Newbie curing questions

[tel932]

Hi all, so pleased that I found this site.

I have been reading the recipes for dry cure and wet cure bacon in a few of the posts and they all seem to mention using either saltpeter and/or curing salt recipes no.1 or no.2.

I don't want to be using either of these products. Is there any way that these recipes can be adapted to be used without either of these ingredients or is it ok to just leave these items out of a cure without disasterous effects.

I get confused by the different amounts of time to leave meat in a cure, some say for 2 or 3 days for streaky bacon and others recommend gauging it by the thickness of the meat and then adding a couple of days.

As for the salt , over here I can get very coarse sea salt, does this need to be ground down for the cures to work better ?

I have tried using 2:1 salt to sugar with crushed juniper and leaving belly pork in this for 3 days as recommended, and using 150 gms per kilo of meat. But it always tastes too salty, so then I soak it for about 4 hours to reduce the salt and tend to lose most of that lovely flavour of the sugar and juniper.

Help from somebody with a bit of patience would be appreciated.

Terry

[grisell]

Hello there and welcome to the forum!

35 grams of salt per kilo meat is enough. Sugar or not is optional. I often use a little (ca 1/3 of the salt weight) because I think it reduces the aggressive taste of the salt without making it taste sweet.

Yes, you could leave out nitrite and nitrate. Parma ham, for instance, is made with only sea salt. I would recommend you to use saltpetre or nitrite, though. It's not obligatory (at least not if you cure whole muscles) but it adds both color and taste. It is also safer.

But as I said, it's not obligatory, just be careful about the hygiene when not using cure.

Good luck and don't hesitate to ask if you have any other questions!

[NCPaul]

Welcome to the forum.

I don't want to be using either of these products.

Why? Are they hard to get where you are? It is much easier (and safer) to use them than to not use them. There are many recipes on this site for bacon but most of them were designed to include nitrite. To omit it for these recipes is not a good idea.