10 hours ago, AlaMoi said:can you share a recipe / ingredients?
I have zilch / zero / null / nil /comma nada experience with "curing salt"
Sure.
In Germany you can buy ready made curing salt (“Nitritpökelsalz”, very often abbreviated as NPS). It contains 0.5% sodium nitrite. You can mix this from the pink salt available in the US and regular salt.
For the Leberkäse:
800 g fatty minced pork
200 g soda water
30 g starch
21 g NPS (curing salt, see above)
Spice mixture for 1.05 kg mixture as above (I make a lot of that; you can use it for sausages, meatballs etc. - it is very good. Think “Bologna” spice)
3 g white pepper
0,25 g cardamom
0,5 g coriander
0,25 g ground ginger
0,75 g macis
plus later
5 g baking powder with phosphate (this helps to bind the water)
Have the meat, the soda water and the mixing bowl ice cold (see also my linked post above). Start mixing the meat vigorously. Add the salt and the spices. Mix the soda water with the starch and add slowly in portions. The meat will turn from a healthy reddish colour to a pink emulsion over the next minutes. Temperature should not exceed 10 oC.
Once pink and “stringy” (you’ll notice, no worries) put into a oiled single loaf tin. It will act like a dough. Press down, you may make a criss cross pattern if you like. Bake in a 130 oC oven until internal temperature reaches 75 oC (about 1 h). It will slightly expand.
If you like you can also ramp up the oven to full once internal temp reaches 70 oC and brown the exterior a bit more.
Let cool down, enjoy warm right away, put on a griddle an brown or let cool and turn into a cold cut or into wurstsalat.
Enjoy !
