Pork Belly Curing Very Slowly

[mjacobsen]

I'm not determined to have it done in 7 days (I'm aware I can't "will" it to finish), I'm just not certain of what I've seen with this particular process. At 15 days, it seems like it's done. However, the redness of the interior seemed to correlate with "doneness", as my early fry tests appeared to confirm. Now, even with the same hue in the interior, it fried up and looked to be done, based on the pronounced pink color of the finished meat. This was one of several variables that I'm trying to get my head wrapped around. And by that, I mean quantitatively - smoking meat has several of its own "doneness" variables that I've gotten very comfortable monitoring and manipulating, such as tenderness, moistness, and temperature. All of those can be observed during the process. The thing with curing that it throwing me is that I've yet to come with anything certain that indicates that full equilibrium has occurred.

Thanks all for contributing. Very helpful info thus far.

 

[atomicsmoke]

Like i said earlier: colour of the raw meat is not a reliable indicator of curing status. Since you cooked it and didn't turn grey i would say is cured.

You also said your fridge was at 32F. So you found the root cause.

No need for an indicator for equilibrium. As long as conditions are right it will be achieved in two weeks.

 

[daveomak]

7 days per inch of thickness, is mutually agreed upon as the normalized equilibrium state..