Cure - maturing period

[petertr]

Hams; hocks; back & streaky bacon now in the initial dry cure period. It seems that some time is then needed to allow the cure to mature / equalise out and finish curing to the centre of the meat. So what next?

Remove from curing container OR scrape off the remaining cure mix OR rinse in water OR soak in water for 24 hours.

Then hang to dry for three days OR hang to dry at 10C, in an air current for 7 days or longer OR stack on shelf at 4-6C, 73-80% relative humidity and dry before smoking.

I don�t have anywhere airy which is sure to stay cool enough. If stacked on a fridge shelf after rinse or soak, might mould growth be a problem?

If a solution of Potassium sorbate is used to suppress mould growth, what concentration would be needed?

[dougal]

Hams; hocks; back & streaky bacon now in the initial dry cure period. It seems that some time is then needed to allow the cure to mature / equalise out and finish curing to the centre of the meat. So what next?

Remove from curing container OR scrape off the remaining cure mix OR rinse in water OR soak in water for 24 hours.

Then hang to dry for three days OR hang to dry at 10C, in an air current for 7 days or longer OR stack on shelf at 4-6C, 73-80% relative humidity and dry before smoking.

I don�t have anywhere airy which is sure to stay cool enough. If stacked on a fridge shelf after rinse or soak, might mould growth be a problem?

If a solution of Potassium sorbate is used to suppress mould growth, what concentration would be needed?

Hi Petertr and welcome!

There are others with more experience than me, but let me try and be helpful.

Yes, at the end of the salting period, you should rinse off the residue of the cure.
You seem to have dry cured ham and bacon.
Bacon's easy. You could slice off a little and fry it right after rinsing. If its very salty (depends upon your cure) you may wish to soak it for hours or days to reduce the salt. (In the fridge, fresh water every 12 hours and taste the bacon when you change the water - just as a guideline suggestion.)
I try and cure for flavour rather than preservation, so go fairly light on the salt input, and, not having excess to remove, don't soak at all.
Leaving it for a couple of days to 'dry' (and for the salt to equalise, and the residual nitrite to work towards exhaustion) can only improve the bacon. Some prefer rather dry bacon, and might hang the piece (in the fridge) for longer. Its just a matter of preference.
You want to allow air movement all around the pieces, so some improvisation will be needed.
You should have a dryish surface 'pellicle' before applying smoke.

Now, the hams.
Dry-salting of ham is usually the first stage in preparing a raw ham rather than a cooked ham. (We don't have enough english vocab for 'ham' types!)
I'm not up to raw ham, myself, yet, so I'll leave that for others. I'll just say that because of the thicker meat, long slow maturing and drying is involved.
Smoking is another big area of variation. Our american friends cook ham in hot smoke. In Europe prolonged cold smoking is more usual - whether or not the ham is to be otherwise cooked. That is, *if* its going to be smoked.
What are you aiming for?
A while back, I spelt out in detail what I did when brining and cooking a small ham - which may be helpful if you are not intending the raw ham route just yet.
http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=1990
Since writing that piece, I have acquired a �20 precision digital scale, which I'd recommend. And my next little ham will be experimentally cooked using the 'keep hot' setting of a rice cooker...

Sorbate. Seen it on ingredients lists, dunno anything more!
Happy to learn about it though!

[welsh wizard]

Hi

Ref bacon, all I do once the cure period has elapsed is to rinse off, pat dry with a paper towel, leave on a trivet in the fridge for approx two days and then wrap in greaseproof and use as required.

Bacon in my house does not last long as the kids love it and I use copious amounts of it in pasta sauces, pies and sausages.

Cheers WW

[petertr]

Thanks, I�ll give this a try: rinse off, pat dry; leave on cooler shelf at 5C for 4 days; hang in moving air; at outside air temperature, to dry for a day before smoking.

Our cold smoker is just taking shape - a whisky barrel with smoke blown in from smouldering wood chips in a pan on a single electric hob enclosed in a microwave oven � gutted except for its fan. Will do the drying in the smoker by running only the fan, continuous air flow may mean it dries in 6-12 hours.

Dougal � thanks for the link, the equilibrium method is an interesting way of doing things. I�ll get a precision scale before starting my next cure.
Although we are dry curing the ham it is for eventual cooking � our favourite gammon is steam or slow cooked then covered with honey & mustard glaze and baked very hot for 15-25 min.

I�ve come across alternative dry cure times of:
1 day per half inch thickness plus 2 days. �So 2.5 inch boned ham = 7days
Seven days per inch less, for a milder flavour. �So 2.5 inch boned ham = 18 days or less
Plan is to try a 14 day dry cure, plus 14days to mature before cold smoking.

We�ll have 4 hams so some will be kept for a fair while (6-10 months). Would they need to be frozen?

[saucisson]

That's an interesting idea for a smoker, using a gutted microwave. I've just cured and smoked a ham for Christmas and have frozen it, but that's as much because I have more freezer space than fridge space as anything else.

Dave

[dougal]

Peter, the smoker sounds intriguing.

I can't help you regarding dry-cured, cold smoked ham, for eventual slow roasting - I haven't yet had a go.
However, you the thing is to recognise the different techniques and their results as part of the route to the result.

Specifically, *raw* hams are preserved by upping the salt content and shedding water - perhaps getting a 20%+ weight loss from drying.
Dry-salting, air-drying, and smoking all assist in those aims.

For your cooked ham, you don't want to be losing too much water - else you'll end up with some very dry meat indeed. I may be way off, but I think dry-salting as a preliminary to roasting is rather unusual - do report on how it works out!
For smoking, you want a touch-dry, tacky surface. I don't think you need more than 12/24 hours hanging in the fridge (less in your (warmer?) chamber) to achieve an appropriate pellicle. I think you're drying it rather hard.

