Curing meat covers salting, drying, smoking and cooking

Curing meat means saving or preserving and the definition covers existing preservation processes such as: salting, drying, smoking. and canning. When applied to home made meat products, the term ‘curing’ usually means ‘preserved with salt and nitrite.’ When this term is applied to products made commercially it will mean that meats are prepared with salt, nitrite, ascorbates, erythorbates and dozens more chemicals that are pumped by needles into the meat.

Everybody almost seems to be in a happy unified agreement that adding nitrites and nitrates is undertaken to prevent food poisoning and nothing else. There are even books that don’t mention nitrates at all, some even say it is not recommended. Nitrites and nitrates prevent food poisoning, but this in not why we have been using them for thousands of years – only in 20 th century science it was explained what nitrates do and until 19 th century we never even knew what food poisoning was. Nitrates were used because we knew that like salt, the nitrates preserved meat and improved its taste and flavor.

Rock salts were mined in different areas of the world and exhibited different properties which depended mainly on impurities contained within. Some salts contained nitrates and it was soon discovered that they would impart a pinkish - red color to beef and a pink color to other meats. It took more than 2,000 years to isolate nitrates/nitrites from salts and to understand how and why meats change the color. The fact remains that for thousands of years nitrate has played a crucial role in meat curing.

Brining - Marinating – Sweet Pickle - Salting - Curing –What’s the difference?

All these procedures rely on adding salt and water to meat (in dry salting only salt is added) to improve its tenderness, juiciness and flavor. Some definitions overlap each other and for example when we add salt and nitrites to water we normally say we are preparing a brine or a pickle although technically speaking it is a curing solution.

Brining is immersing meat in brine (salt and water) to improve juiciness and flavor. Brined meats taste better and all cooks know it. When we cook any type of meat there is an unavoidable loss of moisture, up to 30 %. But if we soak the same meat in a brine first, the loss can be limited to as little as 15 % because the meat absorbed some of the brine and it was more juicy at the start of the cooking. Another benefit we get from braining is that a salt solution dissolves some of the proteins in the meat, turning them from solid to liquid what in turn increases juiciness of the meat. Normally there are a very few ingredients in a brine: salt, water, sugar and sometimes spices. Brining can last from 30 minutes to days and the brined meats are followed by cooking or cooking with smoke (barbecuing). In most cases a meat piece will be cooked at high temperatures (over 200º F) so there is no need for nitrite.

Pickle is another definition of the brine. When sugar is added to brine solution it is often called sweet pickle. Most brines contained sugar anyhow and both terms describe the same method. If you place chicken in a brine overnight you will roast it most likely the next day. You are baking your chicken now and no nitrites are necessary. If you place chicken in a curing solution (salt, water, sugar, sodium nitrite) it can be safely smoked for many hours at low temperatures (below 140º F). It will have a different color, texture, taste and flavor. Some sweet pickles contain vinegar.

Often the word marinade is used in cooking recipes but it does not belong in a real world of curing as it does not call for nitrates. The purpose of marinating is to soak the meat in marinade what will add a particular flavor to the meat. In most cases the meat will be cooked at high temperatures and eaten very soon. It is a shorter procedure and a marinade contains a lot of ingredients. Many pre-made marinades are available in a supermarket. Most marinades call for addition of vinegar or wine as those liquids break down meat protein (denature them) and make meat more juicy. There are hundreds ready to use marinades in the supermarket for example: “Chicken Teriyaki” marinade.

Salting is the simplest form of curing and its objective is meat preservation. It is accomplished by adding salt to meat and drawing moisture out of it what subsequently inhibits the growth of microorganisms. Water inside the meat spells trouble, it spoils everything and eliminating it by salting and drying allows meat to be stored for longer periods of time. A classical example will be an all American favorite beef jerky.

