Salting Pork

[Billy-o]

from Norway is Salt Cod. (plus other cod products) .

Poach the cod after soaking it overnight. Mince it up with a knife.

Put it into a bowl and start stirring it, drizzling in olive oil and cream as you do. Add garlic, lemon and S&P. Learned that off Keith Floyd on the telly years ago. Very good with french bread and a cold white or rosé ... as you might expect.

Some recipes mix in potatoes then cover the lot with cheese and grill it. I dunno about that.

 

[Janne]

I think that is a Portugese receipe?

We usually do a tomato based one.
We did talk about doing a ‘white’ bacalao.

 

[santaman2000]

"
Nitrite, in combination with salt and pH, is used in cured meats to ensure their safety with respect to a number of pathogens including Cl. botulinum"

https://www.fsai.ie/faq/use_and_removal_of_nitrite.html#prevent_botulism

.......To add Nitrite yourself sounds strange to me.
We buy organic food at a higher cost as much as we can, just to avoid added chemicals.....

To be honest, meat preservation aside, nitrites are a big part of what makes cured pork (bacon and ham) taste like cured pork.

 

[Janne]

Yes it does, it changes the taste.
Niman Ranch smoked uncured bacon is how medium smoked bacon used to taste before the manufacturers started adding Nitrite.
I think a longer smoking is nicer.

Niman Ranch have a good line of nitrite free meat products.

 

[Janne]

Try to salt Beef too. Great taste!

 

[santaman2000]

Yes it does, it changes the taste.
Niman Ranch smoked uncured bacon is how medium smoked bacon used to taste before the manufacturers started adding Nitrite.
I think a longer smoking is nicer.

Niman Ranch have a good line of nitrite free meat products.

Manufacturers? Nitrites have been used here by home curers since my grandfather’s time ((the 1890s)

 

[Janne]

Yes, but that is recent. I think the food industry started using Nitrites in first half of the 19th C. Preserving meat and supplying armed forces.
Was first used in explosive making though.
Canning was another preservation method, invented so that they could supply armed forces.
Napoleonic French I think?

Nitrite is naturally formed, just like MSG, but in far less concentrations and amounts.

You know the Roast Beef with the raw meat ( medium almost) center you buy in the supermarket deli counter?
( Hormel brand I think)
Ever thought of how they preserve the product so it lasts for many weeks?
I have.
Would love to know.

The guy in the Youtube vid you posted, he only uses salt.

 

[Janne]

Ever tried brining chicken?
Brining two today, cooking them tomorrow.

 

[santaman2000]

Ever tried brining chicken?
Brining two today, cooking them tomorrow.

Not yet. I’ve done it with turkey and pork chops though. Are you going to smoke them?

 

[santaman2000]

Yes, but that is recent. I think the food industry started using Nitrites in first half of the 19th C.......


Canning was another preservation method, invented so that they could supply armed forces.
Napoleonic French I think?

Nitrite is naturally formed, just like MSG, but in far less concentrations and amounts.

You know the Roast Beef with the raw meat ( medium almost) center you buy in the supermarket deli counter?
( Hormel brand I think)
Ever thought of how they preserve the product so it lasts for many weeks?
I have.
Would love to know.........

I don’t know if we even had a “food industry” as such that early?

My daughter’s favorite brand do the deli meats is Boars Head. Mine is usually the store brand. She’s not big on the beef (prefers deli sliced smoked turkey) whereas I prefer the Cajun spices beef.

 

[Janne]

Yes, food industry existed. Supplied the armed forces mainly, civilian shipping, the various colonies around the globe.
The driving force behind standardisation, quality control and specification were the armed forces though.

Napoleon as I mentioned, was successful in his warfare because his soldiers were well fed.
Canned food, with a content that was safe, nutritious.
No time consuming foraging was needed. March, eat, sleep.

The Caribbean sugar industry was also important there.
They imported quality specified dried cod, bisquits, salt pork and salt beef, dried legumes and so on.

One quite famous brewery, Guiness in Ireland, became successful and a major exporter because they formulated a quality product that lasted well all the way into the drinker’s mouth, all the way to India and other distant colonies.

In US, your food industry ( and manufacturing industry) took a leap during your Civil War.

As Chemistry became more understood and advanced from the mid 1800’, they started adding chemicals to make the food last longer, look better and taste more.

Today we are used to pink looking meat products, right?
Nitrite salts plus colourants, natural or chemicsl.
Make the same product yourself the oldfashined way, and it all has an unappetizing grey colour.

