Putting Food By - Janet Greene [165]
If at any time during the cure you find that the brine has soured or become ropy and syrupy, remove the meat, scrub it well, and clean and scald the barrel/crock. Chill the container thoroughly, and return the meat, covering it with a fresh, cold curing solution made like your original brine, except that you increase the water to 5½ quarts.
Curing time: a minimum of 28 days; allow 3½ to 4 days for each 1 pound of ham or shoulder.
“Sweet Pickle” Salting Small Pieces (Bacon, Loin, “Fat Back”)
Pack the pieces in a sterilized crock or barrel, and cover with a brine like that for large pieces, except in a milder form: use 6 quarts of water, rather than 4½ quarts. Proceed as for hams and shoulders, keeping the pieces well submerged, and overhauling the contents as above at the end of the first, second, and third weeks.
Curing time: a minimum of 15 days for a 10-pound piece of bacon, allowing 1½ days per pound; but 21 days for heavier pieces of bacon, or for the thicker loins.
Pork that is not to be smoked may be left in the brine until it is to be used—but it will be quite salty.
SMOKING
Without intending either to pun or to discuss the pros/cons of this traditional finishing process for many cured meats and a few cured fish, we feel duty-bound to note that smoking any food is under fire nowadays from some critics.
However, as we indicated in the individual salting instructions above, meats may be left in brine or dry salt until they’re ready to be used. Or remove them from the cure, scrub them well to remove surface salt, and hang them in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place for from several days to a week to let them dry out a bit before storage.
We do not recommend using so-called “liquid smoke” or “smoke salt” in place of bona fide smoking. Either smoke your meat or call it a day at the end of the salt cure.
What “Cold-Smoking” Does
We’re not concerned here with what is known as “hot-smoking”—which in effect is cooking in a slow, smoky barbecue for several hours, thus making the food partially or wholly table-ready at the end of the smoking period. The many food smokers sold today for home use are intended for hot-smoking fresh foods. Some models claim to be adaptable to cold-smoking as well, but be sure to have a thorough conversation with a salesman or customer-service representative before you buy to ensure that the device will handle whatever you wish to cold-smoke.
What we’ll do is hold the food in a mild smoke at never more than 120 F/49 C, and usually from around 70–90 F/21–32 C, for several days to color and flavor the tissue, help retard rancidity and, in many cases, increase dryness—the actual length of time depending on the type of food.
The food is then stored in a cool, dry place, or is frozen, to await future preparation for the table.
Making the Smoke
Use only hardwood chips for the fire—never one of the evergreen conifers, whose resinous smoke can give a creosote-y taste, or other softwoods. Among the most popular woods are maple, apple, and hickory.
Or use corncobs. These should be the thoroughly dried cobs from popcorn or flint corn that has dried on the ear: cobs saved from a feast of sweet corn-on-the-cob aren’t the same thing at all. Corncobs are not easy to come by today. You might try a seed-corn company online. Two bushels of cut corncobs can produce 72 hours of smoke, or enough to do a whole ham in a small smoke-box.
Avoid chemical kindlers. Small, dry hardwood laid teepee-fashion over crumpled pieces of milk cartons catch well, and form a good base for the fire. Get your fire well established and burning clean, but do not have it hot; keep it low, just puttering along evenly so the meat is in no danger of cooking. Hang a thermometer beside the food closest to the fire: fish, which is so highly perishable (even when lightly salted for smoking), should be smoked at 40–60 F/4–16 C, and then for a relatively short time compared with the temperature for meats.
The fire can be made and held in any sort of iron or tin brazier suitable for the size of