To Pickle Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cure
Mix together the coarse sea salt and saltpetre.
Rub the mixture well into each piece of pork.
Pack and salt
Pack the pork into a salting tub, sprinkling salt between each layer.
Place a heavy weight on top of the cover to prevent the meat from floating.
Keep the tub closed tightly; the pork will last for a year or two.
For a leg of pork, it will be sufficiently salted in eight days; rub and turn it daily.
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, preserving the pork through curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pork's colour and works alongside the salt to inhibit spoilage during curing.
The step that matters
Keeping the pork submerged under a weight. Pork that floats above the brine or salt layer is exposed to air and can spoil or cure unevenly. A heavy weight on the cover keeps the meat held down so the salt and cure act on it consistently.
“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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