 

[Robson Valley]

Don't confuse nitrites with nitrates. You will not find dyestuffs, like Red #2, in any real meats.
Nitrates are simple sources of oxygen in black powder, some explosives and pyrotechnics.
Nitrites have been and are used for preservative purposes.
Time to crack open Lehninger's Biochemistry text for a good read again.

Read the labels. We are so demanding of extended shelf life that industry caters to that necessity.
It becoming a serious part of the entire issue of "Food Security."

Examine the processes for curing meats as advocated for home use by Cabela's.
Far better information that just opinion. They market Hi-Mountain cure and spice mixes
which are exactly what I have always used on their advice. And I ain't dead yet.

 

[Billy-o]

I am going to have to pick up myself a copy of this Lehninger of which you speak

 

[Janne]

Do not.
I still have my copy. Not opened in 30+ years, been through something like 8 moves, of these twice to a new country.
A habit, packing it with me.
I think I sprnt more time reading it and smoking red Marlboroughs than any other book.
Forgotten 90% though.

Not ’real meat’, RV, but the stuff like sausages, anything where it is in fine bits.

Humanity made excellent, tasty food for many thousands of years, sithout the modern additives.
A healthy digestive system is made for it, and takes care of the odd micro organism.

I have eaten raw veg picked a few minutes before and given a quick rinse since childhood.
Radishes and small carrots I used to shake off the dirt, put it in my mouth, ‘ wash’ it, spit out the soil and eat the veg.
Still here.
Despite gradma spreading DDT liberally on the potatoes she grew behind her family place.
If not they got destroyed by another US import, the dreaded Colorado beetle.
She died age 94. WW1, depression, US bombings during WW2, Communism, plenty of fresh air, plenty of DDT, died from a fall.

 

[Janne]

One salt food which you all should try is fried Salted Icelandic Herring.
Desalt for 24 hours first though. Any decent fishmonger should have it in UK, I used to get it from a chap in Hastings. That fish shop beside the fantastic Fish and Chips shop, you know which one!

 

[Robson Valley]

Albert Lehninger's university textbook = Biochemistry, was the most popular biochem text book on the entire planet.
I taught med and health science students from that for 30+ years.

The problem was, as I see it, that Lehninger took on additional authors to stir the soup.
The direct result made the text far harder to read than when he had his hand on the tiller.

Brown cover = First editions in all it's printings with factoal errors forever corrected.
Blue cover = Second edition and a very polished remake.

But I digress. Sorry as usual. Best to be well informed since BIG FOOD can't help you.
More and more, here, we are reading that what's on the label is not necessarily what's in the package.
DIY is self defense and don't ever take NO for an answer.

 

[santaman2000]

Yes, food industry existed. Supplied the armed forces mainly, civilian shipping, the various colonies around the globe.........

Today we are used to pink looking meat products, right?
Nitrite salts plus colourants, natural or chemicsl.
Make the same product yourself the oldfashined way, and it all has an unappetizing grey.

Yeah, I know about Napoleon and the get leap when canning was introduced. That wasn’t until the around the turn of the 19th century though (around my great, great grandfather’s time) The early colonies here softly fed themselves and farming was mostly local up until canning. They imported staples like sugar to a large extent but even that was produced locally from sugar cane plantations (albeit from colonies that weren’t yet part of the US such as Florida and the Gulf Coastal states.

Even after my Dad was born (1909) they rural areas still grew most of their own food (meat and vegetables) on up through the Great Depression.

As for the pink color of cured meats, all the meats I had that my grandmother killed and made at home were also pink. It’s the smoke that does that more than any additives (I still get pink meats whenI smoke with nothing but salt, or even without it)

 

[Robson Valley]

Sure = do a really good job with your smoker BBQ and all the meats have a pink "smoke ring" in them.
I'm prepared to believe that it varies also from one rack of side ribs to the next.

The pink in fresh raw meat is biochemical.
Oddly, that breaks down in the presence of TOO MUCH oxygen.
Nitrites short-circuit the breakdown so the pink (cytochromes) persist.
Since the nitrites penetrate the meat mass far moreso than the smoke in a cooking surface,
the core of the meat will stay normal pink.

 

[Janne]

Yes, smoking gives a pink hue. When I smoke I get the following colours.
Black brown outside, going to light brown/ pink, then greyish brown.
I smoke hard. 12 hours or so.

Meat needs to be boiled for about one hour.

Any ideas how they make that ‘rare’ Roastbeef? It even has the consictency of rare/semi raw beef.
Weird.

 

[santaman2000]

I never boil meat before smoking. I know several people who do, but usually just to reduce the cooking time.