Kentish Mode of Cutting Up and Curing a Pig
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
Set aside the hams and cheeks for curing separately.
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, and the loin and spare ribs for roasting.
Mix the saltpetre, sugar, and bay salt together.
Rub the mixture gently over the pork.
Pack and cure
Cover the bottom of a pickling tub with salt and pack the pork tightly, adding salt between each layer.
Avoid adding water unless necessary.
If the meat does not rise in a fortnight, boil a strong brine of salt, saltpetre, sugar, and bay salt.
Let the brine cool.
Pour the cooled brine over the pork.
Place a board with a heavy stone on top to keep the meat submerged.
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 preserves it by inhibiting bacterial growth.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pork and gives cured meat its characteristic pink colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and feeds fermentation that contributes to flavour.
- Bay salt
- Adds a coarse, pure salt that cures the pork evenly during packing and brining.
The step that matters
Keeping the pork submerged in brine. Meat that rises above the brine can spoil or cure unevenly, so the weighted board and stone must hold it fully under the liquid.
“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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