I'm just starting to try my hand at this, and I'm having a blast.

Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, ballotines, pâtés, and confit, primarily from pork.

For the past few months, I have been experimenting with wet-brining and dry-brining and curing different meats. I thought it would be good to have a thread on it, so that I can get pointers for myself (completely selfish). But, also, others may benefit from the discussion if they're just starting out.

The only specialized things you might need in the beginning are Prague Powder #1 and Prague Powder #2.  P1 is used mostly for wet brining, and P2 is for dry curing of meats.

You can get both on Amazon by searching "Prague Powder #1" or "Prague Powder #2". A pound will last you for years.

BE CAREFUL WITH PRAGUE POWDER AND WATCH YOUR RATIOS. It is not like table salt and large concentrations of it can be harmful. Be sure to check your recipes and make sure you're not over-doing it, or bad things can happen.

I have done a few different charcuterie projects. My first was corned beef, which is easy and tasty. Here's the recipe:

1 section of beef brisket, 2-3 lbs.  In truth, other cuts will work just fine...I've made corned beef with eye of round and whole flatiron steaks as well...often whatever cut I have on hand.

BRINE:

10 cups of water

1/2 cup kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon prague powder

1/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp pickling spices

2-3 bay leaves (or, ground bay leaves)

I tsp black pepper

Boil 5 cups of the water. Remove from heat, and as soon as the boiling stops, stir in all the salts, sugar, and spices to make a brine.

Add the remaining 5 cups and allow to cool. Place the beef in a non-reactive container (I use a plastic container with an O-ring around the top and snaps on the sides of the lid) and pour the brine in, making sure the meat is covered.

If the meat floats, rest a plate or other heavy, clean object on top.

Place in fridge for 10 days.

Remove.

COOKING

Drain and rinse well to prevent excessive saltiness. Bring 10 more cups of water to a boil, and add

1 tbsp pickling spices

2-3 bay leaves

I tsp black pepper

Add your brisket in and bring to a gentle boil and keep it boiling for 2-3 hours.

You can also vacuum seal the brisket with the spices inside and cook it at about 160 for 4-5 hours.

When it's finished, remove and slice...serve with cooked potatoes and cabbage, or use it to make Reubens (which this stuff is great for...awesome to slice thickly and make your sandwich out of it).

This is one I did with an ordinary eye of round roast, and it turned out spectacular...the flavor was excellent and it was fall-apart tender:



I am not an expert; in fact, I am starting out, but hopefully those with more experience will come along and let us pick their brains about more advanced projects.

EDIT:  The original scope of this thread has expanded since we've started. This is now for all things cured, curdled, or smoked. Enjoy!

Hell yes.

I like your enthusiasm.

Something I neglected to mention...instead of boiling/sous vide at the end, if you smoke it, you end up with pastrami. And it is delicious.

Congratulations on learning a nearly lost art

Here's another one that I did.

Lonzo/Lonzino (dry cured pork tenderloin)

1 pork tenderloin

1/2 cup Morton's Tender Quick (premixed curing salt containing Prague #1 and Prague #2).  Buy once, and you'll not need to again for years.

2 tbsp brown sugar

Mix Tender Quick and brown sugar.

Pat tenderloin as dry as possible, put in 1 gal ziplock bag. Pour in Tender Quick and shake well to completely coat the tenderloin.

Leave overnight or at least 12 hours. When you come back, your tenderloin will be swimming in a brown sugar brine.

Remove, rinse thoroughly and pat dry. At this point, you can roll in any spices that you may like...I've done basil, paprika, black pepper, etc.

Weigh your tenderloin and note the weight.

Completely cover the tenderloin loosely with a linen and prop up in the back corner of the fridge. Come back in a month and check it. Ideally it should have lost 30% of it's weight to be considered done.

Slice thin and serve.

The last batch I made...

Nice   This thread is relevant to my taste buds.

Duck prosciutto was one I had at a restaurant that I would like to reproduce some day.

I want to make some capicola.   Hard to find pig necks in the market though.

