curing with flavours

[senorkevin]

I am curing some Canadian style bacon with maple syrup and also some bacon just with sugar.
My question is when they are cured should I wash off all the syrup etc or will that lose all the flavour?
Or, should I inject the syrup into the loin and add the curing salt to the outside of the loin?

[NCPaul]

If you can injection cure, you could try this procedure:

Boil water and take based on your meat weight

Water 3.26 %
Maple syrup 2.24 %
Salt 0.76 %

Stir to dissolve then cover and let cool. When it reaches room temperature, add

Cure #1 0.24 %

Stir to dissolve.

Inject this solution into your loin. I like to inject from each end of the loin and use a lot of small injections. When you are finished with the injections, rub on the outside of the loin

Salt 1 %

Put the loin in a sealed plastic bag and put this into the fridge for 10 days. At this point, you can remove the loin and roll it in coarse cornmeal and slice it. This is what Canadians call peameal bacon and it is what they think of as "Canadian bacon". Another option is to take the cured loin and give it three days (or nights) of cold smoke before cutting it. This would be another uncooked bacon and would have to be stored in the fridge or frozen. One more option would be to hot smoke the cured loin and get the internal temperature to 150-155F. This would be a cooked bacon that would have a slightly longer shelf life in the fridge.

If you would rather dry cure the bacon, I would find maple sugar to use instead or maple syrup.

[senorkevin]

So I don't need to wash off the cure?

[NCPaul]

No, but if you are going to smoke the loin, it is best to let it rest uncovered on a rack in the fridge to dry the surface of the meat. This will allow the meat to take the smoke flavor better.

[senorkevin]

I inject all the liquid and rub on 1% salt?
Also the cure #1 is at 7%

[NCPaul]

That is correct. For your cure #1 use 0.22 % .

[senorkevin]

That is great. I will give it a go for sure. Isn't 10 days a long time to cure?

[NCPaul]

It allows me to start on one weekend and finish on another; you could cure seven days if that timing suits you better. I wouldn't cure for less than that.

[senorkevin]

I thought the rule is 1 day per inch of loin and 1 day extra

[wheels]

Equilibrium cures where you only use the amount of ingredients that you want in the meat aren't so time sensitive as others. Give them 7 - 10 days or so as NCPaul says.

Phil

[senorkevin]

Will do. But when making normal(British) bacon that rule applies no?

[Wunderdave]

I let my equilibrium cures go so long. It's way way better to go to long, than too short. I've never seen any adverse effects (bad flavor, nitrite burn, mold, spoilage) from letting meat in dry cure go for weeks past when I planned to remove them.

[NCPaul]

Wunderdave you should try the above recipe and cold smoke it. It is based on captain wassname's recipe for bacon chops. After smoking cut the loin in half inch slices and fry in a little butter. Trust me.

[senorkevin]

Is the 1% salt of the weight of the meat or total weight?
Also how would I dry cure it?

[NCPaul]

1 % of the meat weight. To dry cure instead, use the same amounts of total salt and cure # 1 and I would switch to maple sugar instead of maple syrup.