Air Curing Pork Hams
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I’ve been around dry curing pork hams many years ago but my Dad was the lead man so to speak. I’ve been doing a lot of home work and even picked up a Frig for curing. So the University of KY published a really good paper on this topic. At this point my cure mix will consist of salt with the appropriate amount of Instacure #2, brown sugar, black pepper - spend about 60 days in the frig and the I will Cold Smoke it. But then I ran across an article that talked about Sodium Erythorbate and so I bought a pound from Waltonsinc along with some other stuff. The directions for use says to use 0.0546875 lb per 100 pounds of meat! I’m curing a 20-25 pound country ham! So I’m thinking I have really misunderstood the use of Sodium Erythorbate. Can someone educate me? I believe I may have bought something that I have no use for… but maybe not.
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waltons has a conversion chart for smaller amts. just break it down by grams per lb. and use it that way
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craigrice Thanks for the reply. I just share the following with the disclaimer for anyone who might read this - that I know next to nothing about curing meats and what I offer here is my interruption of what I have read. “A little knowledge can be dangerous” so beware. I’m sure there are people on the Forum that are experts in curing meat.
After doing a little more research on the use of Sodium Erythorbate - apparently it is intended for use in processed meats and not as in aid for Dry/Air curing Hams? My guess is (and it is strictly a guess) if I were making a 100 lbs of sausage I would want to incorporate 24.805833 grams of Sodium Erythorbate - 25 pounds of sausage would require 6.2 grams etc… The only way I would know of to incorporate that small amount of material evenly into ground meat would be to dilute the Sodium Erythorbate into water or some kind of liquid carrier. These are incredibly small quantities to work with.
I would not know of any way to incorborate Sodium Erythorbate into the process of Dry/Air curing hams - I could if I were wet curing by virtue of submerging and/or injection . I think I recall that the FDA requires the addition of Sodium Erythorbate to any meat that has had Nitrate/Nitrite used in the process to reduce or prevent the formation of Nitrosamines which is a known carcinogenic. Nitrosamines are generated from unconverted Nitrite. Nitrite needs to be converted into nitric oxide.
Sure would like to hear from one of you experts out there on Air/Dry Curing whole hams.
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send Jonathon an e mail or a post he can answer that or he can ask there in house person who is in charge of those type of things
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