[plt102]

Hi there, we wet cured our bacon last year and it was lush. This year we would like to dry cure or air dry our legs.I would like it to keep for as long as possible. Any tips on where to get a large quntity of curing salt and what tecnique to use would be very welcome. We hope to have a large chiller available to hang the meat in

[tizaala]

You can sometimes pick up 10kilo bags of food quality salt from agricultural merchants, Ours got it in for clearing paths of ice last winter.
Bone ( tunnel or butterfly ) the  legs and just rub in a mix of salt and demarara sugar  , we use a large plastic tub with a lid with a stainless steel rack inside so that the legs are not standing in the liquid . the salt draws off the liquid from the meat and runs to the bottom of the box, drain this off daily and discard. turn the legs daily and rub in more salt mix until no more liquid comes out of the flesh. then wash off any remaining salt , dry the legs thoroughly, then bag them up in three layers of mutton cloth and hang them in a dry atmosphere.
Have a look in the River Cottage books.
Some recipes call for saltpeter but it is difficult to get ( as the terrorists have bought it all ) and not necessary

[plt102]

Brilliant. Thanks. How long should it keep once cured and hung?

[tizaala]

If kept in dry conditions and not allowed to sweat you should be eating well next xmas and beyond .

[The Mobile Butcher]

Hi,
I would re comend that you leave the salt on for 21 days, and in my experience don't keep rubbing more salt into your pork legs, as this could make the dried cured legs too salty.
I would rub the salt on the skin side the night before you put the main salt on, as this will make the pork skin sweat and helps the curing process.then the next day I rub in a good coupe of hand fulls of brown sugar till the meat is nice and covered. then put the salt on. as to how much salt a good rule of thumb is put it on until its nicely heaped up over the meat side of the leg (3 or 4 big hand fulls ) try and make sure you push some down the top of the leg with a tool like a butchers steel. then put in a sealed container and raise it off the bottom of the container with wooden chocks/blocks just so its not sitting in the liquid that comes out of the pork leg.
after 21 day I hand up the cured leg and was off any excess salt and if you can hang in a cold place....a walk in fridge is ideal....after 1 week of the drying out process put muslin over the cured ham and hang it up for at least 6 months before you are ready to enjoy it.

this is my suggestion and the way I cure , there are diffrent ways, so maybe use 2 or 3 peoples ideas and kind off make you own curing plan.
best of luck 

[Eve]

As Smiffy says, there are various ways of doing this, though broadly speaking it comes down to salt-curing for a relatively short time and hanging (air drying) somewhere dark and cool for six months or more.

We use salt only for the curing. You won't need very large amounts, two kilo's will probably do (I stopped measuring and just go by sight). It's easiest to have the butcher remove the bone for you as that makes slicing afterwards so much easier.  We don't use saltpetre, nor sugar (we do use some sugar when making bacon, but our hams have never been salty).

Rub the salt all over, wearing rubber gloves is best, and make sure there's plenty of salt inside the meat if the bone has been taken out.
We cure the meat for about 1 day per 1/2 kilo, so a whole large leg would take around two weeks. Or, as mentioned earlier, cure until no more liquid leaches out.

Whilst it's curing, we keep the meat in a plastic container at the coolest place possible - in our case, that's at our front door (funny looks from postwoman )
We don't bother anymore tipping out the liquid, but the meat has weights on it. For weights, the heaviest things we have are hubby's drill wrapped in tea towels and lots of clingfilm, and now we also have a few pieces of cast iron from a bath, again well wrapped. Tins of tomatoes etc are far too light and they roll off too easily.

After curing, rinse the meat under the tap and dry with tea towels.
Use a few handfuls or more of lard (by the time our meat is cured we also have rendered all the lard) and smear it thickly over every bit of exposed meat. This is important as it prevents the skin from drying out. If the skin dries out, the moisture can't escape from the meat and it will rot inside.
We still put pepper on top of the fat, it's supposed to keep the bugs off and even though that's probably meant for meat hung in a barn or so we keep on doing it.

We then hang the meat in a cheap cotton pillowcase in the loft, just from a clothing rail and near the cold water tank. It's pitch dark up there (light makes fat go rancid), it's relatively humid (around 50%) and cold as we don't have our weaners done until September. Last year we had an Indian summer here and it was still 20C in the beginning of October but it didn't spoil it.

We hang ours for six months before trying it. You can always take a piece off and cover the rest with fat again and hang it back.

If you have a professional meat slicer, it works really welll on dried ham and you can make those thin slices that will have plenty of flavour and make the meat go a long way.

Enjoy!

[The Mobile Butcher]

Eve I like your curing plan - mind I leave the bone in (my preference) but if I help any one cure there own pork I usually bone the Hams out, as like you say makes it easier when you come to slicing.

i am interested in your lard covering technique, I might have a go at this next time I cure a Ham..... its good to experiment and embrace other peoples ideas.

My mouth is watering now