The Manner of Curing Westphalia Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pickle
Boil all ingredients together until well mixed.
Let the mixture cool.
Cure and smoke
Submerge the pork in the cooled pickle for two weeks.
Remove the pork and dry it over sawdust smoke.
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 helps preserve it during curing.
- White salt
- Draws moisture out of the pork and helps preserve it during curing.
- Petre salt
- Contributes to the curing salts that preserve the pork and firm its texture.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pork and gives cured meat its characteristic pink colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the harshness of the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured pork.
The step that matters
Submerge the pork in the cooled pickle. The pickle must be fully cool before the pork goes in, because hot brine would partly cook the surface and uneven curing follows. The pork must stay fully covered for the whole two weeks so no part spoils or cures unevenly.
“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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