you are cold smoking the bacon, smoke it at temperatures no higher than 80°F until it has lost at least ⅓ of its weight (that’s the weight you recorded after salt curing the belly). If you plan to cold smoke the bacon and you do not plan to fry it before serving, you must use Cure #1 during the salt curing step to prevent botulism. See Chapter 1 for more information on the role of nitrates.
CORNED BEEF & BEEF PASTRAMI
INGREDIENTS
Corning Brine
2.5 qt. distilled water
5 Tbsp kosher salt
5 Tbsp evaporated cane juice crystals
2 Tbsp Cure #1 (optional)
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 Tbsp allspice
½ tsp garlic
¾ tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp bay leaf, crushed
5 lb. beef brisket or 5 lb. of beef heart (it will take a couple)
Pastrami Rub
2 Tbsp black pepper
2 Tbsp coriander seeds
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp mustard seed
1 Tbsp sweet paprika
1 Tbsp cinnamon
Few people realize that corned beef and pastrami are so closely related. Corned beef is wet cured and boiled until cooked, and pastrami is wet cured via the same process, parboiled, and then rubbed with additional seasonings and smoked. This recipe gives you the approach for both, so you can go either way.
This recipe uses beef heart, because using the whole animal is for winners, and because beef heart pastrami does not suck. If you don’t want to use organ meat, brisket is a common cut used for corning and pastrami. If you do use heart, you’ll need to do quite a bit of trimming. There is a lot of silverskin on the outside of the heart, plus some extra inner workings you’ll need to remove.
Method
1. Dissolve salt, sugar, and cure in the water, then refrigerate until brine reaches 40 degrees. Injecting or pumping the brine into the meat is ideal, using a meat syringe, but if you are not equipped for this, simply place the meat or heart into the brine and pack loosely in a nonreactive container. Place all the dry spices except the garlic into a grinder and grind them coarsely. Add to brine with garlic. Cure the meat in this brine for 3 days in the refrigerator, if you were able to inject the meat. If you did not, brine it for at least 10 days.
2. Remove the meat from the brine and rinse. Pat dry. If you’re making corned beef, prepare a pot of water and bring it to a boil. Add the meat or heart and cook until the internal temperature is around 120°F. Remove and cool.
3. If you’re going for pastrami, prepare a pot of water just as though you were making corned beef, but simply parboil the meat or the heart for about 5 minutes (some people skip this step, but I swear it makes better pastrami). Remove from water, then cool slightly and rub with the pastrami spice mixture and prepare the smoker. Wrap the meat in foil to keep moisture and spices in, then smoke until the internal temperature is 120–125°F. You want low temperatures — no higher than 200°F. Use hickory and oak or maple woods, or a blend of your own creation.
An untrimmed heart of beef
Denuding the outside of the heart
Trimming the heart’s inside
4. To serve, slice very thinly, across the grain of the meat.
LARDO
INGREDIENTS
40 oz./2½ lb. pork back fat, trimmed of all meat and squared off
1.75 oz. salt
1 oz. cane sugar
0.2 oz. Cure #1
0.2 oz. rosemary
0.5 oz. ground black pepper
0.2 oz. ground juniper berries
Lardo is dry cured back fat, usually served sliced thinly on an appetizer plate, or on bread. I include the recipe here so you’ll have lardo for your Calabrese-Style Salami With Vanilla (page 107). Be sure to avoid light during the curing process, as light turns fat rancid. This is true of all cured meats, but when you’re curing straight fat, as in the case of lardo, you’ll want to be extra vigilant.
Please note Do not attempt this recipe before reading Chapter 5, which details the fermentation and curing required for finishing this preparation.
Method
1. Combine the cure ingredients and distribute evenly over the surfaces of the back fat. Place in a nonreactive bag or container and label with the date and weight. I have cured lardo in the fridge for over a year, but you can also leave it for a week before rinsing, weighing again, and hanging it in a climate-controlled charcuterie cabinet (see page 91). The lardo is finished when it has lost 40–50% of its weight.
Pure Charcuterie: The Craft & Poetry of Curing Meat at Home Page 6