salt petre formula made easy

[saucisson]

It was Delia but there is little detail on her website.
From foodloversbritain.com comes:

The traditional Suffolk cure is made with black treacle, sugar, salt and stout (one recipe I found also added vinegar but this was the only time I have seen it suggested) and he also produces a lighter Suffolk cider pickled ham using cider instead of stout. Both hams are made in the same way in the backyard behind the stores. Mr Jerrey buys in pork , "mostly" as he puts it, "from happy pigs because it is important to some customers, but I can't garantee it". Curiously enough "one in every 200 hams won't take a pickle". Although not exactly sure why this is, Mr Jerrey has a few ideas but at the moment, he is not letting on. First he brines the pork in salt, saltpetre and water, then pickles them in either cure for about 3-4 weeks. Next they are gently smoked for about 5 days in the smoke-holes over oak sawdust; and finally they are hung for at least a month to mature.

Sold vacuum-packed either as whole hams weighing 14-18lbs or half hams weighing 8-10 lbs, they have a rich deep blackish brown skin. The taste is unique; these are strongly flavoured hams with a biting texture - the Suffolk sweet pickle is sweet, punchy and very meaty, the cider cure lighter, even sweeter with a hint of fruit. Also worth trying is the sweet-pickled bacon; again it has a good firm texture with a sweet-smokey flavour but not overly so. But beware of pale imitations. I tried a competitor's bacon and it was quite disgusting - cloyingly flavoured with a sweet-sour aftertaste and it spluttered and shrank away merrily in the pan. Mr Jerrey's is without rival in the county

To cook his hams, Mr Jerrey recommends soaking them overnight in water, then sealing them in a large piece of foil with about 2 inches of cider and baking them in an oven gas4/180C/350F for about 25 minutes to the pound.

Dave

[Oddley]

Vernon, ham traditionally comes from the leg. The brine recipe dictates the taste. You can either simmer the ham and coat it with honey, breadcrumbs etc and bake it, or for a close textured ham press it after simmering in a meat press.

[dougal]

... I know the difference between ham and boiled bacon when served on my plate but I don't see how one becomes ham and the other becomes bacon simply through brining and boiling. Sorry if I am being dim but I just don't get it. I wish to leave my ham on the bone so I hope that won't cause additional snags.

Vernon, I think leaving the bone in makes things more difficult, or rather more problematic. At least for beginners like me.

The english language works against us somewhat, in that "Ham" covers a multitude of different products.
Some are *dried* as a principal ingredient of the preservation process. Parma being the 'market leader'. These are served cut super-thin, as otherwise they would be somewhat 'chewy'...
Others are seriously wet - commercially many of these would be stuffed with phosphates to retain the water/brine.
The water content of bacon tends to fall between these two extremes. Although there are some 'hams', including many smoked ones, that are going to have a water content awfully much like bacon.
Taking the anatomy of the pig, bacon is always going to come from the fattier bit in the middle, and 'ham' should come from the ends. As I'm sure you know much, much better than I do - the musculature is rather different. The shoulders and hips do a lot of work supporting and hauling the bulk of the beast around.
The different meat textures respond differently both to cooking and curing, and are best given different heat treatments. Although classically a "ham" should be a back leg, the same sort of treatment suits the muscles at the front that do a similar job - hence "picnic" ham.

Because "hams" are thicker than "bacon" cuts, they need to be cured longer, to allow the cure to penetrate the thicker meat.
"Wet" hams, particularly those for serving cold, would be 'boiled' (or more specifically gently poached) for a long time. The long slow cooking serves to tenderise the tough hard-working muscle.
I think almost all 'wet hams' would be boned before curing.
One aspect of producing a 'wet ham' for serving cold is that during the cooling process, it should be "pressed" into shape. The success with which that is done seems to determine how well it holds together on slicing/carving.

