Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [38]
6. Let the bacon cool, then wrap in plastic and refrigerate or freeze it until ready to use.
Yield: 4 pounds/2 kilograms smoked slab bacon
A slab of pork belly should have equal proportions of meat and fat. This piece has been squared off and is ready for the cure.
To cure bacon, the salts, sugars, and spices are mixed and spread all over the meat. The bacon can be cured in a pan or in a 2-gallon Ziploc bag.
SMOKED HAM HOCKS
Anytime you might add a chunk of ham to your pot of beans, greens, or soup, the smoke-cured effect of these ham hocks would be equally, if not more, welcome. Hocks freeze beautifully, keeping for months if well wrapped.
A ham hock is not typically eaten by itself. Rather, the hocks can be braised and the meat separated from them to make smoked pork rillettes, for example, or a pig’s feet dish. Or shred the meat and mix it into polenta for a superlative take on scrapple.
THE BRINE
1 gallon/4 liters water
11⁄2 cups/350 grams kosher salt
1 cup/225 grams sugar
11⁄2 ounces/42 grams pink salt (8 teaspoons)
8 fresh ham hocks (about 8 pounds/3.5 kilograms total)
1. Combine all the brine ingredients in a pot large enough to hold the ham hocks and bring to a simmer, stirring until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Remove the brine from the heat and let cool, then refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.
2. Add the hocks to the brine and weight with a plate to keep them submerged. Refrigerate for 3 days.
3. Remove the hocks from the brine (discard the brine), rinse well, and pat dry. Refrigerate on a rack set over a plate or a tray, uncovered for 8 to 24 hours.
4. Hot-smoke the hocks (see page 77) to an internal temperature of 150 degrees F./65 degrees C.
Yield: 8 smoked ham hocks
TASSO HAM
Tasso ham is a Cajun preparation of pork shoulder and one of the easiest hams to cure. The shoulder is sliced into slabs, quickly cured, heavily spiced, and then smoked. The hot and savory spices are seasonings prominent along the Louisiana bayou, complex flavors brought there by the French Canadian settlers more than three hundred years ago. Shoulder is a tough cut and so needs long, gentle cooking.
Tasso is not eaten on its own but rather appears as a component in other dishes, most commonly jambalaya or gumbo. A gumbo may be good without chunks of tasso ham that have stewed in it for hours, but it’s not as good as it can be. Tasso can be used in any dish the way ham or ham hocks are used. Stewed with mustard greens, or with any bean dish or legume, it becomes tender and succulent. You could even dice it fine and heat it in some oil with minced shallot, then add some spinach and sauté it.
“SALT BOX METHOD”: Curing Tasso Ham
The “salt-box method” of curing a piece of meat essentially means dredging the meat in a salt cure so that all sides are evenly coated.
The meat is pressed into the Basic Dry Cure.
The meat is flipped and the other side and edges are pressed into the cure, packing it on.
Some cure can be scooped up and pressed onto the top to ensure that the entire surface is well coated.
The meat is put in a pan and left to allow the salt do its work. This method will cure most meats that aren’t more than a few inches thick. The salt is rinsed off the meat before finishing it. Here, for Tasso ham, a heavy aromatic seasoning mixture will be used to coat the slice of shoulder before it goes into the smoker.
5 pounds/2.25 kilograms boneless pork shoulder butt, sliced crosswise into 5 even slabs
Basic Dry Cure (page 39) as needed for dredging (about 2 cups/450 grams)
3 tablespoons/30 grams ground white pepper
11⁄2 tablespoons/15 grams cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons/6 grams dried marjoram
3 tablespoons/24 grams ground allspice
1. Dredge the pork in the dry cure, pressing it into the cure to make it adhere, and shake off the excess. The surface of each piece should be coated with an even layer of cure. Refrigerate, covered, for 4 hours.
2. Rinse the pork under cold water, brushing off any remaining dry cure, and pat dry with