Cure #1 and Chlorine

[Sven Svensson]

That's the beauty of a dry cure...you add the salt you need, and when it is finished, it's the right amount of salt.

That’s a great way to put it. I’ve never heard it phrased that way. Now I get it. I’m dumping my old dry brine as I struggled to keep the saltiness under control. Thanks for that input.

 

[Sven Svensson]

While brines do work and lots of members here use them, there are better more consistent ways of curing. Just to keep things simple, brining works off of uptake, that is how much nitrite, salt, and sugar are taken into the meat through diffusion. This will vary from meat piece to the next due to muscle structure and fat content, brine strength plays a big roll as well.

However, as has been suggested dry curing meats 3” thick and less is very effective and the process is controllable by adding cure, salt and sugar at the desired amount based on percent to meat weight. The product finishes exactly how you applied the cure mixture. Not more and not less. Cure #1 is added at 0.25%, salt in a range from 1.5 to 3.0%, sugar doesn’t have to be added at all but apply to taste from 0 to 3% all to meat weight.

For meat thicker than 3” like hams or round roast, I use a liquid such as water or unsalted broth. I start with 10% of meat weight in liquid, slightly warm to maybe 90* then dissolve phosphate (0.5%) salt (1.5%) sugar (0.5-0.75%) cure #1 (0.25%) you can also add liquid garlic and/or liquid onion juice to taste, dissolve each one in the order listed then cool the brine and inject all over the meat. Especially around any bone. Inject all of this brine as evenly as can be, then into a zip bag or covered container and refrigerate for about 1 week.

Thanks for your input SmokinEdge . This has all been a really big help to me. I think I’ve been lazy and tried to skip weighing using my old method. I could never get the salt level right. Even soaking didn’t help. This has all been super helpful.

 

[DougE]

That’s a great way to put it. I’ve never heard it phrased that way. Now I get it. I’m dumping my old dry brine as I struggled to keep the saltiness under control. Thanks for that input.

Just add enough salt to the dry brine so the nitrites can get into the meat and do their magic. 1.5% salt, in addition to the salt in the cure#1 seems about right to me without making the bacon too salty.

 

[Sven Svensson]

SmokinEdge VERY well said and totally agree.

I do not recall seeing any citations from reliable sources about any negative affects with cure and chlorinated water OR heating cure. I see lots of what I call "broscience" about it though. I concur it's no go for fermenting for sure. Easy ways to mitigate tho. Chlorine dissipates at room temp in 24hrs and you can add things like campden tablets to chloraminated water to remove it. For brewing, while it won't kill yeast like many say, it does give NASTY off flavors to homebrew. Band-aid is the hallmark. I use chlorinated tap for all my curing injections and no issues here. Here's my latest and best. Used Omak style but with erythorbate and think I am sticking to it. Best color and flavor I ever got but was also the longest smoke (24hrs) I ever put on a piece of meat. No filters or photo tweaks. I might do a distilled water run once to see what the effects are as I think there might be a small chance water hardness might affect the flavor a little and if I do I will try and remember to post. In short, I'd be worried about other things in tap water than chlorine and if it tastes fine it probably is fine to use to cure.

View attachment 522897

Loved the “Broscience” comment. That‘s a great descriptor. This explains why I asked the original question because I couldn’t find anything on it other than passing comments. Great looking lion there. I make those all the time. So what is Omak Style?

 

[SmokinEdge]

So what is Omak Style?

Using 10% of meat weight of no salt vegetable broth and mixing in the ingredients that I posted is the Omak style. daveomak shared that recipe with us. It makes the best ham I’ve ever eaten or made. It’s damn good.

You need to weigh everything in grams. Meat weight can be converted to grams by meat weight, say 10# multiplied by 454 equals weight in grams. So 10x454 = 4540 grams meat weight.

Then to figure the added ingredients do this.

Broth 10% (4540x0.10 = 454g)
Phosphate 0.5% (4540x.005 = 22.7g
Salt 1.5% (4540x0.015 = 68.1g
Sugar 0.75% (4540x0.0075 = 34g)
Cure #1 0.25% (4540x0.0025 = 11.35g)

Keep asking we will keep helping.