I think you would be wrong to be seeking any 'step-change' that separates a bacon cure from a piece of loin to be treated as "ham". The difference would largely lie in the subsequent treatment of the joint.
Hams would tend to have herbal flavourings. Bacon wouldn't - yeah, OK, apart from the odd bay leaf! Either might be spiced.
In the UK, wet hams would usually be expected to be sweeter and less salty than bacon. But in North America, bacon can get pretty sweet...
Its not even as though there were a one-dimensional spectrum. Think of there being a triangular curing map, with bacon, dried ham and 'wet ham' as being clusters of products near the corners, but with a lot of middle ground, creating confusion if and when applied to the same cut of meat.
And then you get a product like the alpine "Speck" - basically a dry cured, and cold smoked, proper hind leg ham - which can be eaten raw, for example in a salad, or cooked in many of the ways that one might use bacon... and Pancetta is usually suggested as a substitute. There's lots of middle ground and cross-over!

So basically, I think the main difference is in the meat... but that's not quite the whole story.



Smoking hams. For 'wet hams', they'd be dried (in a cool place) for a few days, and then given a long, very gentle cold smoke. (Possibly even deliberately done at intervals.) The idea being to provide time for the smoke to penetrate the thick flesh.

Glazing hams. This and similar external treatments (parsley, breadcrumbs? cloves?) would be principally decorative and not affecting the bulk flavour. If they involved cooking, it'd be quick and designed not to upset the inside of the ham.


Right, that's the newbie student trying to set his own thoughts in order - would any of the experts care to set me straight? Please!

[jpj]

i'm no expert, but sounds good
i'd only add that the drying stage between wet-cure and smoking, is for salt equalisation, flavour maturation and formation of the pellicle/salt glaze - makes the smoke adhere and penetrate more successfully. just like kippers, salmon etc

[Vernon Smith]

Having attended a 4 day crash course on bacteria with Oddley, Saucisson (Dave) and Lee I'm feeling a bit shell-shocked but a lot wiser (hopefully).
There are some further points on brining that I would like to tidy up please. I have a 6.5kg ham undergoing cure and according to dear Oddley it won't be ready to come out for smoking until 17th July so I have plenty of time on hand. My brine formula is one I picked up from Paul Kribs, 6ltrs water, 1kg salt and 1kg brown sugar I then added 30g KNO3. Q.1 Has anyone any idea how much salt and sugar will be taken up by the ham? Q.2 Assuming I top up the salt, sugar and KNO3 can I keep by brine tub going? I don't want the bother of mixing up fresh batches for each piece of pig I brine. My grandfather had a brine barrel in his butchery and I don't recalling it ever being baled out. I guess it must have been albeit rarely. He maintained that the brine tub improved with age but I'm sure the Local Authority food inspectors would have a fit if they saw one like it today. Lee has (almost) become the forum's advisor on matters microbiological so what have you so say for yourself in this one my friend?
Regards,
Vernon

[Wohoki]

Hi Vernon, an answer to your second question. You can add further salt and sugar to a brine tub IF you have some means of checking the specific gravity of the original brine and what it reads after brining some meat. All you then need to do is add SATURATED brine (made using the same salt/sugar/cure ratio), or reboiling the used brine with extra salt, cure and sugar until the SG returns to what it started at. Reboiled brine will need skimming of coagulated proteins etc, but is probably the safer route.

[pokerpete]

Vernon

I have seen a cookery program where it showed how a Suffolk 'black ham' was made. I am sure it was on one of Delia Smiths xmas shows. After brining in a stout brine they were then smoked in a smoke shed. I can't recall times required, but I would imagine that it would need a heavy smoke as some flavour would be lost in boiling. Apologies for not paying more attention..

Regards, Paul Kribs

With all this ham boiling/simmering going on, does nobody use boiling bags to retain juices in the meat.

[Oddley]

Question 1 can be answered by saying it is all a matter of equalization. Let me explain by giving an example.

EDIT: Due to recently discovered information, this recipe is to be used at 10% pump only This is not an immersion cure

2500 gm Water
354.84 gm salt
354.84 gm sugar
16.13 gm KN03

Total brine weight 3225.81 gm

brine exhaust weight of meat at 10% pickup 32,258.30 gm

Total Meat and brine weight 35,484.11

We can work out the salt percentage of the total meat and brine weight.

Salt% = 354.84 * 100 / 35,484.11 = 0.999 % Or rounded up 1%

I hope I have explained it clearly enough.

