Pickle for Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
Boil all ingredients together for 5 minutes, skimming well.
Strain the pickle into an earthenware pan.
Pickle the meat
Once the mixture is completely cold, add the meat.
Let the meat sit in the pickle for 5 to 6 days.
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, helping preserve it during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the meat keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.
- Brown sugar
- Adds mild sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt.
The step that matters
Let the brine cool completely before adding the meat. Adding meat to hot brine can partly cook its surface and raise its temperature into the range where bacteria multiply quickly, and it can uneven the cure. Waiting until the mixture is fully cold keeps the meat safe and lets the salt 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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