Did I make a mistake?

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Did I make a mistake?

Postby rjg » Mon Jan 27, 2014 6:18 pm

So, I am starting to get interested in curing meats and sausages, and at the recommendation of the wonderful internet I gave my first shot at curing anything to a few pounds of pork belly with the mouth watering temptation of fresh, wonderful bacon.

Anyway, I used Michael Ruhlman's recipe for the cure and followed his instructions.

After I rubbed the cure all over and into the meat I put about a tablespoon of maple syrup on one side and massaged it into the meat -- was that a mistake?

I began thinking about it, and I'm probably overthinking it a bit, but could I have inadvertently negated the cure by rubbing in the Maple Syrup rather than mixing it into the cure mix? I'm not sure how it would affect it, since all I really did was added the syrup and then massaged the cure in even more on that one side, but hey, better safe than sorry, right?

I figured I better ask someone with a bit more knowledge than myself on this one before I fry up some bacon next weekend.
rjg
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Re: Did I make a mistake?

Postby NCPaul » Tue Jan 28, 2014 12:41 am

Welcome to the forum. :D Bacon curing is fairly forgiving as cured meats go and is a great project to begin with and bacon. I turn the belly each day in a zip bag in the fridge and rub the salt, sugar and cure around to get even distribution. The maple syrup won't be a problem. I tend to cure for 10-11 days then cold smoke for 3 days. You should look into a small scale for weighing cure ingredients. Recipes are much easier to scale in metric measures. Would you add your location to your profile, it makes it easier to give advice.
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Re: Did I make a mistake?

Postby rjg » Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:10 am

I'm certainly glad I was over thinking it, I don't know if I could bear the thought of having to wait any longer for that bacon.

I actually do have a food scale, which I used in determining how much pink salt to use. I went with 3% weight of the meat, which was up a little from the 2.5% that Ruhlman recommended on the recipe. it was a compromise between his ratio and another recipe I found.

I picked up the Charcuterie book, and plan on picking up another one I can't remember the name of off the of my head.

if this turns out well, I think my next attempt will be another whole muscle, then hopefully some Chorizo *drool*.

I'm really looking forward to diving into this a lot more.
rjg
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Re: Did I make a mistake?

Postby NCPaul » Tue Jan 28, 2014 12:15 pm

I think you have a typo in your last post (I hope). What was your meat weight and the weight of the pink salt?
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Re: Did I make a mistake?

Postby ericrice » Tue Jan 28, 2014 9:11 pm

rjg - to elaborate on NCPauls' question above the hope is you used 3% of the meat weight in total salt (salt plus pink salt) of which almost all would have been plain kosher salt (not pink salt). If you did use 3% of the weight in pink salt you have made a dangersous mistake and the meat will need to be binned. We'll wait on clarification from you.
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Re: Did I make a mistake?

Postby rjg » Sun Feb 02, 2014 4:09 pm

Well, I am fairly confident that I used the directed amount of pink salt (2 teaspoons in this case) and that was a typo, and should have said 3% of the meat weight in kosher salt.

However, I am actually second guessing how much pink salt I used, as I followed the recipe and made the stupid mistake of not jotting down exactly what I used. Either way, to be on the cautious side I am tossing the bacon. I'm not chancing my poor safety to my poor memory, and I'll take it as a lesson learned to write my recipes down every time (you would think I would be in better habit of this from brewing beer, but I'm not!).

I'll have to find a new piece of belly and give it a go again this week.
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