Red wine brine/cure

[AKokkinos]

Hi to all. New to the world of charcuterie and just placed my first order for ingredients. Apologies for the long post, but I need to explain what I am trying to achieve. My objective is to get started with the traditional meats/sausages of my country and then proceed with more exotic flavors. The method is mostly the same: brine pork belly and loin in red wine with salt, black pepper, ground coriander for about 5-7 days and then dry for a day. Hot smoke and then it is ready to eat either as is, fried or grilled. Certainly, the old people did not know about nitrites and hence used extra salt for the brine.
Now to my question: To be on the safe side, I need to use cure #1 in my brine. So assuming 3000 grams of meat, I would need to use about 1500 ml of dry red wine and 100 grams of salt (I do not like salty food, and will freeze the portions). How much cure #1 would you recommend using in such a recipe and how long would you marinate / brine the meat. The meat will be 1 piece pork belly, and 1 piece loin about 1500 grams each.

Thank you all
Andreas

[NCPaul]

I would use 10.8 g cure #1 (at 6.25% nitrite) for ten days. Hopefully someone will double check my math. Welcome to the forum.

[wheels]

Given the nature of immersion cures, and the difficulty in calculating them accurately, NCPaul and I have discussed your problem, and whilst his initial answer is perfectly safe, feel that a better alternative may be 16gm of cure #1 for 15 days (5 days per kg).

You will need to follow this with a good few days resting/maturing before you cook the meat to allow the cure to equalise throughout the meat - I'll explain - in 5 days per kg, most of the cure will still be in the outer parts of the meat. This isn't noticeable in meat without nitrite/nitrate added as the cured bit of the meat doesn't change colour, but with the nitrite in the cure #1 you could end up with a red ring surrounding grey, uncured, meat. Something like this:



Hence the rest period.

Please let us know how you get on with the cure. Immersion cures are very difficult to be sure of, or calculate, so any feedback on them is useful - good or bad!

That said at 5 - 7 days in wine then hot smoked, it wouldn't bother me eating it without cure #1. Given refrigeration and good hygiene practices, other than the smoke, it seems no different to what happens to many a slow cooked pork belly in restaurants every day - their meat may not be in wine for 7 days, but it's often that old - the logistics of the supply chain ensure that this is inevitable. However, I would have concerns about it being smoked in an anaerobic environment if it was cold smoked or hot smoked at very low temps.

I hope that this helps.

Phil

[yotmon]

Hi Andreas, I would like to know what recipe you will be using for the Cypriot sausage, will they be the smoked variety I get in my local Greek restaurant.
I also enjoy the smoked cured pork loin I get there, suppose this is similar to the above recipe ?