Meat and salt are like two hands of the same body, they always work together and we cannot even imagine processing or eating meat without salt. When added to meat it provides us with the following benefits:

Salt does not kill bacteria it simply prevents or slows down their development. To be effective the salt concentration has to be 10% or higher. Salt concentration of 6 % prevents Clostridium botulinum spores from becoming toxins though they may become active when smoking at low temperatures. Adding sodium nitrite (Cure #1) eliminates that danger.

The two physical reactions that take place during salting are diffusion and water binding, and no chemical reactions are present. Salting is the fastest method of curing as it removes rapidly water from inside of the meat. The salt migrates inside of the meat and the water travels to the outside surface of the meat and simply leaks out. This gives us a double benefit:

Today the products that will be only salted are pork backfat and some hams that will be air-dried for long time. In some undeveloped regions of the world salting is still practised as a curing method.

A thousand years ago there was no refrigeration but the merchants were moving barrel-packed salted fish from place to place. To preserve fish that way it had to be heavily salted. Before consumption fish were soaked in water to remove excess of salt and then were ready to be cooked. In the highly developed countries refrigeration is taken for granted but in many areas of the world even today the meat or fish has to be salted for preservation.

Salt curing

Curing in its simplest form is adding salt to meat and drawing moisture out of it what subsiquently inhibits the growth of microorganisms. Water inside the meat spells trouble, it spoils everything and eliminating it by salting and drying allows meat to be stored for longer periods of time. A classical example will be an all American favorite beef jerky.

Curing

The highest quality cured product can not be produced by using salt alone, because salt hardens the meat fibres and tends to make meat salty and dry. That is why in most cases sugar and nitrite are added into curing solution. In case of products smoked at low temperatures it also provides margin of safety preventing possibility of botulism (food poisoning). Curing is adding salt and nitrates/nitrites to meat. If you use only salt it is called salting. If you use salt and water it is called brining. The moment you add nitrates and salt to meat it is considered curing.

The understanding of the curing process can be quite intimidating to many people as it covers such a vast area. We cure hams, bacons, poultry, fish and meat for sausages. All meat plants in Poland and Germany have a curing department where meats are continuously cured, labelled and then submitted for grinding. Curing is such an important process that we have decided to cover it in a great detail as this step will decide whether the final smoked product will be the great creation or merely a good sausage.

Meat cured only with salt, will have a better flavor but will also develop an objectionable dark color. Adding nitrates/nitrites to meat will:

After the II World War ended most people in Europe nether had refrigerators nor meat thermometers but were curing meats and making hams and sausages all the same. Because of primitive conditions the curing temperatures were often higher than those recommended today but any growth of C. botulinum bacteria was prevented by the use of salt and nitrates.

They also predominantly used potassium nitrate that works best at temperatures of 46° – 50° F (8° – 10° C) and those were the temperatures of basement cellars. There was not much concern about longer shelf life as the product was consumed as fast as it was made. Salt and nitrite will stop C. botulinum spores from developing into toxins even at those higher curing temperatures (46°-50° F) and the increase in bacteria growth due to those higher curing temperatures might only slightly decrease shelf life of a product.

Curing is a more complicated process than salting and in addition to physical rections like diffusion and water binding we have additional complex chemical and biochemical reactions (nitrates/nitrites, color of the meat) taking place.

The curing temperature should be between 36° and 40° F (4° – 10° C). which falls within range of a common refrigerator. Lower than 36° F temperature may slow down curing process or even halt it. Commercial produces can cure at lower temperatures because they add chemicals for that purpose. Remember that the lower the temperatures when handling meats (curing, cutting, drinfing, stuffing etc), the slower the growth of the bacteria and the longer life of the product. Extending shelf life of the product is crucial for commercial meat plants as the product can stay longer on the shelf in the supermarket and has better chances of being sold. There is a temperature where we can not go any lower and this is when meat freezes-about 28° F (- 4° C).

Higher than normal temperatures speed up the curing process but increase the possibility of spoilage. This is a balancing act where we walk a line between good cure and the bacteria that want to spoil meat. The 50° F is the point that separates two forces: below that temperature we perform curing keeping bacteria in check, above 50° F bacteria forces win and start spoiling the meat.