 

[SmokinEdge]

This is the omak way:
https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/5-days-from-picnic-to-ham.296135/

 

[Sven Svensson]

Thanks SmokinEdge . Do you have a favorite vegetable broth?

daveomak I think that’s brilliant using an unsalted flavor broth as the base of the brine for the injection and leaving the big soak just plain brine. Much more economical than using all flavored broth. Kudos.

All this advice is completely undoing all my old stand-byes. I love it.

 

[DougE]

Kitchen Basics No salt vegetable broth.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Thanks SmokinEdge . Do you have a favorite vegetable broth?

daveomak I think that’s brilliant using an unsalted flavor broth as the base of the brine for the injection and leaving the big soak just plain brine. Much more economical than using all flavored broth. Kudos.

All this advice is completely undoing all my old stand-byes. I love it.

Yes, Kitchen Basics is the broth Dave used, and I have tried several and it was not very good with others. Use the Kitchen Basics no salt vegetable broth.

 

[thirdeye]

That's the beauty of a dry cure...you add the salt you need, and when it is finished, it's the right amount of salt.

The emphasis is the salt you need, making it an equilibrium dry cure. It can't get too salty. My Grandpappy was a salt box dry cure man for bacon. All eyeball. 6 to 7 days was about right, but if you went 10 days it had to soak-out in a bucket.

 

[indaswamp]

The emphasis is the salt you need, making it an equilibrium dry cure. It can't get too salty. My Grandpappy was a salt box dry cure man for bacon. All eyeball. 6 to 7 days was about right, but if you went 10 days it had to soak-out in a bucket.

I'm sure he learned that back before refrigeration was widely available. The salt box was a way to keep the meat safe and get the salt in quickly. with 100% salt in contact with the meat, this inhibited microbial growth while the meat uptook salt. Old rule of thumb for Italians was 1 day per kilo of meat. At that point the meat had taken up enough salt to adequetly salt the whole cut of meat.

 

[Sven Svensson]

Wow did this ever send me down a rabbit hole. So, a question about the phosphate. What do you use and where do you get it? And it looks to me like that’s the same stuff you use in your laundry to make the detergent work better and it’s the same stuff to clean greasy grills with. I’ll still eat it, but I never made that connection. TSPP.

 

[indaswamp]

Wow did this ever send me down a rabbit hole. So, a question about the phosphate. What do you use and where do you get it? And it looks to me like that’s the same stuff you use in your laundry to make the detergent work better and it’s the same stuff to clean greasy grills with. I’ll still eat it, but I never made that connection. TSPP.

Get food grade TSPP.
There are a number of food grade phosphate formulas that will work in meat. Ames-phos is a blend and a lot of people use it. Some have higher pH than others-which is great for when making sausages with acidic ingredients. I use TSPP I get from a local butcher supply shop.

Of note-best to dissolve TSPP in luke warm ~100*F water first, then add ice to dissolve any cure or salt. TSPP does not dissolve easily in cold water.

 

[DougE]

Wow did this ever send me down a rabbit hole

Get used to it around here. I end up going down rabbit holes once, if not multiple times a day. Stuff that never even crossed my mind becomes an area of study, and it just mushrooms out from there.

 

[indaswamp]

Get used to it around here. I end up going down rabbit holes once, if not multiple times a day. Stuff that never even crossed my mind becomes an area of study, and it just mushrooms out from there.

It really gets crazy when you jump down the rabbit hole to salumi and salami!!

 

[DougE]

It really gets crazy when you jump down the rabbit hole to salumi and salami!!

I'll get to it. It's just a matter of time ....

 

[Sven Svensson]

Again, thank you both for all the help. This stuff is fascinating and I can‘t wait to see the difference in my former tried-and-true recipes.

 

[Sven Svensson]

I’ve learned something about this forum. Ask a simple question, get a complicated answer. Follow that answer for an hour, learn 10 new amazing things, and lose another $40 on Amazon. Hahaha!

 

[SmokinEdge]

Again, thank you both for all the help. This stuff is fascinating and I can‘t wait to see the difference in my former tried-and-true recipes.

The difference will be holy grail type.
Follow what has been stated, and you will start to produce quality, repeatable, over and again type cured products. None of the “It was great last time, what happened this time type questions “

The information you have just been given is “money”, if you follow.

 

[DougE]

and lose another $40 on Amazon. Hahaha!

Not to mention at the grocery store, cause you saw it on here, have to immediately try it, and don't have everything you need to make it, soooooo ....