Duck prosciutto is one of the easier ones to make. There are recipes for it all over.

I have half of a pork shoulder hanging right now to make capicola, and the other half is still in salt.

this thread is relevant to my interests, please continue.

I have done “ backboard” bacon aka country bacon, Irish or English bacon from pork butt.  I used brown sugar and Prague powder.  I need to do that again.  All the pork butt trimmings went into breakfast sausage.

I have not actually done a real pork belly bacon as the ones I find locally are just too damn small.

I picked up a book “Charcuterie” by Ruhlman and Polcyn last year.

That sounds good. Dry salt cure, or brine?

"Ham" from pork loin, or Canadian bacon:

10 cups of water

1/2 cup kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon prague powder

1/4 cup brown sugar

Boil 5 cups of the water. Remove from heat, and as soon as the boiling stops, stir in all the salts and sugar to make a brine.

Add the remaining 5 cups and allow to cool. Place the loin in a non-reactive container (I use a plastic container with an O-ring around the top and snaps on the sides of the lid) and pour the brine in, making sure the meat is covered.

If the meat floats, rest a plate or other heavy, clean object on top.

Place in fridge for 10 days.

Remove.

COOKING

Drain and rinse well to prevent excessive saltiness.

Cook loin as usual, via oven roasting or Crock Pot.

You can also vacuum seal and sous vide at about 160 for 4-5 hours, which is what I did.

I just served mine like a ham for dinner...



My wife and I chowed down.  At the end, she said, "I ate way too much of that. And I'm not even sad about it."

To make Canadian bacon, smoke as you would an uncured pork loin.

Curious question about ham. I want to know if using a shoulder muscle cured the same way you would the hind quarter, would produce similar tasting product. I usually make a store bought ham for Christmas dinner but wanted to do a fresh ham cured an spiced to my liking this year. Wanted to do a test run using a smaller cut of pork i.e. the shoulder for just us before hand to see the process. I'd have to ruin a big piece of meat if it goes wrong.

Tag on this.

If you are going to cure it "the same way that you would the hind quarter", i.e., dry salt and hang, and have it be done in time for Christmas, you might need to have already started by now.

How long for Curing Ham? The salt for air drying hams will take about 7 days per inch of thickness to penetrate. Therefore a 14-16 pound ham will be 4-5 inches thick and will take about 28-35 days to cure. An 18-20 pound ham will be 5-6 inches thick and will require 35-42 days to cure. A 22-24 pound ham will be 6-7 inches thick and will take 42-49 days to cure.

You can brine, but unless you're doing a smaller cut (5 lbs or under) then it's also going to take until well after Christmas.

Best bet from this point is to wet brine a few smaller cuts for 10-12 days or so before Christmas then slow cook them.  That's enough time to do a "trial run" with one and see how you like it, then make more for Christmas.

You can brine multiple roasts in the same container, but you'll want to put skewers in between to keep them apart and ensure the brine has contact over the entire surface of the "ham".  The recipe that I posted above will work for that, and the results are remarkably "ham-like", and it was such a huge hit with the wife that she asked me to make one for T-giving dinner at her family's house, and I'm making another one for my parents too.

You may need to scale up the brine recipe to do more cuts, though. Have to make sure the brine covers every square inch of the meat.

My intent was to have it brined to have a cooked ham like a store bought. Similar to this honey baked ham without the fancy spiral slicing.
I don't want something that it dry cured similar to a capicola or air dried sausage. Attached File

I started dry but on a smoking forum i was told that 4” thick I might better have wet cured.  I made the change and cured another four days so arfcom both applies.

What I posted in the pic above was about a 2-3 pound pork loin, wet brined per the recipe I posted, for about 10 days, then cooked in the sous vide.





It was, for all intents and purposes, ham. I thought it was delicious, and the wife liked it better than any ham that we ever had.

It was juicy and tender. But, being a loin, it was lean. Did have a fat ring around the outside which I left on since it was so lean.

I'm sure that if you wet brined a shoulder, you'd get the same thing, only with more fat marbled through it. I'm sure if you glazed it and roasted it, you'd have the nice crust like your picture.

