Making bacon with curing salt

[innerspace]

Hi all, know there have been a few topics over the years regarding homemade bacon and think I have read them all.

Had a crack a while ago and looked good until some plastic in my improvised smoking contraption got too hot and melted ruining the batch.

I have finally after many attempts found the royal exquisite group shop in boonsamphan pattaya(by star bar and pj bar, look for the gate that doesnt look like a shop and has a small text sign...not open on weekends but I was lucky timing as the owner was just arriving!)

So I have a 1kg bag of the curing salt that many here have recommended. Please ignore the nitrite or not debate, I have a bag and am using it.

So, main purpose of my post is, how do you all use these bags? It is unmarked as to ingredients or instructions.

I believe that it is a premixed nitrite and salt, but if not that assumption could be fatal.

One person in a previous thread said 30g of salt but didnt make it clear what weight of pork that was for.

Researching online I have seen anywhere between 2.5% and 8% of the weight of the meat in curing salt, so 25 to 80g per kilo. Those figures are topped up with sugar etc to make total cure mix around 3% to 10%.

So, opinions please, I have a nice 1kg lump of pork loin ready to make into bacon, planing a dry cure. What would you all do?

[iancnx]

You are dicing with a slow death. No instructions and no breakdown of content. You do realise they make fireworks with this sh1t?

I use sodium nitrite from the manufacturers. A 2kg pork loin needs 1/4 teaspoon of nitrite to 13 teaspoons of sea salt. This is for a dry cure to which I add other non carcinogenic ingredients . (Repeat a quarter of a teaspoon)

Never trust the many cowboys selling cured products in this unregulated expat market. They might taste good, but the chemicals might perhaps take you to the crematorium prematurely!

[innerspace]

Thanks for your warning, i know full well the dangers of nitrites, hence checking for feedback with people who are sucessfully using this product.

Refound a useful post here http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/632082-where-in-los-can-i-find-prague-pink-nitrite-625-salt-for-curing-bacon/page-2

This indasia curing salt is the same one I have, so appears premixed at 0.8% which is safe levels.

But that thread alone people are mentioning 30, 40 and 17g per kilo of meat. Elsewhere I had even found 80g but that may have been usa where curing salt is a very different strength.

It does appear that 30-50 g cure per kilo is the most commonly used, especially in the few topics mentioning this indasia curing salt.

[richsilver]

I followed this recipe using the curing salt from Royal Exquisite and it came out delicious!

2 to 3 pounds/0.9 to 1.3 kg pork belly

1/2 cup/113 gr brown sugar

3 tablespoons/45 gr kosher or other coarse, non-iodized salt

1 1/4 teaspoons ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon curing salt (optional)

Rinse the pork belly under cold water. Pat it dry with paper towels or a clean dishcloth.

Combine the sugar, salt and pepper in a small bowl.

Rub the seasoning mixture into all sides of the pork belly, using your scrupulously clean hands. Spend a couple of minutes massaging the seasoning/curing mixture into the meat.

Place the pork belly, along with any leftover curing mixture, into a plastic bag and seal it shut. Store it lengthwise in the refrigerator for 10 to 14 days, turning the bag over occasionally. The bacon should be fully cured at this point, with a firm texture and no soft spots.

Rinse the bacon and again pat it thoroughly dry with paper towels or a clean, dry dishtowel. Roast the cured bacon in a 200F/93C oven until the internal temperature reaches 150F/66C. This should take about 2 hours. Store the bacon in a tightly sealed container or bag in the refrigerator for up to 1 month or in the freezer for up to 1 year.

Or if you prefer, give it a smoked flavor by using one of the two methods below.

If you have a smoker, or want to make a simple smoker, you can use that to smoke your bacon. Use hickory or apple wood shavings for the best flavor. Skip the roasting described above and instead smoke the cured bacon until it reaches an internal temperature of 150F/66C, which should take between 1 and 2 hours.

[Burl Ives]

I bought the curing salt there and made excellent ham and bacon using this recipe scaled down:

Home curing a ham is quite safe, but you will need to get a hold of some insta cure #1 (also called pink salt or D.Q. curing salt, among other things). This ready to use curing salt is sold as a pre mixed combination of 93.75% salt and 6.25% nitrite. It is the nitrite that guards against the slim possibility of botulism, and also what gives ham its rosy pink finish. Nitrite in high concentrations is toxic, so measure carefully (but don’t be scared either!!!). You can find this curing salt in better supermarkets and specialty food stores.

