Wet equilibrium cure - how long?

[Ty520]

Doing a wet equilibrium cure on a 3.5Lb joint of Boston Butt for buckboard bacon - first attempt at both wet cure and buckboard bacon.

How long should I let it cure?

 

[JC in GB]

I am assuming that you are using a cover pickle for the brine method and not injecting the meat.

Brine penetrates into the meat at a rate of about 1/4" per day in an equilibrium brine.

So a 2" pork belly would need a minimum of 8 days to brine.

A pork shoulder has areas that are thicker and would need more time. You could trim the shoulder down like unrolling it to make it flatter. That will reduce brine time.

If you inject the shoulder, you can save a significant amount if time in the brine time.

My general recipe for bacon like stuff...

This is for dry brine of 1 kg of pork

1 kg pork
2.5 g Cure #1
16 g Salt
20 g sugar

If you add water, then just add the water weight to the meat weight and calculate salt, sugar, and cure amounts for the total weight.

Hope this is helpful...

JC

 

[PolishDeli]

Inject the meat with about 0.35 pounds (10%) of your brine. The cure time will be around 1 day per pound.

Consider using daveomak 's method.

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

 

[SmokinEdge]

Doing a wet equilibrium cure on a 3.5Lb joint of Boston Butt for buckboard bacon - first attempt at both wet cure and buckboard bacon.

How long should I let it cure?

Cover brine is not the best way to cure meat. The diffusion of salt and cure into the meat take a long time, and it’s anyone’s guess how much cure and salt are in the meat at the end. The best way on thick pieces is to inject. So here is how I would do this.
Buy yourself a gram scale so you weigh all the important ingredients.
3.5lbs= 1589 grams (meat weight)
Use 10% of the meat weight as the liquid weight, like distilled water.
Water=159.0g gently heat the water (90ish degrees F.) then dissolve the dry ingredients.

cure #1 (1.1g per pound) = 3.85g
Salt (non iodized) canning salt @ 1.5%= 23.83g
Sugar @ 1.0% = 15.89g

Now inject as much of this as possible into the pork making injections every inch or so covering the meat in a grid. Do this in a plastic tub so you can reclaim all the brine that runs out and off to inject again. Do this until either all the brine is in the meat, or until you are satisfied the meat will not hold any more liquid. From there place the meat and any left over brine into a zip-loc style bag seal and refrigerate for about 5 days turning over every day. You may see more or less liquid in the bag as the days go by. Don’t be concerned about that. After 5 days remove and rinse then pat dry place on a cookie rack to air dry a couple hour then smoke ( if you want) to IT of 145*

edit to add........... If there is a bone in the meat, make sure to inject all along and around the bone. Very important to stop bone sour.