After reading about Costco having pork belly, and doing my yearly shopping trip yesterday, I found them and they are gorgeous.... perfectly skinned about 4000% better than I can do.... only thing is we won't have cracklins...
These dry-brined bellies are rubbed with a commercial cure blend of 85% salt, 0.75% nitrite and the rest, I assume, is maple sugar of some sort and anti caking agents etc..... The manufacturer recommends a 2% addition of the cure to the meat.....
The bellies all weighed in at 8#'s give or take.... Soooo, 8# x 454 x 0.02 = about 7.5 grams of cure added to each belly.... divided up between each side and rubbed into the meat.... and stacked on plastic screens for liquid movement and uniform distribution of cure etc. during the curing time.... screens bottom, top and in between the slabs with a weight on top...
Curing time will be about 14 days +/- ..... I prefer the longer curing time so equalization of stuff into the meat will happen... more uniform distribution... thorough distribution.... etc.... I will rotate/turn the bellies every few days...
The bellies fit perfectly into my curing tubs... so I decided to do a dry brine this time.... I've still got about 40#'s of sliced bacon from my last batch.... OH WELL !!!!
Not only were bellies on my to look at list, but Chuck Primal was also.... Picked up a beautiful 19# primal... No pics sorry.... but I sliced it up into 2 small roasts and 10 steaks... vac-packed and in the freeze box.... A good deal at $3.29 for Choice chuck.... I'm thinking I'll smoke the roasts and slice / vac-pack for sammies.... Also did that to a pork loin... 2 roasts will be cured for American/Canadian bacon.... bunch of steaks.... all the meat was pre seasoned with Montreal Steak, because I did pork loin steaks like that last month, and they were the best loin steaks we have had..
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These dry-brined bellies are rubbed with a commercial cure blend of 85% salt, 0.75% nitrite and the rest, I assume, is maple sugar of some sort and anti caking agents etc..... The manufacturer recommends a 2% addition of the cure to the meat.....
The bellies all weighed in at 8#'s give or take.... Soooo, 8# x 454 x 0.02 = about 7.5 grams of cure added to each belly.... divided up between each side and rubbed into the meat.... and stacked on plastic screens for liquid movement and uniform distribution of cure etc. during the curing time.... screens bottom, top and in between the slabs with a weight on top...
Curing time will be about 14 days +/- ..... I prefer the longer curing time so equalization of stuff into the meat will happen... more uniform distribution... thorough distribution.... etc.... I will rotate/turn the bellies every few days...
The bellies fit perfectly into my curing tubs... so I decided to do a dry brine this time.... I've still got about 40#'s of sliced bacon from my last batch.... OH WELL !!!!
Not only were bellies on my to look at list, but Chuck Primal was also.... Picked up a beautiful 19# primal... No pics sorry.... but I sliced it up into 2 small roasts and 10 steaks... vac-packed and in the freeze box.... A good deal at $3.29 for Choice chuck.... I'm thinking I'll smoke the roasts and slice / vac-pack for sammies.... Also did that to a pork loin... 2 roasts will be cured for American/Canadian bacon.... bunch of steaks.... all the meat was pre seasoned with Montreal Steak, because I did pork loin steaks like that last month, and they were the best loin steaks we have had..
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