Curing Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pickle
Boil water, coarse sea salt, sugar, saltpeter, and potash until dirt from sugar rises and is skimmed off.
Cool the mixture in a tub.
Cure the meat
Pour the cooled pickle over beef or pork, ensuring it is well covered.
Let the meat sit in the pickle for 4 to 5 weeks.
Sprinkle the meat with powdered saltpeter for 2 days after killing 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 inhibits spoilage bacteria, preserving it during curing.
- Sugar
- Balances the sharpness of the salt and adds mild sweetness and flavour to the cured meat.
- Saltpeter
- Helps the meat keep its pink colour and further inhibits bacterial growth during curing.
The step that matters
Cool the pickle before pouring it over the meat. Hot brine would partly cook the meat surface and uneven temperatures can encourage spoilage. Cooling it first 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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