Cured Meats

[Mitra]

Index of Cured Meat Recipes

Ham
Spiced Beef

The original purpose of curing meat was preservation. If meat is stored for a long time, even with enough salt to stop mould and decay, it can still be susceptible to botulism - that's what nitrites prevent. The fact that the word "botulism" comes from the latin word for sausage conveys just how real this risk was in the days before refrigeration - a more immediate threat than possible long term hazards from the preservatives. So, if you're wanting your meat to keep unrefrigerated for long periods, you might consider that eliminating the risk of botulism is worth using some saltpetre (potassium nitrate - which gradually converts to potassium nitrite during storage). If you are curing meat more for flavour than preservation, then nitrates & nitrites aren't essential. They are what keeps bacon pink, rather than pork coloured - it's up to you how much you care about the colour.

[Mitra]

Home Cured Ham

This is incredibly easy, and you will never want to eat bought ham again. The only thing is that you have to remember to plan ahead and start it a couple of days before you want to eat it.

I tried this first with pork leg, and that worked well, but more recently I've been using pork loin. It's a nicely shaped cut that gives conveniently sized pieces of ham, and it's much easier to slice than the bigger leg joint.

The spicing comes from a Paula Wolfert recipe for salt pork belly. She got it from Jean-Pierre Moulle at Alice Waters's Chez Panisse. The pork belly version was cured for three days - I sliced the loin and reduced the time.

For 500g/ 1 lb pork loin
20 fl oz/ 575 ml water
20g salt
1 Tbsp (about 12g) brown sugar - I use rapadura
2 bay leaves
6 allspice berries
2 cloves
1/2 tsp peppercorns

Feel free to play around with the spices. Juniper berries are good, for example.

The meat will absorb about 10% of its own weight of cure, so about 50/575 * 12g carb (approx 1g) for 1 lb of meat.

Boil the water, add the salt, sugar & spices and let it go cold .Cut the raw meat into slices about 1cm/ 1/3" thick. Put the meat into a non-corrosive container, and pour the water and spices over it. Let it sit in the fridge for two days, then drain, and pat the meat dry.

I usually sautee it - just do whatever you would normally do with ham.

Thicker slices would take longer for the cure to penetrate, thinner ones less. The time isn't critical - less time gives a milder flavour, longer a saltier one.

I usually add 1/4 tsp of saltpetre, which wasn't in the original recipe. It keeps the meat pale pink - lighter than commercial ham, but looking like ham rather than pork. But obviously, if you're doing this to avoid nitrates/nitrites, then you wouldn't use saltpetre.

[Mitra]

Spiced Beef

This one's from Eliza Acton's book, published in 1845. She suggests round, rump or thick flank of beef. I've tried a couple of cuts and ended up settling on chuck.

It's what's known as a "dry cure," which means you just rub the spice mix into the meat rather than making it into a brine.

4 lb beef
2 oz brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground mace
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 nutmeg grated
1 oz juniper berries
pinch cayenne
3 1/2 oz salt

For cooking:
1 carrot
1 onion
a few sprigs of parsley & thyme

Mix the sugar and spices, rub them into the beef and let it sit for three days. Then add the salt, rub that into the meat, and let it sit for twelve more days, turning it every day.

Wipe the cure from the meat, put it in a pan with the carrot, onion, herbs & enough water to more or less cover, and simmer until it's tender - 3-4 hours. Leave it to cool in the cooking water.

As there's no saltpetre, this will be brown rather than red/pink. The original recipe has a footnote saying that "when the appearance of the meat is much considered, three-quarters of an ounce of saltpetre may be mixed with the spices." That's for 12 lbs of meat, but is still way in excess of modern recommendations for safe levels of nitrates, which would be for 3g salpetre for 12 lbs, or 1g for the 4 lb quantity I've given above. Definitely an area where old recipes need some adjustment!

I really don't know how much of the sugar is absorbed in this one. Certainly there's some liquid collects during the couple of weeks curing time, so you're not getting all of it. If you want to guess, you could count half of it, which would give you about 7g carb per pound (of raw meat).

[Missy]

Interesting thread Mitra. I've just found Jerky...the store boughten kind...and although it helped get me out of a snacking bind the other day...and it hit the spot, I wondered about the added other stuff. And the sodium too. I have bought jerky in the Amish area here...and it doesn't have nutrictional counts on it...like the protein, carbs, calorie info...so, it's left me wondering just how much the protein counts are? You wouldn't happen to know?...roughly that is? I have the gram counter book, but I'm not sure exactly if I'm looking at something named similar....I haven't seen it referred to as Jerky? Can you or anyone else help??

I've had beef, pork and turkey jerky.

I find it very interesting "listening" to your recipes. What is saltpetre? AND...maybe this is a dumb question...BUT is this (Spiced Beef) refigerated while it's curing??

I'm sure my little DOG would be PLEASED if I made him some JERKY! :eek: lol

[Mitra]

I have some packets of biltong, a South African equivalent of jerky. I'll check the counts for that later. The sodium is something you'll have to decide for yourself. Dr Mike's blog (http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/?p=220) suggests it's not as bad as we've been led to believe, and it isn't something I worry about.

Saltpetre is potassium nitrate. Commercial producers often use sodium nitrate to do the same job.

I keep the meat in the fridge while it's curing. Obviously, in the beef recipe, the original 18-something version wouldn't have been - but it was a traditional Christmas food, and houses didn't have central heating then, so it was probably kept somewhere a lot cooler than a modern kitchen. The pork recipe is a modern one, more about flavour than preservation, so I'd definitely refrigerate.

I think I just do this stuff to make up for not being able to bake as much these days :).

