Superior Pickle for Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pickle
Boil the water and add the rock salt, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and loaf sugar.
Skim the mixture well to remove impurities.
Allow the mixture to cool.
Cure the pork
Submerge small, delicate pork in the pickle.
Let it sit for a week before using.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Rock salt or common salt
- Draws moisture out of the pork and seasons it while curing.
- Coarse sea salt
- Adds salt to the brine, seasoning the pork as it cures.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pork and keeps its color during curing.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt.
The step that matters
Let the mixture cool before adding the pork. Hot brine would partly cook the delicate pork and start uneven texture changes, so the pickle should be fully cooled before the meat goes in.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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