Pork Blade Shoulder Roasts, Cured and Smoked

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pops6927

Gone but not forgotten. RIP
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Jul 23, 2008
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Fort Worth, Tx.
Wanted to purchase a fresh ham for Easter, but couldn't find one, so I had to settle for a two-pack of pork blade shoulder roasts. Boned them out:
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Then tied them up with butcher knots (a special non-loosening knot):
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Then injected them repeatedly with curing brine so they cure from outside-in and inside-out:
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Then put down in the curing brine (added a ziploc bag of water, before putting in the fridge)

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Put it in the back fridge until April 19th, when I will pull it, sack the boneless roasts and hang in the smokehouse and smoke and cook to minimum 145°, rest on Saturday April 20th, then heat in the oven Easter Sunday morning, April 21st, to take to our son's house for dinner!
 
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These are my Curing brines for pork, beef (corned and dried), poultry, and so on.

Regular Curing Brine:

1 gallon of clean water

1 cup plain, regular non-iodized table salt

1 cup sugar or sucrolose

1 cup brown sugar or sucrolose equiv.

1 tablespoon of Cure#1

Lo-Salt Curing Brine:

1 gallon of clean water

½ cup plain, regular non-iodized rable salt

½ cup sugar or sucrolose

½ cup brown sugar or sucrolose equiv.

1 tablespoon of Cure #1

mix in food-safe container, stir until clear.

Add meat. Do not add different species of meats, but you can add pieces of the same species.

Refrigerate 7 to 30 days, depending on thickness of meat.

Up to 2 inches, 7-10 days.

2 - 4 inches, 5 - 17 days, may require injecting to cure from the inside-out as well as from the outside-in.

4 inches and larger. 17 - 30 days, requires injecting.

Injecting - use a Morton's injection 4 oz. manual injection pump with the Broadcast needle.



or equivalent.

Brine can become frothy (ropy). It has both salt and sugar in it. It also is inputting curing ingredients into the meat and oozing out blood and plasma. Just dump the brine and make up fresh and continue curing should that happen. Make sure you keep it at 38° - 40°.

Weigh down meat into curing brine with half-filled ziploc bags of water on top.

No further mixing or stirring required, let it cure until done. Meats will come out of the brine wish a distinct grayish look. This is normal.
Cure #1:

I use this as reference:


Computing equivalency, for 100 gallons of curing brine, you add 24 lbs. of curing salt to 100 gallons of water and mix.

That is .24 lbs, or 3.84 oz. of curing salt to 1 gallon of water maximum.

My recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of curing salt to 1 gallon of water. A level tablespoon is .88 of an ounce. Heaping is approx. 1 ounce. Either is fine. Neither comes close to the maximum amount allowed, but just enough to do the job. Curing at Maximum, plus with injection, requires 48 hours of cure time maximum. This process uses less than one third the curing salt and a longer curing time to tenderize and flavor the meat.

You must cover the product until it floats off the bottom of the container, then weight it down to stay submersed in the brine, leaving no area to be exposed to air. You must keep at 38° to 40° until curing time is over. Remove from brine, put or hang in smokehouse or smoker. I personally go from refrigeration to heat with no wait time myself. There is different thoughts, whether to allow a pellicle to form or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellicle_(cooking)

A pellicle is mainly, to my knowledge, allowed to form on fish prior to smoking. We were only 30 miles from Salmon River in Pulaski, NY, a very well known salmon run. We had many bring us their salmon to process and usually allowed a pellicle to form But, pork and beef are not tender like fish.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/a/pops6927s-curing-brines-regular-and-lo-salt
 
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My oldest son, George Jr., had to come to the house, fire up my smokehouse and smoke them for me as I had a brain stem stroke on April 11, then a heart attack on May 20th. But they were a hit for Easter and they even brought me up a slice to the hospital, too! Glad I used the lo-salt curing brine!
 
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