[Missy]

I think it's TERRIBLY interesting that you do, and couragous... and have shared it with us. I'm enjoying reading about it. I don't know if I'm game...but I surely would love to taste it. How about I pop over sometime today for a BITE!!!! :D

Yeah, that sodium...I don't think it IS as bad as we've been lead to believe...once again, has it been "hyped" when really all kinds of other stuff was the cause. Probably. I've switched myself over to exculisively using sea salt now. And, just because I like the LOOK and MOTION of a pepper mill (a new fascination of mine) I also saw that you can "pepper mill" sea salt too! So, I do! :D ..lol...I'm SUCH a child at heart. lol :rolleyes: Make it entertaining..and I'm interested!

Okay, I've stopped just short of having my husband feed me making airplane noises! I've matured from that! LOL Oh, never mind....back to the pork baby!

I like buying my Jerky from the Amish....cause well...I don't know. I guess, cause I know that they are using the good meats in it to begin with...but...with all the preserving I don't know if it loses the "goodness" of it??

I know, I'll tell you whats in it...and if you don't mind, and if you know....you could tell me that it's sounds alright or OH HEAVENS MISSY STAYYYYYYY AWAYYYY!!! LOL

Ingredients in Teriyaki Beef Jerky:

Beef, Salt, Destrose, Hydrolyzed Soya Protein 19.75%, Sugar, Spices, Extractives of Onion, Garlic and Spices, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite.

I don't know about many of those names...and that's the part that confuses me if it's something I'm okay eating or is that questionable.

I was someone not very much turned on too Jerky before...but after seeing how popular it is at the craftshow I was at and the lines they had in their booth and the amount of money/quanity they went through...MY WORD it's popular. I do know that their are whole stores in our area devoted to this Jerky stuff. But, I just don't know if I'd go to the trouble of doing it myself? Hum....

Thanks for sharing Mitra....I'm interested. :)

[cmcole]

Thank you for sharing.
In this "neck of the woods" salt beef and salt pork riblets are sold in five-pound (or larger) buckets (or by the piece from some places).

You soak them (well, some people don't) and change the water a few times, and then cook them with other veggies (mainly root and kale crops), as well as "peas pudding" (traditional around here).

http://www.newfoundlanders.net/jigsdinner.html

[Mitra]

Ingredients in Teriyaki Beef Jerky:

Beef, Salt, Destrose, Hydrolyzed Soya Protein 19.75%, Sugar, Spices, Extractives of Onion, Garlic and Spices, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite.


Beef is OK :D
Salt - well, I think we've covered that
dextrose - that's a form of sugar, so you might want to see how much there is. I thought ingredients were listed in order, but if there's 20% of soya protein, I can't imagine the salt level is higher than that :eek: . I see there's sugar as well, so I'd just want to check the carbs if you were going to eat much of it.
hydrolysed soya protein - I don't eat soy usually, but lots of people do, and I don't want to restart the Great Soya Wars! Hydrolyzed means the protein has been broken down into its component amino acids. I've no idea what effect that has in health terms.
sugar - you probably know about that ;)
onion, garlic, spices - being a control freak (otherwise why would I be curing my own meat in the first place :o ) I'd like to know what spices - but they never like to commit themselves :rolleyes: .
sodium erythorbate - I knew nothing about it, so I looked on Wikipedia: Sodium erythorbate is used predominantly in the food industry (meat, poultry, soft drinks and other food stuffs) when used in processed meat such as hot dogs and beef sticks, this compound keep these foods from changing color.

This compound reduces the rate of nitrate to nitric oxide in meat thus keeping the pink in meat color. As an antioxidant this compound helps keep the flavor stability, similar to Vitamin C. This compound can have a very tiny effect as Vitamin C.

Also helps prevent the formation of nitrosamines, which is a carcinogen.

sodium nitrite - keeps colour, prevents botulism. It can produce nitrosamines, which are potentially carcinogenic - presumably that's why the erythorbate is added.

Does it taste good?

My biltong, from the supermarket (made in Yorkshire!) has: beef, salt, black pepper, brown sugar, sodium bicarbonate, vinegar. 57g protein and 0.5g carb per 100g

[LisaS]

A biltong shop – oh my ! http://www.markblumberg.com/biltong.html (http://www.markblumberg.com/biltong.html)

Home biltong making:
http://www.shebeen.com/biltong/ (http://www.shebeen.com/biltong/)
http://www.biltongmakers.com/ (http://www.biltongmakers.com/)

[Missy]

Thanks Mitra! I had assumed it probably wasn't the "BEST" thing for me...but it was either that, (in the situation I was in) or an apple crisp with ice cream, or a funnel cake. :rolleyes:

Where's Ottawa...isn't he the pemican man?! lol

[Nean]

Thanks for the biltong links! Definately worth it to have the butchers make it and ship it in my opinion. Suspect it has MUCH less sugar than jerky. I don't do jerky because i haven't found any which doesn't have sugar as the 2nd (or two or three kinds of sugar) in the list of ingredients. In fact I's beginning to wonder if there's some kind of law about not calling it jerky unless it is sugar cured.

[cmcole]

Could you make it in a dehydrator, do you think, rather than building a box?

[LisaS]

you can definitely make regular beef jerky in a dehydrator. I don't know about biltong - every recipe I see on the 'net is with a biltong box - but that might just be the S.A. way of doing w/out the tech gadget.

Have you see the Good Eats (Alton Brown) episode about jerky? He slices it with the grain (not against) and then lays it out on furnace filters and dries them by strapping to a box fan. The idea is cool-drying rather than low heat (like a conventional dehydrator). recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_31151,00.html
and here is a page about DIY jerky
http://www.diyjerky.com/instructions.html
which I found here:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/09/diy_jerky_machine.html