Phil,
sorry about the delay, orders come in and being a one man show right now takes a toll, 80+ seafood pies, Cumberland sausage 150 lbs, and that was only half of it. One client has requested dry cured duck sausage, custom not the run of the mill stuff.
Another client has put on for the world cup a breakfast & lunch on the recommendation of a friend sight unseen or tasted.
It now reminds me of a quotation; 'I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel, but it was only some silly bugger fetching me more work'
wheels wrote:Robert
Can you elaborate on this bit please:
I basically do what we call an English cure, take a leg of pork and rub in curing salt, place rind side down in a non-metallic container elevated up from the bottom so that it will not sit in the liquid that comes from the leg. Place a light coating of salt on the top of the leg. Cure for three days per inch ... remember we are curing to the 'center', so if the height of the leg is fifteen inches then we are curing for seven inches.
I could spin you a yarn to appear to be wise and knowledgeable but all in all most if not all curing processes are very simple. If we keep the anagram in mind one cannot and should not go to far wrong… ‘Kis’
wheels wrote:Do you have a specific dry cure that you use,
Please do not take this the wrong way; I seem to use words that were told me by the old ones, English cure; is the same as my German friend dose while making Schinken so he would in all doubts call it a 'German cure' ie just salting it down. I seem to recall that someone real polite reminded me that there are people around hear we're working in the dark - we've probably never made the recipe, and are unlikely to know it's source - so any answers will be 'stock answers' that will generally cure the problem in the majority of cases.
It seems that I need to be reminded once in a while.
The whole process is a dry cure but incorporating a wet brine, sounds like a contradictory of words.

If you think of the dry cure as the same process as doing Prosciutto, the deference being that we are doing the dry curing with an ‘all purpose curing salt’, and not a salt and saltpetre combination.
I can now hear the question of why use the ‘all purpose curing salt’? reason being that this is a ‘complete’ mix that was produce quite some time ago to eliminate beginners making the big mistakes that can lead to potential hazards. I use it due to the fact of 911 the restrictions in North America brought on by our friends down south followed by the government of the day up north deeming it to be an ‘explosive’ therefore it is on the restricted list and you will have to fill out so many papers that it is just not worth it. Mined you I cannot wait for my next shipment of spices.

I do not have any photos of a leg being dry cured but the following photos of the dry cured bacon will give you the same idea.
If you take a good handful of the curing salt and rub it into the skin side of the leg to start, rub good and hard as well as long, how long you ask? I usually go until I see it starting to sweat or that your salt is looking wet. Turn the leg over and repeat the other (meat) side next place in a non-pores container – elevated off the bottom so that the meat dose not sit in the liquid. If it dose sit in this liquid it might and will make the meat go hard.

Belly of pork salted with curing salt.

Belly of pork salted with curing salt.

Belly now covered with spices.

Curing tub with the inserts.

Curing tub with excess liquid that has come out of the pork, this is the liquid you
'do not' want the product sitting in.
Remember the old days when they talk about a ‘salt box’ these was made for dry curing and had holes in the bottom to let the liquids drain out, personally have used a ‘salting trough’ a slab of marble that slopes to one end and to the front with a groove along the edge to channel away the liquid.
I put the legs down for seven days then rotate, top to the bottom and the bottom ones on top also empty out the liquid if I deem there is to much to leave for another seven days as the legs will be down for a total of fourteen days.
wheels wrote:a certain salt,
Not at this time as I have only just set thing up in the new location, but given time I will be getting back into using different types of salts.
wheels wrote: type of sugar,
Again due to the cost out this way I stick to what is in my budget, the darkest demerara sugar as well as a light/medium demerara sugar. I hope to have a couple of different Muscovado sugars on the next shipment.
Take 1 Kg of curing salt add to that ½ Kg each of two different Muscovado sugars, mix well and use this on your bacon. I do my Irish and Lancashire short back this way.
wheels wrote:type of curing salt,
As stated above.
wheels wrote:spices, herbs etc?
Spices, now there’s one for you. Follow the procedure for dry curing the legs … salting then dust the meat side with the spices great for making European dry cured bacon.
European (German Black Forest area) this is from my good friend who’s smokehouse I ran for some time while he was sick.
Bulk Spice:
125 gm white pepper
25 gm nutmeg
25 gm mace
25 gm cardamom
200 gm sugar (white)
Store in a non-pores ‘opaque’ container
Food for thought ???
If my ramblings are getting too long, please let me know.
Robert