It only takes 10 days to give it a try, and you have over a month until Christmas. Get some Prague #1 via Amazon and the rest you probably already have. 10 days later, you have ham.

Give it a shot!

Sweet. I'll bet it was good. Did you use sugar in your brine?

I need to try bacon, but we don't have a decent butcher locally. Gonna do it at some point, though, if for no other reason than it's fun.

Thanks squashpup. I've got the powder from doing bacon so I'll be giving it a go next week. Appreciate your help. I'll report back with pictures once it's done. Happy Thanksgiving.

Cool. It'll be interesting to see the difference between the shoulder and the loin. What size are you using?

Yes, brown sugar.  

It was good.  Now I have a better thermometer set up to monitor the smoke.  I went a bit too far last time but it was delicious. No one I shared it with had any complaints.  Made awesome fried bacon side on a plate and scrumptious bacon egg and cheese sandwiches and eggs Benedict.

I need a smoker.

I can see this getting as expensive as BRD.

The hard part will be convincing my wife that I need a dedicated outbuilding in which to hang whole hams...lol.

You are correct in that assessment.

I have three smokers now and none perfect for everything

- ugly drum smoker, works great on pork butts and ribs, chicken could be crispier.   It works well as a set it and forget it smoker.  Get it going, do yard work, check it occasionally.  Perfect pork buts and good ribs.  I am still playing with wood types added to the charcoal.

- electric master built.  I got the basic with. Out the computer and biggest error is I cannot add a a kit for lower temp smoking.  I wanted to low temp smoke trout without cooking the fish hard.

- Smokey joe offset charcoal grill and offset smoker.  I got it as a do all but haven’t used it beyond a grill much.

Ha I have thought about the out house sized wooden smoke house with a cold smoke flue from a separate fire box.  The cold smoke house with a long smoke flue won’t burn down to the ground.  

Probably 7-8 lbs that is pretty common here. They have the Smithfield cryo double pack 1 is usually 12lbs or so the other in the 8 range. I use the big one for either sausage if I'm getting low or for pulling then freezing.

Mentioned this earlier, but right now, I have a capicola drying in the fridge.

First step was to coat part of a pork shoulder in brown sugar and Morton's Tender Quick, which is a blend of regular salts, sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite.

1/2 cup of that and two tablespoons of brown sugar. Put it in a Ziplock for 7 days.

Removed, patted dry.



Rubbed with smoked paprika and some red pepper flakes.



I didn't have the traditional casing, so I wrapped in linen...



then trussed it...



It weighed 435g with the linen at the start. It is supposed to be finished when it gets to 318g. Right now, it's at 396g. (I use metric because it is easier to figure percentages...the meat should lose 30% weight before it is considered ready to eat).

Should be interesting! I'll post pics when it's finished in a month or so!

It may take longer for the brine to penetrate.  Could be faster to cut it into a couple of 2-3 lb roasts and do it that way. Just a thought.

Good luck! Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy my pork loins!

Lem or sausage maker should have the casings and the string harness things.

digging dog farms has a bacon calculator that will let you determine amounts of cure #1, salt and sugar for a given weight by percentage. if you don't like your bacon too salty, i've found it to be very useful.
smoking meat forums has countless threads on curing and smoking charcuterie.

I just finished up two of these, one for my family's Thanksgiving, one for my wife's.

Observations:

Ham 1 was done with a 1/4 tsp of Prague 1

Brined for ten days.

Frozen for several days while I brined the second one.

Cooked for 20 hours at 140, sous vide, then finished under high heat in the oven for a few minutes..

It was good, but it wasn't as juicy as I would have liked. I don't know how much of that was because of freezing, and how much was because of the long cook time, or even if it was just an inferior cut of meat (if I recall correctly, this was not the usual brand of pork loin that I buy). Still, this process is pretty forgiving, and it was a hit. Several people raved about it and a couple were just grabbing extra slices with their fingers and eating it after dinner was over.

