Brine injection pork leg with vacuum packing

Air dried cured Meat Techniques

Brine injection pork leg with vacuum packing

Postby LouisJ » Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:20 pm

Hi,

I dry cured a bone-in pork leg a couple of weeks ago using polka-salts.

I covered the exposed meat with the cure and also created a few pockets and tunnels next to the bone and packed some in there also. I then vacuum packed the leg and let it cure.

After 8 days it had cured very well with no spoiling.

Next time i am thinking of using a brine injection into the thick parts of the leg, rather than creating pockets and tunnels. I will also be using the dry cure on the exposed meat again and vacuum packing the leg.

Does this sound achievable using the two methods (dry and wet cure) in a vacuum?

Any tips or advice from somebody who has done it before would be greatly appreciated.
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Postby captain wassname » Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:44 pm

what are polka-salts?

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Postby LouisJ » Wed Dec 05, 2012 6:23 pm

Sorry, its actually called Pokesalz and is a ready made drycure made by Lucas foods.
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Postby wheels » Wed Dec 05, 2012 7:34 pm

Welcome :D :D

A combination cure using injection followed by a dry cure is quite a common practice among forum members.

If you want, you could post the amounts you plan to use for the brine and for the dry cure and someone will check it out for you.

I'm guessing that Pokesalz is a 0.5-0.6% nitrite cure?

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Postby captain wassname » Wed Dec 05, 2012 8:38 pm

Phil you are correct and its made by lucas ingredients
Their spec sheets give nothing away so I assumed that using as directed would give 150 ppm nitrite.
I also suspect there is already at least 0.5% sugar maybe even 1%


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Postby LouisJ » Wed Dec 05, 2012 8:47 pm

Hi Wheels,

Yes, that is correct about the cure.

It says i need to use 3% of the cure for the weight of the meat. I would be very grateful if somebody here could give me an idea of what percentage i would use for a brine and what to use for the rub.

I am waiting for the hog to be ready in the next week or two before i can begin so dont know the weight of the leg i will be curing yet, but my last leg (that i dry cured in vacuum) weighed roughly 3kg (bone in), so if i were to have used the brine/dry method for that one, for example, what would the calculations have been do you think?

90g of cure split between a brine and dry rub?

Sorry for the newbie questions. I cant wait to get my head around the methods of calculating the amounts and be able to work this sort of stuff out myself! :)

Thanks in advance

Louis
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Postby captain wassname » Wed Dec 05, 2012 9:56 pm

You need to make allowance for the bone or you could end up with too much salt.
How did the dry cure leg work out?
You might consider some herbs and spices for your injection.Have a look at Phils blog might give you some idea
I will happily work out something for you if you post back.

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Postby LouisJ » Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:26 pm

Hi, the dry cured leg turned out great. Nice, firm deep red meat throughout.

Some herbs and spices in the brine sound like a good idea.

Im thinking i may remove the bone for the next ham i do. Is it best to tunnel bone or just make a cut along the length and remove it?

Working my way through Phils blog at the moment. Its a marvel.

Would be great if you could give me a rough idea of what i would need cure wise if the leg weighed, say 3 or 3.5kgs?

Thanks Jim
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Postby captain wassname » Fri Dec 07, 2012 9:54 am

Its good that the dry cure worked out well I culdnt guess the sugar content from their tech sheet So for your pump and rub go with the 83% mix 17% sugar at 3%.
Most injection cures on here and the web are 10%,thats to say you inject 100 gms brine per kilo but as Ive struggled to get 10% into the meat I have been experimenting with lesser pumps.
With your mix 6% is easy.
So to inject you need per kilo of meat 15 gms cure mix and 45 gms water
Then you just rub the other 15 gms per kilo as per your dry cure
Just boil up your herbs and spice let it cool and then measure out what you need for the brine and mix.
Ive never vac packed any of my ham or bacon either dry cured or injected
I just wrap them in clingfilm.
I mention this as you may have issues with the brine coming out of the meat if you vac pac.Not to say you would coz ive never tried it
Just make sure you get cure in round the bone as you did with the dry cure
Dont know much about boning best ask a butcher.Mind you there are a few on here.

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Postby LouisJ » Fri Dec 07, 2012 10:02 am

Awesome Jim!

Sounds like a plan.

Thank you for your calculations.
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