From my point of view reusing a brine is a non starter. If first you boil the brine to get rid of any bacteria the heat is destroying any nitrite.

Salt and sugar both give buoyancy to a hydrometer so how do you accurately replace the individual ingredient of salt, sugar.

An amount of potassium nitrate has been converted how do you judge how much. you can end up with far too much or far too little. So unless I decide to equip my little flat with a lab I wouldn't reuse a brine.

[Wohoki]

Actually you are right. I only brine for very brief period (hours, not days) as preparation for cold smoking, so I'm not expecting a full cure. I do re-formulate my brine based on SG, but the brine only has salt and sugar in it, and I assume that the uptake of each is proportionate, so it isn't fair to state that it is OK to do this all circumstances.

[Oddley]

Here are a few links from an apparently reliable source. pretty much whatever you want to know about curing but were afraid to ask.

First to answer Vernon's question about reusing a brine.

Curing solutions must be discarded unless they remain with the same batch of product during its entire curing process –because of the possibility of bacterial growth and cross-contamination, do not reuse brine (PHS/FDA 2001

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/n ... _pres.html

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/n ... intro.html

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/n ... e_toc.html

[tristar]

Some of the complications of brining illustrated here have persuaded me so far to exclusively dry cure, I recently used a corned beef cure posted by Oddley some time ago, and left the meat in the refrigerator for a total of six weeks, I didn't even have to soak the meat before cooking it. Coated with crushed black pepper and coriander and straight into the grill for 5 hours of indirect smoke and it was absolutely the best smoked beef I have ever tasted, tender and perfectly cured!
I realise that you are all talking about hams, but does anybody dry cure hams? I am sure it must be possible, and it seems like a more accurate method of placing your salt and cures into the meat with no risk of the product becoming overly salty.

Regards,
Richard

[Vernon Smith]

Thanks for the links Oddley. I have down loaded and saved them already. Your formula looks complicated so I hope I haven't lost the plot. I have aded more KNO3 to reach your recommended 500mg/kg so my brine and ham look like this:-

6000g water
1000g salt
1000g sugar
40g KnO3
=======
8040g total

10% uptake to exhaustion = 80400g meat so meat plus brine = 88440g

Salt = 1000 X 100 / 88440 = 1.1307%

Assuming I have understood the rocket science brining formula my 6.5 kg ham will absorb something like 73.4955g of salt. Following this it will also absorb 73.4955 sugar. Pauls brine suits me nicely so I will stick with it.
In your experience Oddley will my ham be overly salt. Tristar seems to worry about wet brining. I agree it looks complicated at first until you get used to it but assuming I have understood the mathematics correctly I'm a lot more confident now. By the way where did the 10% uptake figure come from? It is obviously not something you grabbed our of thin air.

Poker Pete's boiling bags sound good but I can't get them here. I will try heavy duty white polythene bags suspended in the water. If I tie the neck with strong twine and keep the opening above the surface so it doesn't full with water I think it will work. Thanks for the tip. I am anxious about poaching without exceeding 80 deg and I believe boiling bags will help.

Wohoki, your "hours not days" in brine is confusing me. Oddley's time frame means my ham will be 26 days in brine before drying and smoking. Will you really get ham? Sounds more like a botilism sandwich but I guess you know what your doing. I would appreciate more information though. I have a hydometer so I can check the s.g. of the brine before and after but I will have to research residual KNO3 that is an unknown thus far. Fyi I don't think I agree with boiling brine because it drives out all dissolved oxygen that inhibits cl. botulinum but that is only hypothesis and I stand to be corrected. I also hypothesise that any bacteria in the brine will be desirable species because the salt and KNO3 should eliminate all the harmful types. Again, I stand to be corrected, hopefully before I poison myself.
Regards
Vernon[/b]

[Oddley]

Vernon I picked 10 % because 8-10% is the recognised amount that the meat will naturally pick up.

A Generally, the 1.5% sodium nitrite cures are for soaking meats. The ham, bacon, or brisket would then pick up 8 to 10 percent of it’s own weight in cure.

http://www.yeagerspice.com/FAQ.htm

I originally put forward a controversial theory earlier but decided to delete it until I have done more research.