Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Air dried cured meat and salami recipes

Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Postby Dazzlin » Wed Mar 26, 2014 1:42 am

Guys and Gals:

Have I got a good one for you!

OK, this is gonna sound very odd - so I'll just cut to the chase... (As I'm confused anyway, so you might as well be)... I was given this recipe for dry curing back bacon but I have no idea of what kind of product I should be looking to buy... :cry:

Below is a conversation I had with a butcher (the recipe I'm trying to recreate)... Hopefully you'll see what I mean...

"Our curing mixture is made up of 8% "cure", it's a mix that we get come in, that's got sodium nitrite and a few other things, but I don't know what goes in that. When it comes in we mix that with 19% sugar and 73% salt. We then mix it all up and add it to the meat." :shock:

From anyones experience and/or knowledge, are there any prefabricated "mixtures" out there that are specifically made to be added to salt/sugar at the butchers level... and, if so, based on these recipe percentages, what would the most likely product I would need to buy, be?

I'm a complete novice (as you can tell) and it's now beyond me! :oops:

ANY help is greatly appreciated.

With thanks


Daz
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Re: Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Postby BriCan » Wed Mar 26, 2014 5:07 am

Dazzlin if you are 'still' in Ontario Canada how about putting it in your profile as it will help other forum members give you the right information you need :) :) :D

As I have said before I do dabble (but don't know much) in making bacon -- the stuff you are inquiring about

The following link may or may not be of some use/help to you

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9058

and if you do not mind wading through the 'food porn' av a butchers at the following

http://instagram.com/britishbutcher
But what do I know
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Re: Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Postby Dazzlin » Wed Mar 26, 2014 7:18 am

Hey there BriCan, thanks very much for the reply... Aye, I'm still in Ontari-airi-airi-o ;) but I didn't think to update that because, honestly, I'm happy to get the product I need from anywhere - particularly the UK as that's where the recipe came from... ;)

That's great to know you dabble in the old bacon making yourself ... And as such, I suppose, short of wading through the food porn (lol) - the simple question would be to ask if you have any idea of what this 'mystery', and possibly premanufactured, product name may be... Any ideas?

Good to hear from you again, and thanks for your help :)
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Re: Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Postby BriCan » Wed Mar 26, 2014 5:31 pm

Dazzlin wrote:That's great to know you dabble in the old bacon making yourself ... And as such, I suppose, short of wading through the food porn (lol) - the simple question would be to ask if you have any idea of what this 'mystery', and possibly pre-manufactured, product name may be... Any ideas?


The reason for putting location in, is because as said 'we' can give you the 'right' answer UK is totally different than Canada :shock: ----- :lol: :lol: :wink:

That being said -- your answer lies within the link :wink:


viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9058
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Re: Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Postby Dazzlin » Wed Mar 26, 2014 5:45 pm

Hey! Thanks for the reply... So your thoughts are that the "cure" the butcher I was talking to, at 8%, is most likely a product like the following...

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/4904/510v.jpg

And then I would add a further 73% salt, and 19% sugar?
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Re: Dry Cured Back Bacon - "Translation" Assistance??

Postby NCPaul » Thu Mar 27, 2014 6:24 pm

What butchers do is different than what you might do. Let's consider some math to work this backwards: to make BriCan's all purpose cure using a cure at 8 % usage would require the sodium nitrite to be 11.375 %, to make an all purpose cure with the sodium nitrite at 0.5 % using a cure at 8 % usage would require the sodium nitrite to be 6.25 % and to make an all purpose cure with the sodium nitrite at 0.47 % using a cure at 8 % usage would require the sodium nitrite to be 5.88 %. These three all purpose cures would be handy to a butcher doing a lot of bacon; butchers don't have time the weigh each belly and calculate and weigh out the exact amount of a concentrated form of sodium nitrite, so instead they apply the all purpose cure at roughly the salt level they want. BriCan's all purpose cure used at 1.7 % would supply sodium nitrite at 154 ppm. With some practice (over 40 years :D ) he would know what this amount of salt would look and feel like in his hands and on the belly. The weakest of these cures at 0.47 % would be used at 3 % to supply the sodium nitrite at 150 ppm, a little bit salty for bacon, but not impossibly so. If you are not doing a lot of bellies, I would suggest that rather than making up an all purpose cure, you just get to the same amounts by weighing each ingredient. In Canada, the cure # 1 will be 6.25 % sodium nitrite I believe, so you would use 2.4 g per kilo of belly. The salt could be weighed out at 20 g per kilo of belly and the sugar at 5 g per kilo (the 4:1 ratio the butcher gave you above). If you like BriCan's spice blend, (I can recommend it :D ), you would weigh out white pepper, nutmeg, coriander and mace at 1 g each per kilo of belly. Cure the meat for 10-14 days in a zip bag, pat it dry and allow the meat to mature for another week uncovered. You could cold smoke the bacon while it matures if you like. :D
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