Salting Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Pack the barrel
Cover the bottom of a barrel with 1 inch of coarse sea salt.
Place a layer of pork in the barrel and cover it with ½ inch of coarse sea salt.
Repeat layering pork and salt until all pork is used.
Brine and keep submerged
Pour strong brine over the pork, ensuring it is packed tightly with the rind side down.
Keep the pork submerged in brine using a clean inner cover and stones.
If scum forms, pour off the brine, scald it, and add more salt.
Old brine can be boiled down, skimmed, and reused.
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 pork and preserves it through salt curing.
- Pork
- The meat being cured, which firms and preserves as salt and brine penetrate it.
- Strong brine
- Keeps the pork submerged and continues salting it evenly throughout the cure.
The step that matters
Keeping the pork fully submerged in brine. Any pork exposed to air can spoil or grow scum and mould. Packing it tightly and weighting it under brine keeps the surface protected and the salt penetrating 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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