To Cure Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Dry salt
Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the pork.
Place the pork in a vat for four to five days.
Barrel and brine
Transfer the pork to a barrel, layering it with coarse sea salt.
Ensure the barrel is well covered.
Make a brine strong enough to float a potato.
Add the brine to the pork.
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
- Pork
- The meat being cured; salt and brine draw out moisture and penetrate its muscle.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, slowing spoilage by microbes.
- Saltpetre
- Converts to nitrite in the meat, helping preserve it and give cured pork its pink colour.
The step that matters
Make a brine strong enough to float a potato. Brine strength determines how well salt and curing agents penetrate and preserve the meat. A brine that is too weak fails to preserve it, while the potato test is a rough check that the solution is concentrated enough.
“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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