The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Food & crafts => Food processing => Topic started by: Justin on January 05, 2018, 11:41:35 am
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Just doing my second pork belly into bacon, again using the river cottage curing book. I've done one load of sausages in the past and now looking to expand into more variations including salami, chorizo etc and trying to decide whether to use nitrates/nitrites, ie cure 1/2 etc in the recipes.
The River Cottage book says that they don't use them, several places online suggest it's not 'real' charcuterie if you use them and then there's many others that say you should use them for food safety reasons.
We raise our own pigs naturally, and I'm building a curing/drying fridge to be able to control the temp/humidity of the environment (although the current slab of bacon is hanging in the woodshed at the moment) and I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on why you should/shouldn't use the cures with nitrates/nitrites in them and particularly from folks that don't use them and whether they've had any issues with that.
Thanks.
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If you don't get any answers here, this FB group came highly recommend and might provide a bit more info?
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If i felt I could cut artificial nitrites and nitrates out of my family's diet I would. As someone said to my husband recently: food preservatives inhibit growth of microbes. This action doesn't stop just because you eat it, instead they wreak havoc on your gut microbiome. -which is a very interesting line of research, and current understanding is that you want a diverse, happy gut microbiome.
If you can do it without, I would. But I've never raised pigs or made ham or bacon.
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I did the River Cottage day course a while back. There was quite a discussion on this as you may imagine. My recollection is as follows: The charcuterie relies on the correct concentration of cure (salt) preventing any decay/ eliminating bacteria. The issue is toxins (e.g botulism) that may be present from bacteria prior to the bacteria being eliminated. This risk is low for correctly cured lumps of meat (e.g bacon/ air dried ham) as the cure is in direct contact with the surface, but the concencus of the group was that where you have a minced product the greater surface area and the fact the salt has to permeate to the surfaces which are not in intimate contact with the salt means the risk is higher so salami, chorizo is higher risk without nitrates/ nitrites.
As a real food loving chemist I am quite happy doing my bacon and air dried hams with salt only but I wouldn't do the minced products without some good old chemicals. Oh and I cannot but be amused by the 'organically approved' label on my Tescos sea salt.
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thanks for the replies. That all ties in with my own thinking that the bacon and hams are fine but, just for safety's sake, the nitrates are worth putting in the processed meats.
Tonight I moved the bacon over to the woodshed to start drying after 5 days in the cure, Can't wait to try it next week.
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OH bought me a Andrew James meat slicer for Xmas. He has been rewarded with proper rashers and some finely sliced air dried ham. We are such a smug couple!
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A slicer is probably the next big piece of gear I want. How do you find the Andrew James one?
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Only used it a few times but so far I am very pleased with it. I find it easiest to cut the meat to a suitable size block first and have got some lovely slivers of the air dried ham out of it as well as rashers of bacon. You can adjust the thickness of the cut. Used it for bread once and it worked ok but I probably wouldn't bother getting it set up just for bread. It is a smallish bit of kit so probably not robust enough for meat on the bone but commercial cutters cost 10x more so,at the price , worth a punt.
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Thanks, that's good to know.
After 5 days hanging, we tried the bacon this morning, it was heavenly. Possibly a little sweet on it's own but fabulous in a bacon butty :)
Had to the belly first and, I think, I would probably do that before curing next time.
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Congratulations on waiting the 5 days- doesn't always happen in this household. I placed a few slices of our air dried ham on a plate when some friends came to pick up their 1/2 pig today. Clean plate. Much praised. Make it all worthwhile. Brines cooling and the pork ready to start gammon prep.
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this article on the topic was published this morning; makes very interesting reading!
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed-meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed-meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages)
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very interesting article!
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It' terrible!
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yeah, read that this morning. Very interesting. I certainly won't use anything in my bacon or hams, but need to understand more about the minced products that are out in the air for much longer.
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Yesterday I attended a butchery day at Good Game in Exeter, who make salami and other processed meats. They don't use any nitrates in their products. We discussed their use as I'm a novice and will soon be making my own. They suggested that I use nitrates to start with, to understand the processes and to fine tune my own products. Once I'm happy with that, then take out the nitrates but ensure that I have my first few products tested by a health lab to see what the level of nasty bugs in there is. Hopefully it'll be low but you need to be sure.
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Would it be stupid to suggest you do most of your first batch with nitrates and a just a wee bit with only salt them send off both to the lab to see how they compare? (Just had a paper published; I miss my lab days! Lol!)
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I have made RC salamis with just salt and acidophis and they were REALLY good, kept well too. For bacon the nitrates give a better colour and i now use them for salami to be a bit more confident in keeping them but if it was purely for my own home use would be happy without them
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Having had cancer, bacon was one of the foods i was told not to eat. We now raise our own pork and do bacon with salt Once sliced and packed we freeze it.