Hi
I've been producing my own GOS pork for several years now but this year have decided to take the plunge and do my own curing...
I want to brine cure some hams without using salt petre or proprietary curing chemicals. I am curing for flavour not keeping qualities - my hams will either be cooked immediately or frozen for cooking later.
So I was just planning to make up a brine using cooking salt in water and/or beer and/or vinegar + sugar and spices.
But having browsed this site and read Hugh F-W (HFW) River Cottage Cookbook, Mrs Beeton (MrsB) and John Seymour (JS) I am pretty confused about brine strength to say the least!
To summarise:
JS talks about 8 lbs salt in 5 gallons which is 160g/litre
MrsB talks about 8 lbs salt in 3 gallons which is 266 g/litre
HFW's basic brine is 2Kg salt in 6 litres of water which is 333g/litre
HFW's ham cure is 1.5 Kg salt in 4 litres of beer/treacle which is 375g/litre
and I seem to remember Oddley's Basic Brine is 126g salt/litre
Then there's how long to leave them in, which seems to vary from 24 hours (HFW for a light bacon style cure) to 2-3 weeks (HFW for a ham cure) to 1 month (MrsB) to 60 days (JS who suggest 4 days per lb so 60 days for a 15lb leg).
Not to mention what king of salt (not) to use!
Please can someone give me some clear advice - I've got 4 hams in the fridge currently just rubbed in cooking salt to draw out the last of the blood.
Thanks Julian
PS Also posted on Curing/Techniques two ideas 1) using sea water as brine 2) adding smoked paprika to a bacon dry cure - but not had many replies. Any views?