Meats were traditionally cured with nitrates at about 42° F - 46° F (6° - 8° C) temperatures. Before nitrate can release nitrite (the real curing agent) it has to react with bacteria that have to be present in solution. Putting nitrate into refrigerator kept solution (below 40° F) will inhibit development of bacteria and they will not be able to react with nitrate. Sodium nitrite works well at refrigerator temperatures.

Salt when used with nitrates/nitrites is an incredibly effective preserving combination and there is not even one documented incident of food poisoning of a meat cured with salt and nitrates. And people in the Far East, Africa , South Americ and even Europe are still curing meats at higher than normal temperatures without getting sick. That does not mean than we recommend it, but if a guy in Canada shoots 1600 lbs (726 kg) Moose or 1700 lbs (780 kg) Kodiak Bear he has to do something with all this meat. He is not going to spent 5,000 dollars on a walk-in cooler, is he? These are exceptional cases when curing can be performed at higher temperatures. Dry curing will be a much better method as it removes a lot of moisture and nitrate or Cure 2 (there is 0.5% nitrate in it) will be a better choice.

Traditional Curing

Until recent years all dry curing mixtures and brines that were described in books on curing had one aim in mind: meat preservation. When a hog was killed the farmer who did not have proper coolers had a a big problem. How to process 300 lbs of meat without spoiling it. Bear in mind that today’s hogs are much smaller than their predecesors which weighed as much as 400 pounds.A pig today is fed with a special diet that allows for maximum weight gain in a record time. It is much leaner, too.Very often a holding pen is designed in such a way that the animal can not even turn around in order not to waste energy.

Almost all of a pig was utilized for making meat products and there was very little waste. This meat had to be processed and the best time to slaughter and process a pig was during cold wheather. Whatever could not be immediately consummed had to be preserved in such a way that it will last for many months, sometimes even until the next season. On many occasions a hog was simply left in a curing solution and the meat was removed on a need basis. You may compare this method to a modern freezer. Ever popular American summer sausage owns its name to the fact that it was made in cold wheather (the winter) but was consummed in “the summer” as that was the necessary length of time to dry the sausage out.

Traditional way of curing was even more important in the war damaged Europe where some cities sustained 80 % damage. There was of course no refrigeration, meat plants or supermarkets. Animals were slaughtered all the same, be it a pig, cow, lamb or a deer. The meat had to be preserved which was accomplished by curing or canning. Salt with potassium nitrate were commonly used curing agents and that combination was a perfectly suited for that purpose. Potassium nitrate worked best at the temperatures that were present in cellars and pantries (50º F, 10º C) as it was continuously releasing nitrite that was curing meat for long time. As the meats were cured at higher temperatures and the main object of curing was meat preservation, more salt was added to curing mixes or brines. That in turn prevented development of bacteria and created product that could be kept at room temperatures for extended periods of time.

Nowadays everybody has a refrigerator with a freezer, some people posess a separate freezer to accommodate large amounts of meats. This fact alone calls for smaller percantge of salt when preparing cures. The other fact is that many people are health conscious and try to stay on low sodium diet (salt = sodium chloride = NaCl) and that limits amount of salt used in cures and recipes even further. Commercial curing differes from home curing in many aspects, the most significant is pumping into meat maximum allowed by law quantities of water with chemicals.

How Curing Works?

Of all the processes at work during brining, salting or curing, the most significant is salt's ability to denature proteins. This is a technical term that describes how the coiled proteins in the meat unwind and then join together with one another expelling water that they were able to hold. Heat (cooking) causes rapid denaturation, salting and even acids (vinegar) can cause it, too. The dissolved salt that migrated from the brine into the meat causes some of the proteins in muscle fibers to unwind and swell. Those proteins were held originally together and could not react with water. The salt breaks those bonds and the proteins are now free to absorb extra water that gets trapped inside. When the temperature increases these protein bind together and hold trapped water between them. During cooking the protein bonds tighten up again and squeeze out trapped water what leads to some weight loss. If the cooking temperature is raised even higher, more protein links will be broken and more water will be lost. The final effect is that meat is overcooked and much tougher and less juicy.

