Kentish Mode Op Cutting Up and Curing a Pig
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pig
Prepare a porker weighing 16 stone (approximately 224 pounds).
Set aside the hams and cheeks for separate curing.
Salt the feet, ears, tail, and eye-parts of the head for immediate eating.
Reserve the blade bones, ends of the loins, and ribs for sausage meat.
Cure and pack
Rub the pork with a mixture of saltpetre, sugar, and coarse sea salt.
Cover the bottom of a pickling tub with salt and pack the pork tightly, adding salt between layers.
Avoid adding water unless necessary.
If the meat does not rise in a fortnight, prepare a strong brine and pour it over 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
- Salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat by inhibiting spoilage bacteria.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing.
- Sugar
- Balances the harshness of the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons and cures the pork as the main salt in the rub.
The step that matters
Packing the pork in the tub. Pork packed tightly with salt between every layer cures evenly; gaps or uneven salting let the meat spoil at the surface and in unsalted spots.
“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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