New Groups to Help Everyone on Smokers
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I cured some bacon and tasted it before smoking it and it was super salty it was in the cure for 8 days. Will smoking help get some of the saltyness out ?if not is there a cure? Don’t want to throw away 20 pounds of pork belly.
samc You should be able to get some of that salt out just by soaking it in plain water for a few days or so, even just a day or so would help. Change the water every day or two to help leach the salt back out.
Now, getting just as salty as you want it is the trick. I’m afraid I can’t help with that. However, you could just keep sampling it to see if you get it where you want it.
Also, you can just reserve that bacon for seasoning instead of just straight up eating. Twenty pounds is an awful lot for seasoning, but you could maybe save some of it out for that. I’d love to have a ready supply of 1/2 pound seasoning bacon packs ready to go in the freezer. Talk about making a bunch of beans and greens!
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Think I’d start by soaking in water for an hour then see where you are at.
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I cured some bacon and tasted it before smoking it and it was super salty it was in the cure for 8 days. Will smoking help get some of the saltyness out ?if not is there a cure? Don’t want to throw away 20 pounds of pork belly.
samc out of curiosity what was your cure recipe? How much salt?
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I’m curing an 11# belly now for bacon and went with 3% weight in salt and 1.5% weight in sugar. I went with 8g Cure #1. Definitely way less on all.
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samc I am doing some conversions and double checking right now, please DO NOT EAT THAT! I’m having someone double check me but it looks like too much pink salt (sure cure in our world) and salt were used. Maybe I can’t do the math this morning or am brain dead so please don’t throw it out yet either!
I’ll have more very shortly.
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samc Did you mean 5.6 grams?
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We are testing out creating new groups based upon what smoker you own. Right now I have 1 for the Pk-100 and 1 for Masterbuilt. If people want I can split masterbuilt into a few different categories (but I don’t want to go totally nuts here) as I know they make a bunch, but to start this will make things easier. So, now if you have a question on a Masterbuilt or PK100 you can simply Masterbuilt or PK100 and it will notify everyone in that group!
So, to be useful people would have to go and join those groups. Let me know if you guys like this idea and what other groups for smokers or other pieces of equipment you want. Right now I have the badges showing but we can hide that if it starts to get too many badges next to our names.
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cattleman54 Didn’t post the pic, feel free to email me at jonathon@waltonsinc.com and ill post it!
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The cure I used is the one in the Charcuterie book by Ruhlman page 39. It has worked before I have no idea why it was sooooo salty this time. I am now soaking the bellies overnight in water and brown sugar. That seems to be working just a little slow. Hopefully I will be able to smoke tomorrow
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I show about .5 lb salt and 22.7 grams cure#1 for 20 lb bacon
Water will leach some salt out but I am not sure on the nitrite
(Edited to show nitrite instead of nitrate) -
samc Sorry, I’m not familiar with that book. What glen is saying is what I am more familiar with. If you have the time and want to you could snap a pic and email it to me at jonathon@waltonsinc.com ? I don’t think posting a pic from a book here would be right but I’m curious as to what this is.
Actually, when I was looking the book up on Amazon (got awesome reviews by the way) I think I see part of the issue, I was able to view the first few pages of it and I think I see an issue. On page 2 or 3 under “THE BASIC DRY CURE” he says to use 2 oz/56 grams of the mixture for 5 lb of meat, it seems he would be talking about using 2 oz of the mixture he is talking about below that paragraph for 5 lb of meat, not use that entire thing for 5 lb of meat. That would be closer to what we would recommend as the total mixture there would be 26 oz with enough cure in it to 50 lb of meat. So for 5 lb divide that by ten and you get 2.6 oz, so not exact but pretty close.