Step 1

Buy a fresh ham leg (uncured pork), a half fresh ham, or a piece of fresh ham in whatever size you're comfortable with. I am using the term ham here to refer to the hind leg section of a pig - you must buy fresh, not already cured pork. The size doesn’t matter; buy it as big or small as you are comfortable with.

Step 2

Prepare the brine.

I use a brine recipe from Michael Rhulman's book "Charcuterie" (which is excellent)

· 2 liters of water

· ¾ cup of kosher salt

· 1 cup of brown sugar (1 packed cup)

· 4 teaspoons of pink salt (insta cure #1) (4 teaspoons)

Stir all ingredients together until dissolved. This brine can be multiplied as needed, and if you are doing a whole ham, you will probably need to double it.

Step 3

Place your pork in a bowl or pot that is large enough to hold the meat completely submerged in the brine, but one small enough to fit in your fridge. Add the cold brine to the pork, and lay a heavy plate on top of the floating meat to keep it submerged.

Keep it in the fridge until done. It will cure at the rate of 2 pounds per day. A large ham will take about a week.

Step 4

Rinse it off and prepare it in any way you enjoy. This ham is better if smoked (see here for instructions on hot smoking a fresh ham) but you can just as easily bake it or fry off slices unsmoked, and it will still be great. It has become ham – it is done!

For ham Roast in oven in tin foil at 180 Deg C until 71 deg c internal temp

A last tip…if you find the ham too salty you can soak it in clean water in the fridge for a couple of hours to leach out some of the salt. I don’t tend to find that this is necessary.

[rhythmworx]

Pink Himilayan salt is the way forward.

Why you are trying to make bacon and not prosciutto I have no idea.

Good look either way, just don't kill yourself with lack of information.

[sanuk711]

I was reading this medical journal a few weeks ago & they feel that by the end of this year scientists in Japan will be growing human organs in pigs and transplanting them into humans.

I think somethings obviously lost on them here. They're going to give you a new heart grown in a pig to replace the old one which got

clogged up from eating too much bacon and sausage...................................

[billd766]

Pink Himilayan salt is the way forward.

Why you are trying to make bacon and not prosciutto I have no idea.

Good look either way, just don't kill yourself with lack of information.

Where can you buy pink Himalayan salt in Thailand and what is the difference between that and nitrate brine salt which I have been using for 3 or 4 years now?

[mixxer]

Mmmm c'mon guys ,got a serious craving for a bacon sarnie now .

[maybefitz]

I too, use a wet brine mix with salt, sugar,pepper and nitrate. I use a touch of red colour, just a touch. I then use a hypodermic medical syringe to put some of the brine into the meat. My hypodermic actually came with some printer ink - it's a thing that can be difficult to acquire in the West, (touchy over drug use) = but easy to get in Thailand. I put the meat, both bacon and ham, in a tight sealed plastic bag with the brine, and leave in the fridge for a week. The bacon I machine slice - the ham I use a pressure cooker to cook off, then slice when cool. They both keep good in portion sizes in the freezer.

[golfer1111]

be careful with this stuff & always check your calculations - please double check these

40gr Indasia = 0,32gr Nitrite = 320mg (mg per kilo of meat)

from USDA

Wet Cure must be under 200 ppm

Dry Cure under 625 ppm

Comminuted (eg sausages) under 156 ppm (150 ppm in Europe)

Any cured item marked keep refrigerated (eg bacon) must have 120 ppm.

