Curing without nasty chemicals

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Curing without nasty chemicals
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Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Sun Dec 11, 05 7:48 pm Post subject: Curing without nasty chemicals

A few questions which I think are worth a thread of their own.

Is saltpetre always required for curing bacon? If it is such a dangerous chemical and if you are curing a small piece of bacon in the fridge is the risk of botulism so great as need saltpetre and does the salt not stop it?

There are other meat cures that sound rather nice. In HFW 'Meat Book' there's a recipe for Bresaola that uses coarse sea-salt and red wine to cure the meat for 5 days in the fridge and then hangs the meat for 10 days in a cool place. I particularly like the idea of curing venison and drying for longer than 10 days.

Apart from meats that are dried straight away, are there other meat curing/preserving methods that don't need saltpetre?

whitelegg1

Joined: 05 Apr 2005
Posts: 409
Location: Woodford Green

Posted: Sun Dec 11, 05 7:59 pm Post subject:

Bresaola well worth making (times two if you look how much it costs in the shops!!!)

I have followed Nick and Johnny's recipe from the book Preserved.

Lees salt and slightly different herb and spice mix.

They recommend marinating in fridge for a week and then hanging for at least a month.

First attempt ended up feeling like a house brick, but tastes supperb if a little salty....so if you slice it and leave it for a bit in a tupperware in the fidge, some of the salt leaches out. Tastes even better.

Again well worth trying.

Pete

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
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Posted: Sun Dec 11, 05 9:25 pm Post subject:
Thanks for reminding me Pete, we've also got that book and I shall read it over Christmas. Having a quick scan in a ham recipe they just use a teaspood of slatpetre and say it's just for colour.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Sun Dec 11, 05 10:00 pm Post subject:
I thought saltpetre was just for colour. I guess cab will be along in a minute with some real, unpronouncable chemistry

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Sun Dec 11, 05 11:36 pm Post subject:

wellington womble wrote:

I thought saltpetre was just for colour. I guess cab will be along in a minute with some real, unpronouncable chemistry

Naah, I'm here with something far closer to my heart, microbiology

The Latin word for sausage is botulus, from which we derive the name for food poisoning botulism. Saltpetre is used because, along with salt, it encourages the growth of other bacteria other than the one that causes botulism, and together with those bacteria the product of saltpetre that the better bacteria produce effectively means that the botulism bug hasn't got a toe hold.

The nice colour is just an added extra.

You can salt meat without saltpetre. Just isn't QUITE as long lasting, and isn't entirely as good. My memory might be playng trickson me, but isn't what you get when you make bacon or ham without saltpetre referred to as 'green'?

However you look at it, saltpetre, and the resultant nitrite and reactive groups left in the meat, are pussycats. Really. You can hurt yourself with them, of course, but I wouldn't fret over it. Botulism toxin, on the other hand, is thousands of times more toxic than nerve poisons that are used as weapons. Puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
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Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 05 7:30 am Post subject:
What I don't understand is why some recipes never mention saltpetre or mention food poisoning. Even ones where the product will be air dried and kept for ages. Would be possible to buy saltpetre from a local chemist, if we asked them to get it in for us?

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 05 8:32 am Post subject:

Treacodactyl wrote:

What I don't understand is why some recipes never mention saltpetre or mention food poisoning. Even ones where the product will be air dried and kept for ages.

Would be possible to buy saltpetre from a local chemist, if we asked them to get it in for us?

Not all cures rely on saltpetre. Some use salt content and low pH and some even seeding with other microbes to exclude dangerous microbes. Our chorizo is seeded with lactic acid bacteria bought from a health food shop, for example. It all really depends on what you are doing. Of course, with dry curing you're also reducing water content to the point where its harder for pathogenic bacteria to get going. You can also tilt things in your favour these days by doing your brining in the fridge.

I've seen recipes for brining without saltpetre, producing salt pork and suchlike, and I'm sure that done properly that works well.

At one time a good pharmacist could get you things like saltpetre. These days, it's unlikely, what with saltpetre being handy for making explosives

What's irritating about that is that you can buy all manner of other things that'll make something go bang, there's no consistency to what you can and can't buy based on safety.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45442
Location: Essex

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 05 11:43 am Post subject:
How long does bresaola last?

sally_in_wales
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Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 05 12:10 pm Post subject:
We pickle meat a lot, usually its a variation of rub meat with salt, sugar and strong spices, cover with wine and put in the fridge or a cool palce for a week or so before cooking in the pickling liquor. Tends to come out a bit like pastrami and a great addition to the midwinter food stash.

judith

Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 05 12:18 pm Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

We pickle meat a lot, usually its a variation of rub meat with salt, sugar and strong spices, cover with wine and put in the fridge or a cool palce for a week or so before cooking in the pickling liquor. Tends to come out a bit like pastrami and a great addition to the midwinter food stash.

Using red wine sounds like a good way to avoid using saltpetre. I normally find meat cured with salt only far too grey and unappetising, but I think I will give that a go.

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 05 10:45 pm Post subject:
Of course, a lot of the traditional sausage cures rely on lactobacillus/mold instead of using things like saltpetre. So you could rely on good old salami, chorizo and suchlike.

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 05 12:41 pm Post subject:

tahir wrote:

How long does bresaola last?

No idea but one recipe dries/ages it for a month before eating.

Platypus

Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 56
Location: Hampshire

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 05 1:20 pm Post subject:

I'd just like to add that Saltpetre (Potassium Nitrate (E252)) Is not as bad as has been made out - Yes it is toxic, but then so is salt (remember the court case last year about the woman who killed her baby by adding salt to it's food?)

I think it is worth putting in perspective;
Firstly the saltpeter that you end up with in the finished product is GREATLY reduced from the initial amout put in as up to 75% of it is converted during the curing phase into potassium nitrite, 80-90% of which also decomposes.
Secondly, the quantity of saltpetre that you would need to ingest before it had any noticably harmful effect is HUGE, it's the sort of amount that would have you retching and gagging well before you could finish eating it! Think of trying to eat a tablespoon of salt!

So unless you are eating huge quantities of over-cured products the possibility of you needing to worry about saltpetre is almost non existant.

Blue Peter

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 2400
Location: Milton Keynes

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 05 1:23 pm Post subject:

Platypus wrote:

Slightly off-subject, but I heard on the radio last week about one of those baby salt-death cases. They were suggesting (in this case, at least), that the cause of death was likely to be "salt diabetes" rather than salt-poisoning per se, since, as you say, it is very difficult to eat enough salt to kill you,

Peter.

Northern_Lad

Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 14210
Location: Somewhere

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 05 1:27 pm Post subject:

Blue Peter wrote:

... it is very difficult to eat enough salt to kill you

An adult, yes, but an infant is quite easy to kill with salt. A single tin of beans would be enough. (and if the salt didn't, the build-up of gas probably would *kaboom*)

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