Salting Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the meat in cold water for 1 hour, rubbing it well to remove any impurities.
Wipe the meat dry and rub coarse sea salt thoroughly into every part.
Salt and cure
Sprinkle a handful of salt over the meat and turn it daily, rubbing in the salt.
After 3-4 days, the meat will be ready for the table.
For quicker curing, wrap the salted meat in a clean cloth.
If possible, hang the meat for 2-3 days before salting.
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
- Meat
- The main ingredient, which the salt cures and firms as it dries.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat by making it hard for spoilage microbes to grow.
The step that matters
Rubbing the salt into every part. Salt only preserves where it touches the meat. Rubbing it thoroughly into every surface and turning the meat daily makes the cure even, so no area is left under-salted and prone to spoiling.
“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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