17# of Canadian bacon and smoked boneless chops.

[LanceR]

While cruising the meat case at the local BJ's Wholesale I spotted some boneless loins for a buck a pound as they were 5-6 days short of the sell by date. 

At any rate, two big ones (22# total) got trimmed of fat and silverskin and wound up at 17#.  They got needle pumped with a brown sugar cure and brined for 6 days.  I had trouble getting them pumped more than 5-6% (was aiming for 10%) so brined them for 6 days instead of the usual 4-5 days.  The post rinsing taste samples were too salty so I had to soak them for 3-4 hours.  After a day to equalize the fried samples were fine so off to the smoker they went.  Lesson learned: stick to 5 days max for the brine.....

The family asked for fairly heavy smoke so they got about 6 hours of hickory smoke.  About a third of them got sliced for Canadian bacon and the rest into 1" boneless chops.  That's a 7" boning knife in the bowl.

 

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• LanceR
• Aug 19, 2015

Lance

 

[pc farmer]

Looks good but 6 days seems a bit short.

Any more info on the cure?

 

[LanceR]

5 days is the norm for loins using this 50 degree salinometer brine using Cure #1:

per gallon of water-

1.3 pounds salt

136 g Cure #1

226 g (1/2 #) sugar (I used light brown)

As stated the intent was to cure for 5 days after a 10% needle pump but the cure was running out of the needle holes and the loins had about 5-6% pickup.  Due to the size of the loins and the lower than targeted pickup I chose to brine for 6 days and it was way too salty.

Lance