36 replies to this topic

[ianinfrance]

I'm not sure that what I do here in France is going to be much of a help, but here goes. I can't live without smoked bacon, and they don't make it here. So I've had to learn how to do it. I won't claim it's the world's best, or anything silly, but it's way better than anything I've ever bought in a supermarket in the UK.

What I get here in France is "sel nitrité" This contains 0.6% sodium nitrite and is a straight 1 for 1 replacement for salt in any charcuterie recipe, obviating the need to fiddle around with calculating proportion of cure #1. However, in the Americas (and UK) that's what you have to do. So to cure sensibly in the States you need very accurate and sensitive scales to make sure you don't overdo the nitrite (which is highly toxic).

I use my salt at the rate of 2.5% w/w and dry cure under vacuum. I use an equilibrium cure, which means that if you leave the meat curing too long, it's entirely unimportant.

So.... I make up a mixture of one part demerara or other raw cane sugar to two parts of nitrited salt. I add quite a bit of black pepper corns after grinding them fine in a little rotary coffee mill, and some dried thyme.

I then regrind everything together to make absolutely sure they are perfectly homogenous. You really don't want to find you've hit a high concentration of nitrite.

So... using 2.5% w/w of salt, that will give 37.5g cure per kilo of meat. (the weight of spices and herbs is irrelevant).

Prepare your vacuum pack bag so it's long enough to hold your meat, folding back the top so it doesn't get brine all over it. Now rub your cure well into the meat, working it into all the nooks and crannies. If the skin is on, use 90% flesh side, 10% skin side, otherwise use 60%:40% flesh: fat. When it's well rubbed in, slide the meat into the bag, wipe the edges unfold and vacuum pack. Measure the thickness at the thickest part. It's usually about 2 inches. Calculate the curing time as follows 2 days plus one day for every half inch thickness. (2in would therefore give 6 days, but to cure a loin (say 4 in) might take 10 days.

Stick it in the fridge (less than 5°C to discourage botulism) and cure it for the time required, not shorter, though anything up to 50% more will do no harm.

When the time is up, remove from the pack, rinse and dry. Put back on a rack in the fridge to skin up for a day or two. The bacon can be fried and eaten like that - in the UK it is called unsmoked or "green" bacon.

I cold smoke my bacon. Dead easy to do with the "cold smoke generator" which you can get from MacsBBQ in the UK. I use that with my Bradley, but just using the Bradley as a container. I can't afford their Brickets. One single charge of the smoker lasts 10 hours and I find it's perfect to give me bacon the way I like it. Salmon can even be done at the same time though I give that only 5 hours. The CSG gives out very little heat, so as long as your ambient temperature is under 20C, you can cold smoke with it without a problem.

I like to leave my bacon to settle down 24 hours after smoking, but it's by no means essential.

Whew....

As for combining brine and dry rub. I sort of do that to make gammon. In fact I inject half of my total salt as a flavoured brine to make sure the centre of the meat is rapidly protected against botulism, and rub the rest on the outside. The cure takes about a fortnight. (I can give detailed quantities if requited, though the calculations are a little complex).

Hot smoking is only an advantage in countries where you can't rely on the pork being parasite free. The quality of the bacon is way better if cold smoked.

All the above is of course only my opinion. But it's shared by most people who've tasted my bacon.

[Blether]

My curing salts arrived and I just sliced the first few pieces of my first batch of nitrite-included bacon, wet-cured in an equalisation brine (3% salt, 200ppm sodium nitrite) for 7 days:

I think 3% & 200ppm is a heavier cure than i will settle on, but I'm happy the result is this good.

[Blether]

I forgot to say that I also used 2% sugar.

I made up my own spreadsheet. Because I'm a perfectionist, I calculated the salt, sugar & nitrite amounts using the formula (meat & water weight) * (1+(tgtpct/((1-tgtpct)/1)/1)) to ensure the percentages were accurate to the total final weight rather than the initial weight of the major ingredients (the meat & water). (I mean tgtpct to mean 'target percentage').

The spreadsheet shows this most clearly, but to illustrate simply, if you have 100ml water and you want to add enough salt to make a 5% salt solution, then if you add 5g of salt you end up with 5/105 = 4.76% salt. You need the more complicated formula above to calculate how much salt to add so that the salt is 5% of the total of the added salt and the water. At least, it seems that way to me.

Spreadsheet available as a download here.

Edited by Blether, 13 December 2011 - 05:35 AM.

[qrn]

I forgot to say that I also used 2% sugar.

I made up my own spreadsheet. Because I'm a perfectionist, I calculated the salt, sugar & nitrite amounts using the formula (meat & water weight) * (1+(tgtpct/((1-tgtpct)/1)/1)) to ensure the percentages were accurate to the total final weight rather than the initial weight of the major ingredients (the meat & water). (I mean tgtpct to mean 'target percentage').

The spreadsheet shows this most clearly, but to illustrate simply, if you have 100ml water and you want to add enough salt to make a 5% salt solution, then if you add 5g of salt you end up with 5/105 = 4.76% salt. You need the more complicated formula above to calculate how much salt to add so that the salt is 5% of the total of the added salt and the water. At least, it seems that way to me.

Spreadsheet available as a download here.

nice job, I did one that is very similar, and I use it for all my brine and cure stuff,,,saves a lot of effort...
Bud

[dachickenfarmer]

wrt calculation a la Bertolli:

I know it has been a while, but... a couple questions, as I'm going to attack a Berkshire Belly, pretty high % fat.
1) Moisture content of fat is ~ 0% - this should be accounted for, no? If I conservatively assume 50% fat, we're down to 30 g pink salt and 250g salt and 185g sugar...
2) Is the 200 ppm for all the water content (as was calculated) or all the mass (as was stated)?

If attachments work, I've put my spreadsheet below (unpolished)

https://docs.google....TcxMTNhMjc4NTE4

wrt calculatiing % salt: http://chemistry.abo...ncentration.htm

Edited by dachickenfarmer, 15 December 2011 - 01:44 PM.

[qrn]

wrt calculation a la Bertolli:

I know it has been a while, but... a couple questions, as I'm going to attack a Berkshire Belly, pretty high % fat.
1) Moisture content of fat is ~ 0% - this should be accounted for, no? If I conservatively assume 50% fat, we're down to 30 g pink salt and 250g salt and 185g sugar...
2) Is the 200 ppm for all the water content (as was calculated) or all the mass (as was stated)?

If attachments work, I've put my spreadsheet below (unpolished)

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxhjOiDfzB8ENDBiMDlkZTktOWZiMS00ZGQ4LTk3OGMtNTcxMTNhMjc4NTE4

wrt calculatiing % salt: http://chemistry.abo...ncentration.htm

itsthe total mass of everything,the entire mass becomes equal%'s so it does not matter if the fat has a different h2O,%to start,the whole thing is the same(hence,equalibrium)
Bud

[dachickenfarmer]

That's not how it was calculated - total mass of everything is 29.6 lbs, total mass of water is the 24.27 mentioned in the calculations:

6a. a. Add up the weight of everything -- water, meat, salt and sugar: 24.27 + 0.728 + 0.485 = 25.483.

So if you need 200ppm of TOTAL mass, it's 41.3 g (41.3/(454*29.6))= 200 x 10-6

updated spreadsheet showing my work: https://docs.google....zM1YmQ2N2VhNWJl