I swear I’m not trying to come down on you hard here or anything, we all make mistakes, and it’s possible I am wrong here… but 2 oz of pink salts (a common name for what we call sure cure) for 5 lb of meat is so over the top that I can’t reconcile it in my mind. Dry curing isn’t my specialty and with Charcuterie in the title maybe he is talking about a different method I am unfamiliar with but when we did some lomo and some dry cured sausage we were still using 1 oz of sure cure to 25 lb of meat.
This is a good example of why we recommend premixed seasonings, it eliminates or at least reduces issues like this popping up. I know of no way of removing nitrites from the meat once they have been introduced.
Get more help with your processing questions and learn more about processing meat by subscribing to our waltonsinc.com youtube page at https://wltns.link/waltonstv I am a Gorilla, love yourself
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Jonathon I would think there would be more value if you broke them out by category of smoker. At the end of the day the recipes that would be discussed can be used across the brands, with some idiosyncrasies here and there based on pellet, ceramic, stick burner, sawdust burners, and full-on commercial units…
ClaytonD I agree. Some people have propane or electric. Some people might have a small electric smoker and some people might be in the commercial business.
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samc Sorry, I’m not familiar with that book. What glen is saying is what I am more familiar with. If you have the time and want to you could snap a pic and email it to me at jonathon@waltonsinc.com ? I don’t think posting a pic from a book here would be right but I’m curious as to what this is.
Actually, when I was looking the book up on Amazon (got awesome reviews by the way) I think I see part of the issue, I was able to view the first few pages of it and I think I see an issue. On page 2 or 3 under “THE BASIC DRY CURE” he says to use 2 oz/56 grams of the mixture for 5 lb of meat, it seems he would be talking about using 2 oz of the mixture he is talking about below that paragraph for 5 lb of meat, not use that entire thing for 5 lb of meat. That would be closer to what we would recommend as the total mixture there would be 26 oz with enough cure in it to 50 lb of meat. So for 5 lb divide that by ten and you get 2.6 oz, so not exact but pretty close.
I swear I’m not trying to come down on you hard here or anything, we all make mistakes, and it’s possible I am wrong here… but 2 oz of pink salts (a common name for what we call sure cure) for 5 lb of meat is so over the top that I can’t reconcile it in my mind. Dry curing isn’t my specialty and with Charcuterie in the title maybe he is talking about a different method I am unfamiliar with but when we did some lomo and some dry cured sausage we were still using 1 oz of sure cure to 25 lb of meat.
This is a good example of why we recommend premixed seasonings, it eliminates or at least reduces issues like this popping up. I know of no way of removing nitrites from the meat once they have been introduced.
Jonathon I have the Ruhlman book, and I agree with your reading (2 oz/56 g of the mixture for 5 lb of meat).
samc, I can see how you read it to mean use that whole recipe for only 5 lbs. It would have been helpful to say something like "cures 50 pounds of meat) or something like that where they put the recipe. I’ve even made myself a note to that effect so I or someone else doesn’t go back and make the same mistake.
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Possibly difference between brining, injecting and dry cure?
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I did use the salt box method and it appears that was the mistake next time I will weigh and measure. I do see where it says 2 oz per 5 pounds but it also said if you use salt box method there was no need to measure. That seems not to work well and I will be the first to not recommended that to anyone. Lesson learned
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samc We have all been there for sure, I have FINISHED stuffing snack sticks before and then realized I never added cure! Luckily everything had kept super cold so I just cut the casings, added the cure, remixed and restuffed. Now everything is double-checked when I think I am done with mixing!
TexLaw Thanks for checking in on that! As we get more into charcuterie I’ll be wanting some books (and HOPEFULLY attending a short course at Iowa State…I can’t emphasize how badly I want to do that, if you are reading this Austin ) is that a good one?
Get more help with your processing questions and learn more about processing meat by subscribing to our waltonsinc.com youtube page at https://wltns.link/waltonstv I am a Gorilla, love yourself
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Charcuterie and Salumi by Ruhlman are both books that started my journey into cured and smoked meats. Highly recommend for entry level.
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