Curing Brine for Long Term Aging.

Rock salt. Water will only dissolve/absorb so much of it. So if you have some undissolved in your barrel/crock, it's a brine as it can get.
I think it is admirable of you to pursue the old ways of preserving. I hope you can find enough info to try it.
But like Al said, contact Pops6927. If anybody knows, Pops does.

 

I think your grandfather may have used one of Morton's curing salts in his process.... Did you eat any of his cured hams ?? Was it pink inside or brown inside, like a regular hunk of pork..

FWIW, the older the egg, the less salt it takes to float it... as the air chamber inside the egg increases... It's not a good method to check the salt content... Maybe they had chickens and all their eggs were fresh... Who knows...

 

In order to have room temp stable dry meat you need to welll...dry it.

Wet curing and cold smoking alone won't do it.

I used to do this with my dad with a whole leg of pork - but we'd start in december. After a few weeks in a wet brine would cold smoke for as long as one week. Then dry for a long time.

It was perfect for Easter (were not allowed to touch it before) and then kept pecking it until only the bone was left (usually mid summer). Stayed hung the whole time in the pantry (cold in winter, hot in the summer).

It's pretty much a wet cured smoked prosciutto.

I tried to quantify the floating egg test. It's not consistent: way too many egg variables. 10% salt is sufficient for your brine.

 

Rock, kosher, fine, table salt...they all disolve the same in water. Same amount. Just takes longer for large grain salts.

1L of water can disolve as much as 350g of salt in it .You don't want to cure your meat in that.

 

The link below is taken from Wedliny-Domowe....

https://www.meatsandsausages.com/hams-other-meats/hams

 

Do you want to hang hams because you don't have enough fridge space or just because they look cool (they do indeed)?

 

Below is a recipe for hams that I developed a few years ago... Makes the best ham I've ever tasted... I now use unsalted vegetable stock for the injection liquid..

https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/ham-from-fresh-picnics-update-10-21-money.236375/

 

@hoopie
"He said they would butcher hogs around febuary/march and take hams and shoulders and submerge them in barrels. In the barrels they had dissolved enough salt in water to float an egg. They'd leave the pork in the brine for up to a month and then cold smoke them. After that they'd get wrapped in brown paper bags and hung in the top of the garage all summer."

It's basically "The Salt Box (Saltbox) method." Very popular decades ago.
It's explained in several books.
Often the meat was just salted and swam in the brine created by the water expelled from the meat, and topped off if needed!
FWIW,
At 68°F one liter of water can dissolve about 357 grams of salt, a concentration of 26.3%.

Here's a better method:

Details in print: http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/ASC/ASC213/ASC213.pdf

 

Isn't this where the term pork "butt" came from? The "butt" is a wood barrel and whole legs where packed in salt in them.

 

Needs to be modernized.
Source: Circular, Issues 106-153, By University of Wisconsin. College of Agriculture, 1918

 

We use to do a dry sugar cure I post the recipe one time but not sure where it is on the forum. Will gladly post it again.
By the way and welcome to the forum.

Warren

 

here is " old fashion, Southern Slavic" way my granpa teach me back in 60's which I still use today. .
4 - 5 % salt of total pork butt weight...
2% sugar (sugar keeps natural meat color)
mix salt and sugar in amount of water just enough to cover half an inch over the top of pork but. keep it in brine for about 3 to 4 weeks turning pork but once every two days.. . after wet cure keep pork but for one day in fresh cold water changing water 3 times - desalination .. hang it for day or two to drain, spread generous amount of red paprika on pork butt and smoke it for 3 weeks... After smoke is done hang it to dry on dry and cold place on light breeze for at least 2 month... longer the better... and don't wash white mold that acumulates on pork butt... it is good sign that pork butt is healthy....
here is pic of cold smoked pork butt in my smoker.. good old fashion way..

 

Here is where I got that.



Frankly, it is a moot point to me. I dry brine anything I do. (Well, not since I don't brine Deer or Antelope in the bath tub any more.)

But by all means, make yourself feel important.

 

That changes everything: if you got it from a video off youtube titled "the best..." It must be reliable information.

I am not trying to feel important. I just corrected some misinformation you posted. If i am wrong feel free to prove it.

P.s. even if you dry cure with rock salt. Leave it too long and the meat/fish will be inedible.

 

Rock salt and table salt "can" impart off flavors.... Kosher salt gives a clean flavor that is reliable...
Do a taste test... put each on your tongue and check the flavor.... Personally, I find Kosher salt to not be as harsh as the others... Anywho, that's what I find...
And that's my unscientific note for today....

 

in my humble opinion, kosher salt, rock salt, table salt are pretty much the same....only difference is granularity of the salts... they all have diferent granularity, so one cup of table salt, kosher salt and rock salt have different weight measurement in one cup....whatever choice of salt you go with measure it by the weight not by the volume...
BTW....One of the most important thing before you even start process of salting is to squeeze out blood remains in main artery that runs along pork butt.. do this by pressing with tumb along the blood vein... you will be surprised how much blood comes out....