Ham 2 was done with 1/2 tsp Prague 1

Brined for ten days.

Removed immediately and cooked Sous Vide for 12 hours at 140, rested for an hour or so, then finished under high heat in the oven for a few minutes.

It was way better than the first. It was tender, but very moist inside. And, the extra Prague 1 made it a little more flavorful.

Just some notes to consider when you get around to preparing yours.

The pork loin we talked about in the other thread is on cure day 9 and I'm going to let it soak a few more days. I'm gonna try smoking it. I'm gonna hit up Costco this week to see if they still sell pork bellies as they had them a year or two ago. Pepper bacon will be next.  I did make Buckboard Bacon once years ago but I wasn't real impressed with it but it may have been something I'd done wrong. I'd used a packaged cure (Hi Mountain Seasonings I think) and didn't really care for the flavor and it was kind of dry too. Or it could have just been the pork. Anyway I'll post back with pics when the Canadian bacon is done.

Yes. Please post what you did, whether it turns out like you'd like or not. Successful recipes are good, but with stuff like this, its almost as important to hear about the failures so that we can avoid the pitfalls for ourselves. I'm still learning, believe me.

I think you'll be very happy with that smoked loin (Canadian bacon).  It's good just roasted in the oven, but adding that smoke flavor will put it over the top.

Yesterday, I cooked up a "poor mans" corned beef that I made from a Flatiron steak. I'd had brined it a while back and vac-packed it and stuck it in the freezer, and decided to get it out and cook it and slice it up with eggs and ham for breakfast. I sliced it about 3mm thick and seared it off in a skillet and had it with eggs.

It was so good.

Keep 'em coming, guys!

I just ordered THIS yesterday. 10% off and a free cover for Cyber Monday. It'll be here next Monday so I'm going to stretch the cure out on the pork loin until then. Checked over on the "Smokin Meat" forum and they say it won't make any difference up to 30 days or longer. Its a bit shorter than my gas smoker but they say theres no problem fitting up to a 17-18 lb brisket or 15 lb turkey in it. And has the same amount of rack space for flatter stuff like jerky, sausage etc. Much better insulation and built like a tank! I thought about getting the next size up but for the small batches I do it'd be overkill.

Thanks for the tips, i will be hopefully going after it this weekend. Got a couple unexpected jobs pop up this week so my time is limited until then.

Get a smoker and you can turn that corned beef into pastrami.

My best attempt was duck breast pastrami.

Anybody here have their own smokehouse?  I'm interested in making my own sausage and cured meats but I'm not sure if my offset smoker would go low enough for smoking this kind of meat.

Old school TAG.  I love making cheese plates and charcuterie platters.  Haven’t dabbles in making my own yet.  Very interested
Attached File


Attached File


And I want this for Christmas....

Attached File

Tag.

Thanksgiving spread.

Although not Charcuterie, I recently started fermenting things. In this case, kimchi.

I have a grill that I can sort of rig up as a pathetic little smoker, lol.

Smoked some of the corned beef on it and ended up delicious. I will be getting a real smoker at some point.

My Capicola is approaching 30% weight loss. I decided to have a little look-see at it...





My initial impressions were:

Holy cow, this thing has lost a lot of size.  Stands to reason, since mammal tissue is mostly water, that it would shrink significantly when drying.

My second observation is that the outside is completely solid, what Charcuterie enthusiasts call "case hardening." That's not a good thing...lol.

I kinda knew this was going to happen, since I did my drying in the fridge. You're really supposed to have a dedicated, humidity controlled setup. What happens is the outside dries and hardens, and the inside retains moisture. The outside becomes hard and chewy, the inside is still too wet, and would have a slighly off-putting texture, like when you get jerky out of the dehydrator too soon.

The answer is to vacuum seal the meat now for a few weeks. The vacuum literally pulls the remaining moisture outward through the case-hardened parts, and they re-soften, and the whole cut evens out in texture. They say it also improves the flavor as well. So, in a day or two, I'm gonna put this thing in a vacuum sealed bag and stick it in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Hope that works. If so, it is going to be cheaper than buying a dedicated, humidity controlled setup.