Anything under 120 ppm and you won't get the shelf life that is required, however you will get some extra shelf life with about 40-50 ppm.

ppm = parts per million (eg mg per kg of meat)

123 ppm per kilo is 15.3 grams of Indasia

[cryo]

Hi I regularly make bacon when I visit Pattaya using loin or belly (lean or fatty bacon) using various curing mixes. The ratio of salt to meat in general curing mixes is 30g curing salt to 1kg of pork if using standard salt cure and 70g salt cure to 1kg of pork if using a salt cure that already contains some sugar (lowcocks mix). Rub the mix into the meat at the above ratio and place in a sealed poly bag (I find the ziploc bags ideal) then turn daily in the fridge for a time depending on the meat thickness (one day per an inch thickness) then add another day. Once you taste your own cured bacon you will be amazed at how good it tastes compared to the processed packaged bacon that is produced by an industrial method for super fast results. The industrial bacon has many added components to make the pork hold water ( up to 100% extra weight) as the producers like to sell you water at ?bht a kilo :-) now you know what all that white gunk is when you grill it and why it shrinks. There are many doom sellers attacking cured food and you have to be safe with the nitrates and nitrites in cure mixes but looking at it realistically you ingest more carsogens walking daily down a busy road and breathing in exhaust fumes than you will ingest having an occasional bacon butty. How our ancesters survived to continue the human race never surprises me as if you listen to the doom merchants we should have died out millennia ago but it gives them something to get excited about :-)

Ken.

[quidnunc]

Hi I regularly make bacon when I visit Pattaya using loin or belly (lean or fatty bacon) using various curing mixes. The ratio of salt to meat in general curing mixes is 30g curing salt to 1kg of pork if using standard salt cure and 70g salt cure to 1kg of pork if using a salt cure that already contains some sugar (lowcocks mix). Rub the mix into the meat at the above ratio and place in a sealed poly bag (I find the ziploc bags ideal) then turn daily in the fridge for a time depending on the meat thickness (one day per an inch thickness) then add another day. Once you taste your own cured bacon you will be amazed at how good it tastes compared to the processed packaged bacon that is produced by an industrial method for super fast results. The industrial bacon has many added components to make the pork hold water ( up to 100% extra weight) as the producers like to sell you water at ?bht a kilo :-) now you know what all that white gunk is when you grill it and why it shrinks. There are many doom sellers attacking cured food and you have to be safe with the nitrates and nitrites in cure mixes but looking at it realistically you ingest more carsogens walking daily down a busy road and breathing in exhaust fumes than you will ingest having an occasional bacon butty. How our ancesters survived to continue the human race never surprises me as if you listen to the doom merchants we should have died out millennia ago but it gives them something to get excited about :-)

Ken.

The standards are different in the USA from those in Europe, so you need to define the mix by the percentage of nitrite.

[quidnunc]

You are dicing with a slow death. No instructions and no breakdown of content. You do realise they make fireworks with this sh1t?

I use sodium nitrite from the manufacturers. A 2kg pork loin needs 1/4 teaspoon of nitrite to 13 teaspoons of sea salt. This is for a dry cure to which I add other non carcinogenic ingredients . (Repeat a quarter of a teaspoon)

Never trust the many cowboys selling cured products in this unregulated expat market. They might taste good, but the chemicals might perhaps take you to the crematorium prematurely!

First of all, it's nitrates, not nitrites, that are used in fireworks.

And the best and safest way to use this stuff is to weigh it, not measure by volume. You can buy a scale that weighs to 0.1 grams for a little over 1000 baht.

Edited August 25, 2014 by quidnunc

[quidnunc]

Pink Himilayan salt is the way forward.

Why you are trying to make bacon and not prosciutto I have no idea.

Good look either way, just don't kill yourself with lack of information.

Where can you buy pink Himalayan salt in Thailand and what is the difference between that and nitrate brine salt which I have been using for 3 or 4 years now?

Himalayan pink salt is basically salt (sodium chloride) with a few mineral impurities. It has nothing to do with pink salt for curing. PInk salt for curing is pink because of the dye which is added to the nitrite/salt mixture so that you don't confuse it with salt (sodium chloride) and use it with unfortunate results.

Edited August 25, 2014 by quidnunc

[billd766]

Pink Himilayan salt is the way forward.

Why you are trying to make bacon and not prosciutto I have no idea.

Good look either way, just don't kill yourself with lack of information.

Where can you buy pink Himalayan salt in Thailand and what is the difference between that and nitrate brine salt which I have been using for 3 or 4 years now?

Himalayan pink salt is basically salt (sodium chloride) with a few mineral impurities. It has nothing to do with pink salt for curing. PInk salt for curing is pink because of the dye which is added to the nitrite/salt mixture so that you don't confuse it with salt (sodium chloride) and use it with unfortunate results.

OK Thanks for that info.

