First time poster, long time reader...
I started my BBB making adventure last night (9/1/15) with 2 butts from Sam's club, each deboned and split in half. I used High Mountain BBB Cure, which comes in 3 small bags. I also added a handful of brown sugar to each of the bags as I've seen that recommended on this forum due to the salty nature of the High Mtn cure. 2 of the bags also received some maple syrup. It's arguable whether the sugar or maple will even flavor the meat during the cure, but I figured it couldn't hurt.
I weighed each half-butt and then measured out the cure at the indicated amount (1Tbl + 1.25 tsp per pound). What a pain! How are you supposed to measure out cure for 4lbs. 3 oz. of meat?!? (e.g. 0.8375 of a teaspoon)
Anyway, on the last butt, which weighed just under 3.5 lbs., I was short by 0.5 teaspoon of the BBB cure. I really didn't want to open the last little bag of cure just for 1/2tsp., so instead I added 1/2tsp. of Prague Powder #1 (oops). Finished it off with some brown sugar, maple syrup and CBP.
For that small amount of meat, I probably could have just left out the 0.5 tsp and let it cure longer than 10 days to be sure it cure all the way though. For 3.5 pounds of meat, I would have needed 0.7 tsp. of Prague Powder for the entire cure.However, in this case, I was using High Mtn cure, so there was already cure in there.
Anyway, on to my questions:
- Did I ruin that last bag by adding 0.5 tsp prague powder instead of the High Mtn BBB cure?
- It's only been in the bag less than 1 day, so can I rescue it if it was too much cure by a dangerous amount?
- Finally, and on a side note, are there recipes which utilize meat/cure ratios by weight of cure and not by "spoons"?
Thanks,
Matt
I started my BBB making adventure last night (9/1/15) with 2 butts from Sam's club, each deboned and split in half. I used High Mountain BBB Cure, which comes in 3 small bags. I also added a handful of brown sugar to each of the bags as I've seen that recommended on this forum due to the salty nature of the High Mtn cure. 2 of the bags also received some maple syrup. It's arguable whether the sugar or maple will even flavor the meat during the cure, but I figured it couldn't hurt.
I weighed each half-butt and then measured out the cure at the indicated amount (1Tbl + 1.25 tsp per pound). What a pain! How are you supposed to measure out cure for 4lbs. 3 oz. of meat?!? (e.g. 0.8375 of a teaspoon)
Anyway, on the last butt, which weighed just under 3.5 lbs., I was short by 0.5 teaspoon of the BBB cure. I really didn't want to open the last little bag of cure just for 1/2tsp., so instead I added 1/2tsp. of Prague Powder #1 (oops). Finished it off with some brown sugar, maple syrup and CBP.
For that small amount of meat, I probably could have just left out the 0.5 tsp and let it cure longer than 10 days to be sure it cure all the way though. For 3.5 pounds of meat, I would have needed 0.7 tsp. of Prague Powder for the entire cure.However, in this case, I was using High Mtn cure, so there was already cure in there.
Anyway, on to my questions:
- Did I ruin that last bag by adding 0.5 tsp prague powder instead of the High Mtn BBB cure?
- It's only been in the bag less than 1 day, so can I rescue it if it was too much cure by a dangerous amount?
- Finally, and on a side note, are there recipes which utilize meat/cure ratios by weight of cure and not by "spoons"?
Thanks,
Matt