Brined Pork Loin with phosphate Experement
Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:31 amLast week I picked up a pork loin for some smoked Canadian bacon and thought I'd try a little experiment. I wanted to see what adding phosphate to the brine would do to the finished product as far as aiding in moisture retention.
I cut the loin into four pieces, three would be in my basic brine and one will go into a brine with phosphate added. All four will be pumped with 10% and left in the brine for 4 days.
With a 10% pump this works out to 140 ppm of nitrite.
The basic brine was;
1 Gallon water 3780 grams
Salt 220
Maple syrup 150
Cure #1 95
For the phosphate brine I used the same ratio of ingredients but only made a quart and added 26 grams of Butch & Packers 450s “Brine Pumping Phosphate” this will give me about half the allowable amount of phosphate or 2400 ppm.
After the pump I let them rest a minute, dried them with paper towels and verified the weight was meat plus 10%. then into the brine. Then I repeated the drying and weighing each day to see if there was a difference in intake between the phosphated one and the other three.
After the 5 days they all took in about the same amount of additional brine, but the one with phosphate on the first day took in a two to five more then the basic three, but lost over half of it the next day. If I hadn't weight them twice the first day, I'd say it was a screw up in the weighing, and it still could be, but I won't know till I repeat the the proses.
The big difference was after smoking.
Smoked for approximately 6 hours starting at 130°F and ending up at 200°F until the internal temp's were over 152°
The three in the basic brine lost 5, 6 and 8 percent of their original green weight.
The one in phosphate gained a little over 1 percent, and was noticeably moister.
I need to do a good side by side taste test today to see if the flavor is different. And will add some pick then.
I could also add the spreadsheet (at least I think I can) with the daily logged info, but this post is already sounding to geeky for me.
I cut the loin into four pieces, three would be in my basic brine and one will go into a brine with phosphate added. All four will be pumped with 10% and left in the brine for 4 days.
With a 10% pump this works out to 140 ppm of nitrite.
The basic brine was;
1 Gallon water 3780 grams
Salt 220
Maple syrup 150
Cure #1 95
For the phosphate brine I used the same ratio of ingredients but only made a quart and added 26 grams of Butch & Packers 450s “Brine Pumping Phosphate” this will give me about half the allowable amount of phosphate or 2400 ppm.
After the pump I let them rest a minute, dried them with paper towels and verified the weight was meat plus 10%. then into the brine. Then I repeated the drying and weighing each day to see if there was a difference in intake between the phosphated one and the other three.
After the 5 days they all took in about the same amount of additional brine, but the one with phosphate on the first day took in a two to five more then the basic three, but lost over half of it the next day. If I hadn't weight them twice the first day, I'd say it was a screw up in the weighing, and it still could be, but I won't know till I repeat the the proses.
The big difference was after smoking.
Smoked for approximately 6 hours starting at 130°F and ending up at 200°F until the internal temp's were over 152°
The three in the basic brine lost 5, 6 and 8 percent of their original green weight.
The one in phosphate gained a little over 1 percent, and was noticeably moister.
I need to do a good side by side taste test today to see if the flavor is different. And will add some pick then.
I could also add the spreadsheet (at least I think I can) with the daily logged info, but this post is already sounding to geeky for me.
They were different only in the weight gain or loss. also the one with phosphate seemed a bit moister, but no difference in flavor.