So yesterday I put a 2.77 lb pork loin in the fridge to cure for some loin bacon (also known as Canadian Bacon). It's my first time curing anything so I'm pretty excited about it.
I am using a dry cure (vs a brine) based on the weight of the meat of salt, brown sugar, cure #1, plus onion powder, garlic powder, coriander, ground cloves, and ground allspice. The loin was covered in cracked pepper before applying the cure. The bag smells wonderful; the allspice and cloves give it a smell like a Christmas or Easter Ham, and that's kind of the flavor I am going for here.
Based on my research it should be cured in 5-7 days, but with the amount of salt that I am using I should not need to worry about it becoming too salty. Most sausages are 2.5-3.0% salt by weight for reference.
The other thing that I did with this test that I normally do not do is measure and write down the ingredients and process. I tend to cook by feel and taste, but I often have trouble recreating things exactly. Sometimes that's good (even better than last time!) and sometimes it's not so good (not as good as last time
). I'm excited to be able to test, compare results, and modify one ingredient at a time to hopefully get some really good products after a few attempts.
Enough about that! Here are a couple pics, more to come after it's cured, smoked, and sliced.
Thanks!
Topic: Back bacon teaser (smoked and tested w/ pics) (Read 2956 times)