Is there meant to be another link besides the ismokehog app?Take a look at this link, use a online cure calculator, like digginfarm or there is iSmokehog.com app on iTunes.
Thanks for that, I have 2 nice 1kg pieces of Loin that I want to use, so will do 1 of them as a 1:1 mix of sugar and salt and the other one more of a 3:2 but add 2 teaspoons of honey, with the salt at 2.5% for both. I will try a mixture of 50/50 Dark Muscavado and Light Brown Cane Sugar for my first attempt to see how that works,
Sweet cure bacon is not really a special type of cure but one that usually has more sugar (and usually different distinctive types of sugars) to give it flavour rather than to just balance out the salt content.
As a rule of thumb you would usually aim for 2-3% salt and use one half sugar to salt. If using white sugar this is usually not detectable from a flavour perspective. However if you substitute something like molasses, Muscovado sugar or honey and you increase the salt to sugar ratio to 3:2 or 1:1, the sweetness and sugar flavours then become distinct and it is then often called sweet cure bacon.
Thanks for that. I will try that next time as I have done the cure for the 2 pieces of loin I already had. Providing I can find sodium ascorbate locally to me.
here is a recipe ive come up with over the last few years by dabbling about with the spices which does it for us here
you will need to scale it down accordingly as this is how i have wrote in in my book of love (recipe book)
the piece I based the recipe on was 1560gms in weight so if you divide it by two thirds per 1kg its close enough
34.32gms fine sea salt
14.5gms white sugar
3.9gms cure1
0.78gms sodium asorbate
2 gms course ground pepper
0.5gms ground mace
12 gms black treacle
cure for 1 day per half inch thickness of meat plus an extra 2 days
rub dry ingredients into pork then put in vac bag and drop in treacle..it will work its own way around during the curing
gives you a "black cured" bacon
to make slicing easier you can part freeze the bacon for 2 or three hours
In the above recipe the flavours all come from the pepper, mace and treacle. The sodium ascorbate is not really required as it is simply a cure accelerant and creates a deeper ("pickling") red colour in the finished bacon. Without it you will still get a good "bacon" red colour just from the Nitrite in the Cure #1 and any colour is likely to me somewhat masked by the treacle. As a rule of thumb cure for ~10-14 days (you cannot over cure within reason).
Thanks for that. I will try that next time as I have done the cure for the 2 pieces of loin I already had. Providing I can find sodium ascorbate locally to me.
When you get old you amass a wealth of knowledge Steve , just before you start forgetting things :drool :sausage:
Quick update, they both turned out really well. I thought the honey one turned out closer to a sweetcure flavour than the straight sugar. It is slightly on the overly sweet side (which I like) but will probably try and tone it down slightly for my wife next time. But the flavour is definitely there. More of a bacon on a plate type full english than in a sandwich though.
Thanks for that, I have 2 nice 1kg pieces of Loin that I want to use, so will do 1 of them as a 1:1 mix of sugar and salt and the other one more of a 3:2 but add 2 teaspoons of honey, with the salt at 2.5% for both. I will try a mixture of 50/50 Dark Muscavado and Light Brown Cane Sugar for my first attempt to see how that works,