As many of you know I’m not a fan of brine curing generally, I prefer dry rub cure, but here I drove into the ditch just a bit.
Marianski recommends very “hot” brines, to the tune of 60-70* brines, that’s about 15% salt in brine. The cure happens crazy fast because of the very high salt concentration. Salt is the horsepower of curing so the more of it the faster the cure happens
So for bacon thickness pieces of meat 1 1/2” or so the brine time is just 2-3 days, any more and the final product is to salty. So pull from the brine at 2-3 days and rinse well, dry and back into the cooler naked on a rack to finish curing for another 5 days or so. I was intrigued by this “hot” approach and tried it out on some small buckboard pieces each about a pound and a half in weight. I drove in the ditch again because I could not bring myself to put meat into a 15% salt solution so I did a semi-dry cure . I painted the pieces with molasses then applied 7% salt by weight and then covered them in sugar like a donut, eyeball to heavy, added just a bit of water about 1/4 cup then bagged for 2 days. Then rinsed and dried back into the fridge naked on a rack for 5 more days, then smoked.
The Canadian bacon was a run of a play off of Blackforest ham. I dry cured the loin piece with just salt and cure #1 all by weight. Then after 7 days I pulled it and washed it, rinsed, then mixed up the sugar and spice coating and again applied as much as would stick to the meat then trussed and on to the smoker.
Both were a huge success, they are delicious. The blackforest is sweeter but they both are very good.
Marianski recommends very “hot” brines, to the tune of 60-70* brines, that’s about 15% salt in brine. The cure happens crazy fast because of the very high salt concentration. Salt is the horsepower of curing so the more of it the faster the cure happens
So for bacon thickness pieces of meat 1 1/2” or so the brine time is just 2-3 days, any more and the final product is to salty. So pull from the brine at 2-3 days and rinse well, dry and back into the cooler naked on a rack to finish curing for another 5 days or so. I was intrigued by this “hot” approach and tried it out on some small buckboard pieces each about a pound and a half in weight. I drove in the ditch again because I could not bring myself to put meat into a 15% salt solution so I did a semi-dry cure . I painted the pieces with molasses then applied 7% salt by weight and then covered them in sugar like a donut, eyeball to heavy, added just a bit of water about 1/4 cup then bagged for 2 days. Then rinsed and dried back into the fridge naked on a rack for 5 more days, then smoked.
The Canadian bacon was a run of a play off of Blackforest ham. I dry cured the loin piece with just salt and cure #1 all by weight. Then after 7 days I pulled it and washed it, rinsed, then mixed up the sugar and spice coating and again applied as much as would stick to the meat then trussed and on to the smoker.
Both were a huge success, they are delicious. The blackforest is sweeter but they both are very good.