There some patented mixtures that allow for pumping 80 % of curing solution into the meat in relation to its original weight. In final effect there is so little meat in the product that in some countries in Europe there is a special classification of a meat product: “ham-like product” which when printed in small letters will dupe an inocent customer into buying something that looks like a ham, feels like a ham, taste like a ham but is NOT a ham.

Meat cured only with salt, will have a better flavor but will also develop an objectionable dark color. Adding nitrites to meat will improve flavor, prevent food poisoning, tenderize the meat, and develop the pink color widely known and associated with cured/smoked meats.

If the recipe calls for sugar, it should be added to the curing mixture as it offsets the harshness of salt and further improves flavor as long as the temperatures are not higher than 40 F. Otherwise at higher temperatures sugar facilitates fermentation and development of microorganisms and this is what we are trying to avoid in the first place.

Cured meat will develop its true cured color only after submitted to cooking (boiling, steaming, baking) at 140º – 158º F (60º – 70º C),

The best color is attained at 161º F (72º C) which almost perfectly coincides with FDA requirements to cook our meats to 160 F (71 C). The time of curing is directly proportioned to the size of the meat – the larger diameter the more time required for the solution to fully penetrate the meat. It also depends on temperature – the higher temperature, the faster curing action. Another factor is the amount of nitrate - reducing bacteria present the meat along with several environmental conditions, such as :

Recommended curing temperature is between 36º – 40º F (2º – 5 º C), any less than 36º F and the process might come to a stop and going above 40º F (5º C) allows bacteria to multiply rapidly increasing chances for spoilage. We have seen in recipes curing temperatures going as high as 46º F (8º C) without any ill effects on a consumer.

Salt and nitrite will stop C. botulinum spores from developing into toxins even at 46 F (8 C) and the increase in bacteria growth might only slightly decrease shelf life of a product. By adding ascorbates and erythorbates commercial plants are able to cure meats at even lower temperatures. That effectively prevents bacteria growth and the final result will be longer shelf life of the product in the supermarket.

After the II World War ended most people in Europe did not have refrigerators nor meat thermometers but were curing meats and making hams and sausages all the same. Because of primitive conditions the curing temperatures were often higher than recommended but any growth of C. botulinum bacteria was prevented by salt and nitrates.

They also predominantly used potassium nitrate that works best at temperatures of 46º – 50º F (8º – 10º C) and those were the temperatures of basement cellars. There was not much concern about longer shelf life as the product was consumed as fast as it was made.

What would happen if we skip the curing process and just add salt, nitrite and spices after grinding. The way most sausage books recommend ? Nothing, it would still be a very good sausage but not the super quality product we want you to make.

Massaging is an additional curing step employed by commercial plants and it involves placing pumped up pieces of meat into a meat tumbler. This is a machine with a rotating drum and the meat pieces will be bouncing around its mowing walls providing even better brine distribution inside of the meat. Using high production stitch pumping machines and a tumbler a ham can be ready for the smoker in 24 hours.


40 lbs and 800 lbs capacity meat tumblers by Koch Equipment, Kansas City, MO

Cozzini method

Cozzini method of stitch pumping allows for pumping of the meat with a brine solution of water, salt, nitrites, posphates, ascorbates AND microscopic parts of meat of any kind..

And the biggest beauty of it is that it is so small it cannot be detected and does not have to be labelled, no need to mention in details what’s pumped into the meat. In other words you might buy a ham that has some racoon in it which should taste fine as racoon is somewhat on a sweet side. Bon apetite.

More information related to nitrates/nitrites can be found at the: nitrates


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