Curing Bacon:

When I make a brine to cure meat I use nitrite. are we all talking the same thing?

DanMcG said:

When I make a brine to cure meat I use nitrite. are we all talking the same thing?

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A wet cure, a pickle, (or sweet pickle if sugar is added), or brine all have salt as a basic ingredient..... and I think they are just interchangeable terms.... like smoking and barbecuing are.

Brines can be flavor brines or curing brines. Flavor brines can vary in amount of salt, seasonings and aromatics, and might only be used to make things retain moisture.....and might be used for very short times, like 5 minutes when brining shrimp. Curing brines have the addition of nitrites and sometimes nitrates, and can be different concentrations. A lighter curing brine might only be used to produce a pleasing color and tighten up the texture of meats, like on Buckboard bacon or city ham. A stronger or hard curing brine is used when preservation is a consideration, like a country ham or some varieties of bacon.

For example, when corning beef, you are curing it. It can be corned in a liquid solution, which might be called a brine or maybe a pickle. It can be pumped, which means injected, with the same liquid it is immersed in....or corned beef can be dry cured.

Some folks use the term dry brining to mean dry curing. Dry cures have salt but not always nitrites or nitrates. Most meats that are dry cured are smoked (or cooked) afterwards (ham, bacon, etc.). Some things are not cooked.... like lox, dry cured salami, some Italian style deli meats and maybe a duck breast. Lox is cured with only salt. Your salami and Italian meats will use a different combination of nitrites and nitrates as they take a long time to cure.

I think that I'd be careful about injecting a belly with a cure/brine. The excessive fat content in it could likely turn mushy. I've done both wet and dry cure for belly when making bacon and really prefer the dry cure approach.

I guess it's subjective and down to personal preferance, but, I prefer to dry cure using "Supracure" it's a ready mixed salt / sodium nitrite cure.

CarolinaQue said:

I think that I'd be careful about injecting a belly with a cure/brine. The excessive fat content in it could likely turn mushy. I've done both wet and dry cure for belly when making bacon and really prefer the dry cure approach.

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Careful (or controlled) injecting is good advice for the home charcuterist, yet injecting bellies is very successful.... the majority of the producers do it. If they didn't shorten the cure time by injecting and immersing the bellies, bacon would be $20 a pound. Of course they have a few other chemicals and special flavorings in their bag of tricks too. :wink:

Personally I'm with you, I like dry cured bacon.

I dry cure Bellies, but inject and immerse loins and small hams, all to 150 ppm nitrite
normally.

So How did they come out MStoney?

Mak'n Bacon, on my to do list!

Thirdeye as usual did good job explaining curing brining wet dry etc. Next subject is the difference between American bacon Canadian bacon European style city ham country ham Italian hams the list goes on. So decide what you want to make and KISS . No hard science needed here.

captndan said:

Thirdeye as usual did good job explaining curing brining wet dry etc. Next subject is the difference between American bacon Canadian bacon European style city ham country ham Italian hams the list goes on. So decide what you want to make and KISS . No hard science needed here.

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The only part I disagree with is the last sentence. I think that the hard science of using the proper curing agent and ratio is very important and needed...especially if you plan on doing a nonrefrigerated cure like many types of hams or dry sausages.