By Christie Vanover | Revealed March 16, 2023 | Final Up to date March 16, 2023
Bored with feeding your sourdough starter? To your subsequent meals journey, attempt making homemade bacon. The salty, smokey strips of meat are addictive and surprisingly straightforward to make for those who perceive the right way to use sodium nitrite.
Do-it-yourself sourdough and kombucha are made utilizing a fermentation course of. Bacon, smoked sausages, pastrami, deli meats, and salamis are made following a curing course of utilizing particular salts like sodium nitrite.
Curing Salts
Once we consider salt, most cooks are aware of customary desk salt, kosher salt, and sea salt. They’re all made up of the chemical compound sodium chloride (NaCl). They’re historically used to reinforce the flavour of meals.
Curing salts, however, are made up of sodium, nitrogen, and oxygen and are used to protect meats.
Sodium Nitrite (NaNO2) and Sodium Nitrate (NaNO3) are the 2 most typical curing salts. When utilized to meat both by way of a direct software or brine, they inhibit the expansion of micro organism that causes meals poisoning.
The meals preservative additionally offers cured meat merchandise their attribute pinkish coloration and distinctive taste.
How To Prepare dinner With Sodium Nitrite
As we speak, most preserved meats within the U.S. are cured with sodium nitrite. For shopper use, the salt is offered as pink curing salt #1 or Prague powder #1. It’s coloured pink so cooks don’t confuse it with common desk salt.
These merchandise are made up of about 6 % sodium nitrite and 94 % desk salt.
When utilizing curing salts, it’s essential to comply with respected recipes and product packaging. Utilizing an excessive amount of curing salt may be poisonous and never utilizing sufficient can hinder the preservation course of.
Mix
When making smoked sausages or kielbasa, pink curing salt #1 is mixed in with the bottom meat and spices at a ratio of 1 teaspoon of curing salt per each 5 kilos of meat.
The combination is then cured for a few days within the fridge earlier than it’s stuffed into casings. Then, it’s cured once more after it’s cased for one more one to 2 days earlier than being smoked.
Rub
Curing salt may also be blended with sugar and spices and utilized to the skin of meats. This methodology is the frequent option to remedy pork stomach to make homemade bacon.
After the meat cures for per week within the fridge, you’ll rinse off the curing salts, so it’s okay to make use of two teaspoons for each 5 kilos of meat.
Brine
A 3rd option to protect meat is to combine curing salt with water and spices to create a brine. This methodology is frequent for making corned beef pastrami. For each 5 to seven kilos of meat, use one gallon of water combined with two to a few teaspoons of pink curing salt #1.
After the meat cures for a number of days within the fridge, rinse it, season it, and cook dinner it.
When To Prepare dinner With Sodium Nitrate
Sodium nitrate is used to dry-cure meats like pepperoni, salami, and different dry sausages, like Spanish chorizo.
Over time, the nitrate compound within the meat converts to nitrites after which to nitric oxide. This pure conversion retains the meat protected from micro organism, so the meat doesn’t require cooking or refrigeration.
This curing course of requires exact measurements and an setting that has strict temperature and humidity controls to forestall mildew.
As a result of it’s so complicated, it’s greatest to depart sodium nitrates and dry curing to the professionals.
What Is Tender Fast?
One other sort of curing salt that may be discovered at your grocery retailer is Morton Tender Fast. The identify is type of deceiving. It’s probably not a meat tenderizer. It’s a mix of salts that may scale back curing time.
Whereas pink curing salts include round 6 % sodium nitrite and/or 3 % sodium nitrate, Tender Fast comprises a half % of every.
Though it comprises sodium nitrate, Tender Fast shouldn’t be used to dry-cure meats. All curing with Tender Fast needs to be accomplished within the fridge.
Morton recommends utilizing one tablespoon per each pound of meat for a dry brine and one cup for each 4 cups of water for a moist brine.
Nonetheless, to all you bacon lovers on the market, this isn’t the salt to make use of. The Morton website particularly states that Tender Fast is just not really useful for pork stomach. However you need to use it to make Canadian bacon, which is ready by curing pork loin.
Options To Curing Salts
Now that you simply perceive what it takes to make bacon, you might be asking your self how they make nitrite-free bacon and different meat merchandise with out nitrites.
There are options to man-made curing salts. Nitrate happens naturally in some meals like celery. When celery is dehydrated and concentrated right into a powder, it may be used to remedy meats.
There are quite a few sources on the market that advise ladies to keep away from meats ready with curing salts throughout being pregnant. The nitrite-free and nitrate-free choices appear to be good options.
Nonetheless, they’re nonetheless preserved with nitrates and nitrites, simply not man-made ones. The excellent news is that cured meats should not listed as meals to keep away from on the USDA’s food guidelines for pregnant women.
What the USDA does suggest is reheating deli meats, scorching canine, and dried sausages, not due to the nitrites, however as a result of they might include listeria, which may trigger miscarriages.
What To Do With All Your Bacon
When you begin making do-it-yourself bacon, it’s arduous to cease. It’s enjoyable to experiment and make totally different flavors like black pepper, Cajun, and maple.
The excellent news is Meals Drink Life, has you lined with 36 mouthwatering bacon recipes you need to try right now.
Mouthwatering Bacon Recipes
Christie Vanover is a championship pitmaster and licensed barbecue choose from Las Vegas. She’s cooked on dozens of grills, together with the practically 30 in her yard. She shares her experience in grilling and barbecuing by way of her web site, GirlsCanGrill.com. Moreover, Christie has developed her personal line of award-winning rubs which might be offered internationally.
This text initially appeared on Food Drink Life.