[innerspace]

So varying opinions discussing varying different products and methods (indasia, usa cures, pure nitrites etc).

Back to the original question...

Indasia premixed curing salt specific. With 1kg pork, 40g of indasia and 30g sugar in a dry bacon cure, safe or not?

Cryo and golfer suggest yes.

Hope so, half way there already!

[Jinjo14]

Does royal exquisite have a number or email as I'm in Korat and cannot find any pink salt here. Many thanks

[billd766]

Does royal exquisite have a number or email as I'm in Korat and cannot find any pink salt here. Many thanks

Try this link.

http://www.tuugo.in.th/Companies/royal-exquisite-food-ltd.-part/0290003079670

[annietang]

dying for some great bacon! i have tried making bacon at home, but it turned out unsucessfully. perhaps the salt hat i used was not for bacon, and i didnt calculate the weight so it tasted too salty.

[billd766]

dying for some great bacon! i have tried making bacon at home, but it turned out unsucessfully. perhaps the salt hat i used was not for bacon, and i didnt calculate the weight so it tasted too salty.

When you have fininshed brining it cook a small piece and if it is too salty soak the rest a couple of times in water and that should improve it.

Eventually you will get the hang of it and then your house will smell great with fresh food.

[quidnunc]

dying for some great bacon! i have tried making bacon at home, but it turned out unsucessfully. perhaps the salt hat i used was not for bacon, and i didnt calculate the weight so it tasted too salty.

Here's a link to a dry curerecipe from Michael Ruhlman. I believe he also has posted a wet cure.

http://ruhlman.com/2010/10/home-cured-bacon-2/

[innerspace]

Thanks for reviving the thread.

To the person who asked for royal exquisites number, if the link doesnt work then let me know. Some info online is still for their old office, took me a long while to find them!

And as to the original topic, the quantities I stated worked well and still alive so it is definitely premixed and not pure nitrites!

I had a slightly odd taste though still good, reckon it could have been from brown not white sugar. Or maybe going OTT on some herbs in the cure.

But 40g or so per kilo of pork and a 1kg bag of curing salt leaves another 20+kg of bacon to experiment with for the perfect recipe!

Also need to improve my slicing or invest in a proper machine!

[maxtwo]

Check a product on line called Morton salt.looks like they do mail order.

[quidnunc]

Check a product on line called Morton salt.looks like they do mail order.

I believe it's called Morton Tender Quick. Since it has nitrates, it shouldn't be used for making foods you're going to fry. Like bacon. Nitrates turn into nitrosamines, very potent carcinogens, when exposed to high temperatures. For making bacon, you don't need it.

[maxtwo]

Check a product on line called Morton salt.looks like they do mail order.

I believe it's called Morton Tender Quick. Since it has nitrates, it shouldn't be used for making foods you're going to fry. Like bacon. Nitrates turn into nitrosamines, very potent carcinogens, when exposed to high temperatures. For making bacon, you don't need it.

[maxtwo]

Morton is a range of products one is down as bacon cure.

[quidnunc]

Morton is a range of products one is down as bacon cure.

Thanks for the correction. I went to the Morton website and, according to them, all their curing products (with the exception of their pure salt) contain nitrates. According to all the authorities on the subject that I've read, nitrates shouldn't be used to cure meats that are going to be fried.

ANyway, I doubt their stuff is even available in thailand.

I actually make my own nitrate free curing salt. It's easy to do if you have a scale that weighs in tenth of a gram. It can also be easily done if you want to create larger quantities where 1/10 of a gram accuracy isn't necessary.

Essentially, you mix sodium nitrite with pure salt (not regular table salt which has additives) and add some water to make a slurry. Then you heat the mixture on a stove while constantly stirring. At a certain point the mixture will collapse into a powder. At that point, it's finished. You can also add a bit of red food coloring to the water so that no one will later confuse it with plain salt.

[Jinjo14]

I tried the link above for royal exquisite has their address but no email or number. I'll be heading to Mae hong son next week so if anyone knows a supplier in Changmai much appreciated, I could pick some on the way

[stevo2]

Just for the record. You would need to eat 60kgs of bacon, one that contains nitrates, in one day to get even a slight stomach ache.

The salt in the bacon is much more damaging, as is the bacteria that may form in a non nitrate cured bacon.