So I bought 11 lbs of pork bellies the other day and got my cure ready. This time I used Morton's smoke flavored sugar cure, and wanted to mix in some of my home made maple syrup from the two sugar maples in my back yard, what could be better than that, right? So here's my dilemma...
Cure said for smaller batches, use one cup sugar mix and 1 1/4 tsp spice (that has the curing agent). I mixed up one cup per instructions, and then two more cups with the Appropriate curing spice. Total was 3 cups sugar mix, 3 3/4 tsp cure spice. I figured that amount would provide good cover for my slabs. So to ensure the maple flavor really got in there, I added about a cup or so of syrup to the mixture, mixed it all up, rubbed them down and Saran wrapped them tight then into the fridge.
Then I remember reading many times on here it is all about the weight.. The weight of the meat...and that is how you determine curing agent... So I read the back of the Mortons bag and it says for bacon, use 1/2 oz per pound. So I take this to mean 1/2 ounce of the sugar and curing spice mixture. Well that comes out to 1 cup sugar cure and spice for SIXTEEN pounds of bacon!
There is no way one cup of the sugar cure would even come close to covering the three huge slabs I have, which is wy I used three cups. The proportions of spice I mixed to the sugar salt mix was correct, but I am just concerned because of what it says about the weight.
I made my last batch the same way, minus the maple syrup, and using Morton's regular sugar cure. Bacon was waaayyy too salty after seven days, so I had to soak it, might leave these for five and rinse them and test,fry.
Thoughts? Am I ok here?
Cure said for smaller batches, use one cup sugar mix and 1 1/4 tsp spice (that has the curing agent). I mixed up one cup per instructions, and then two more cups with the Appropriate curing spice. Total was 3 cups sugar mix, 3 3/4 tsp cure spice. I figured that amount would provide good cover for my slabs. So to ensure the maple flavor really got in there, I added about a cup or so of syrup to the mixture, mixed it all up, rubbed them down and Saran wrapped them tight then into the fridge.
Then I remember reading many times on here it is all about the weight.. The weight of the meat...and that is how you determine curing agent... So I read the back of the Mortons bag and it says for bacon, use 1/2 oz per pound. So I take this to mean 1/2 ounce of the sugar and curing spice mixture. Well that comes out to 1 cup sugar cure and spice for SIXTEEN pounds of bacon!
There is no way one cup of the sugar cure would even come close to covering the three huge slabs I have, which is wy I used three cups. The proportions of spice I mixed to the sugar salt mix was correct, but I am just concerned because of what it says about the weight.
I made my last batch the same way, minus the maple syrup, and using Morton's regular sugar cure. Bacon was waaayyy too salty after seven days, so I had to soak it, might leave these for five and rinse them and test,fry.
Thoughts? Am I ok here?