Have you seen Keith Erlandson's smoking book?
And Jane Grigson's Charcuterie? (Imprecise, heavy on the saltpetre, no refrigeration, but a splendid resource for different results and the methods towards them.)

[dougal]

That's an interesting idea for a smoker, using a gutted microwave.

Yes, I hope it has a stainless lining though!
I suspect that in the small, well enclosed space, not much heat is going to be needed.
More soldering iron than hotplate wattage, methinks.

As ever, hopefully we can all learn from shared experience.

[saucisson]

Yes, I hope it has a stainless lining though!
I suspect that in the small, well enclosed space, not much heat is going to be needed.
More soldering iron than hotplate wattage, methinks.

As ever, hopefully we can all learn from shared experience.

It will be interesting to see the effect the fan forced ventilation has on smoke generation and the wattage required to achieve it. The biggest issue is likely to be avoiding the wood burning rather than smouldering from the plentiful supply of oxygen a fan will give.


Dave

[petertr]

I guess that the supermarket smoked hams we�ve cooked previously have been stitched pumped, and that �smoked� could be liquid smoke flavour in the cure.
A ham presumably has to be cured somehow. Some people say brine cure meat is less moist (looses more weight) than dry cure, others that dry cured meat looses less moisture when cooked. I�m new to curing and somewhat confused (it happens a lot) by the inconsistent guidance around.

I�ve read Keith Erlandson�s Home Smoking and Curing and Stanley Marianski�s Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design, was disappointed that Erlandson�s book is mostly about fish. The most useful part of Marianski�s book is available on-line http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/smoking/smoking_intro.htm


The average hob wattage will hopefully be lower than the microwave was (700W), I anticipate 100-300W, with the airflow the oven should be cooler than its original use.
I�ll put some more details of the smoker in a new post. http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopi ... 9733#19733

[Oddley]

A ham presumably has to be cured somehow. Some people say brine cure meat is less moist (looses more weight) than dry cure, others that dry cured meat looses less moisture when cooked. I’m new to curing and somewhat confused (it happens a lot) by the inconsistent guidance around.

You have really hit on the crux of the matter with this question. I think you'll be surprised to find out that brine curing and dry curing will give exactly the same results as to the dryness.

This thread gives me the ideal opportunity to clarify my thinking on this subject. During the process of curing, you will be introducing into meat, a number of chemicals that will change the composition and makeup of the meat. The major chemical to be introduced, and I think one of the other most underrated is salt.

To start with salt and the other chemicals will be introduced into the meat by the process of diffusion. The particle weight will then cause an uneven pressure on each side of the cell wall, the cells will then try to equalise pressure by losing water, and actually shrinking in size. This process is called osmotic pressure.

As you can see from these two processes. The more salt and chemicals you introduce into the meat. The more water the meats will lose, the more water the meat loses the dryer it will get. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that dry curing and brine curing will give exactly the same dryness with exactly the same chemicals introduced.

If anybody disagrees, or has new ideas on this. I would be most happy to hear them.

[petertr]

That makes sense to me Oddley

So has anyone cooked a properly cured ham?

[dougal]

Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that dry curing and brine curing will give exactly the same dryness with exactly the same chemicals introduced.

Really?

I've always found that some brine had to be poured off after dry curing, not a lot, but some.
That's water out of the meat.

Brine curing leads to a "pickup" in weight.
Oddley usually quotes 8 to 10% for this.
Meat wants to end up somewhere around 2% salt (very roughly), so that indicates a water gain of perhaps 6% of the meat's weight.

I'd be extremely surprised to discover the same water content after the two methods.


However, the subsequent processing also matters.
The water content after curing would be carried directly into roasting.
Please refer to Sucisson's enthusiastic response to the moistness produced by brining a Turkey before roasting it.


However, it is perfectly plausible that the excess water, present during a poaching process, might very well completely mask the difference between the two cures.

But of course, when it comes to mouthfeel, "dryness" and water content aren't exactly the same thing.

[Oddley]

petertr, I have just finished an experiment to test my theory. I thought you might be interested.

I cured a piece of leg of pork with an equilibrium cure, with the following ingredients

1048 g leg of pork
502 g water
68 g salt
68 g sugar
0.25 g nitrite
0.51 g nitrate ( for the purpose of calculation I will call the nitrite + nitrate = 1g)

Total weight 1687 g

Salt calculated as 4% of finished product
Sugar calculated as 4% of finished product

I took the meat out after 11 days and re-weighed it, the weight was 1116 g a weight gain of 68 g or 6.5 % of the original meat weight.

I now calculated the weight of salt and sugar at 4% of the final product. The salt and sugar each weighed 45 gm rounded up, added together this makes 90 g. As there was only a 68 g increase in the weight of the meat, then this means a loss of water of 22 g, or 2% of the meats original water. This means in this case the meat would be dryer.

I'll have to now do one with a dry cure.

The wife simmered it, and served it up with a salad, and potato in it's jacket, and very nice it was too. I didn't get the opportunity to weigh the meat after being cooked, so I have no idea if it had re-hydrated.

[petertr]

I cured a piece of leg of pork with an equilibrium cure, with the following ingredients

....... As there was only a 68 g increase in the weight of the meat, then this means a loss of water of 22 g, or 2% of the meats original water. This means in this case the meat would be dryer.

I'll have to now do one with a dry cure.

I look forward to your results.
My dry cure bacon is about finished maturing, I'll reweigh soon to see how it compares.