Fridge Fail on Guanciale Batch

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johndan

Newbie
Original poster
Jul 19, 2018
4
0
I cured a hog jowl in the upstairs fridge for around 10 days in my upstairs fridge, then rinsed it and hung it on a meat hook in a spare fridge I keep in the basement yesterday. When I checked it today, I discovered that the temp controller I use wasn't connected correctly, so instead of aging at 45F or so, the guanciale has been sitting at 67F for a day.

Should I pitch it? Or does the salt cure do enough to keep it safe, even at a non-ideal temp? (I'd prefer to not give myself botulism with my first foray into curing meat.)
 
Tell me about the actual cure process you used. Specifically salt percentage and which cure, #1 or #2 and that percentage.
 
The jowl weighed 893 grams. The cure was ~2.5% kosher salt (22.5 g) and ~ 0.25% Tender Quick (2.3 g).
 
and ~ 0.25% Tender Quick (2.3 g).
This is a problem.
Tender Quick is .5% nitrate and .5% nitrite. You cannot apply that product at .25% to meat weight and be safe.

Cure #1 is 6.25% nitrite And is applied at .25%. If you had used that things would be much better, you have minimal cure salt in your product.

In addition, pork jowl is heavy on fat and requires much longer cure time than say belly bacon. We need more time than 10 days to push salt through the fat layers. 20 days would be better.

All that said,,,, all in you are 2.75% salt in cure. This is a good thing safety wise, as long as the meat passes the smell test with no off smell, I would continue on at refrigeration temperature. In the future I would use straight Tender Quick as the direction on the package says with no added salt or I would can that and use salt in the percentage you like along with .25% cure #1 in the future.
 
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Reactions: indaswamp
Thanks! I had #1 but not #2, so the recipe I was relying on wouldn’t work. (I’ve since ordered #2.) But I found a Tender Quick recipe—which was apparently wrong. I’ll give it a sniff test and decide before I taste it.
 
SE has you covered....
Only thing I will add is the question of how well the jowl was cleaned. The saliva glands should be removed as they can be prone to high bacteria counts.
 
Last edited:
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Reactions: SmokinEdge
Thanks--this is all helpful. I'll let it finish in the fridge until it's dried out and see (and smell, then, possibly taste) how things go.
 
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