Receipt for Curing Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
Boil water, salt, sugar, saltpetre, and potash together and skim off any foam.
Let the mixture cool completely.
Cure the meat
Pour the cooled brine over beef or pork, ensuring it is well covered.
Allow the meat to cure for four to five weeks.
Before curing, sprinkle the meat with powdered saltpetre for two days to remove surface blood.
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
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it while preserving it against spoilage.
- Sugar
- Softens the harshness of the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured meat.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the cured meat keep its pink colour and slows the growth of spoilage bacteria.
The step that matters
Let the brine cool completely. Pouring hot brine over raw meat can partly cook and toughen its surface, and it may not cure evenly. Cooling the brine fully keeps the meat raw and lets the cure penetrate evenly.
“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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