Fast Cured Canadian Bacon

[Radrob]

I ate the dogfood, Really. I cooked steaks Thursday and bought a pack of thin sliced pork loin for $3 to cook for the dog but forgot.

I started this experiment at 9:30 Friday morning and finished it today, I should've been finished last night but it was late.

I made a dry cure using the following grams carefully measured with a jewelers scale.
meat 1lb 453.5grams
Kosher or pickling salt 2.2% 9.977g
cane sugar 1% 4.535g
Cure #1 0.25% 1.13375g

I dried off the meat then carefully sprinkled the meat with the cure and vac sealed it for faster curing. It sat in the fridge for 8 hours before I pulled it out. You can see I had to use the paper towel trick to stop the liquid that was already starting to come out of the meat.

I rinsed it off a few times and smoked it for an hour at 150 then bumped up to 200 to get to that 145 temperature.

Out of the smoker, I could already tell it wasn't smoked enough but this is experimental and it was 11PM.

I fried up a test piece. It was too salty for me but it was good.

I left it in the fridge to finish curing/drying over night, this morning I soaked them in water for 30 minutes to remove some salt and smoked them again just till they dried out.

I had to fry up a test piece and this time it's much better and not as salty.

Lessons learned:
Soak the cured meat for an hour changing out the water every 20 minutes.
Let it rest on the counter till it gets tacky/forms a peticule before smoking.
Next time smoke for 3 hours then let it set in the fridge overnight unwrapped. I know 3 hours seems like a short time but this thin meat absorbs enough smoke flavor for breakfast and not over powering.

Other than that this came out good considering the time it took. Does anyone see something I missed or have suggestions to improve it?

 

[Stingerhook]

No suggestions, I would hit it hard.

 

[campdude]

My suggestion... Eat the rest!

 

[IamMadMan]

I think you have it covered. The cured smoked chops you have there are also called Kassler Rippchen in Germany.


The only thing I disagree with is that Vac-sealing does not speed the curing process up. You are only removing the air and not creating a vacuum in the bag. I also like to leave the liquid in the bag, as it helps to quickly dissolve and redistribute the salt evenly through the equalization process.

However, if you are trying to slightly speed up the process of the cure, try adding some Sodium Erythorbate to speed the breakdown of nitrites. But with thin cut pork chops, about 3/8 of an inch or less, your time would have been adequate because the if the cure was applied to both sides of the chops, it would cure at a rate of 1/2" per day.


Looks really tasty.......

 

[thirdeye]

Tickle your technique a bit here and there and everything will fall into place. The soak-out will always mellow cured meats, and I like a rest before smoking to let everything equalize.

Bottom line is.... smoked chops can be $6/lb at the market. Your smoked chops will cost less than half that if you buy a loin roast and slice it yourself.