As for the white on the bottom, it's mold, and it's staying. I could wash it off with some vinegar, but I'm leaving this particular mold because it is the white, non-fuzzy type of mold, which is not only edible, but also beneficial from the standpoint of protecting the meat from spoilage or contamination by other types of molds (green and black).

So, she'll go into the vac seal and in the fridge for a few weeks. Probably until Christmas. When it comes out, I'll cut it in half and post pics so we can see how it turned out.

This is fun!

1. Make your own corned beef.

2. Make your own sauerkraut.

3. Make your own Rye bread.

4. Make your own Reubens for the win!

Those look incredible.

And I see you added the roasted peppers and fresh mozzarella.

This thread is making me hungry.

@NorWester  @stacks04

How you guy's doing with your projects?

I'm doing better than Fedex is, which isn't surprising.  Monday delivery of the new smoker has been pushed out to Thursday and I'm skeptical as it just left Chicago today. Took 4 days to travel a couple hundred miles! Fedex...
Anyway like I said, its good in the cure for quite awhile. Hitting Costco tomorrow for some pork belly and brisket. I'll be smoking some cheese and deviled eggs while it cures, both of which would go good on a charcuterie board. Also some smoked meatloaf which wouldn't.

Will post recipes and pics though most likely not pretty ones.

Picnic roast in the brine until Thursday. Got it set there last Thursday evening. I'll be getting it out Thursday evening and smoking it Friday or Saturday. Think I'm going to layer with hickory and apple wood. I'll put up some pictures once it's out.

On a side note I picked up an antique deli slicer couple weeks ago. 1950's era globe model 610. Smoked a loin last week and sliced it up on there, my God it's nice to have a real deli slicer. Made for a real nice Cuban sandwich the next day. Should come in handy for many many meat projects. Attached File

Well, FedEx has royally screwed me over before.

Check out this thread:

O' Federal Express, how I hate thee...

Yep. I wish I had a slicer. I never find bargains like that...

Today is Summer Sausage day.

I started with ground beef, lean. I'm never happy with what they sell at my local store, and round roasts were cheaper per pound anyway, so I picked up about 2lbs. to grind myself.

Ground up, then mixed with Morton's Tender Quick. Ratio is approximately 2.5 tsp per pound of beef.

I'm letting it set overnight.

Tomorrow, I'm going to divide into three parts and mix each with different spices. First is just liquid smoke, garlic salt, and black pepper.

Next one is a little bit of garlic salt and liquid smoke, and chopped jalapenos.  Maybe a little bit of cheddar as well, if the mood strikes.

Third one is a pre-mixed Memphis BBQ rub that McCormicks makes.

Mix well, roll into "logs", then onto a broiler pan.

Then, into the oven at 225 for four hours.

After that, hopefully, deliciousness.

I'll post pics of the finished products tomorrow, along with taste test results. Wish me luck!

Well here's the cured product Attached File

Here's the smoked product.
Attached File


Tastes like ham, I've got to adjust the salt content though. I used a recipe on a smoking site that was basically a huge tutorial on bringing a ham, it is very salty. I'll fix that for next time. My brine was pretty good though and with my wife's great glaze will be fantastic. I'm going to make a batch of the sweet glaze to try and counter some of the salt next.

That looks fantastic! And you are right about the glaze...the ones I made for T-giving, I used a honey/brown sugar/liquid smoke glaze and it turned out great.

As for the saltiness, here are my ratios...

10 c water

1/2 c kosher salt

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 tsp prague powder

And, I rinse well before cooking.  I've never had an issue with saltiness, but I never salt it when cooking, either.  Usually, the salt you cooked it in is enough, all the way through the cooking process.

If you're still having problems with saltiness, they say you can soak your meat it in water with a small amount of salt. The theory behind this is that salt always finds its equal, and so any excessive saltiness will be drawn out into the water that has a lower concentration of salt. I've tried it with my capicola, but since it's still drying, I haven't had a chance to actually taste it and test the theory yet.