Brine Cure For Bacon and Hams
By: Anonymous
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 - 2:33am

Ingredients




8 pounds Salt
2 pounds Sugar
2 ounces Saltpeter
5 gal Water, boiled but cooled

Preparation

1 Mix the pickling ingredients. In theory thicker joints, such as ham, should have a stronger brine - make the brine up in 90%% of the quantity of water. Thinner joints, such as bacon and bath chaps, which are the jowls of the pig, should have the mixture in 120%% of the water.: Put the meat into the brine, making sure that there are no air pockets, put a scrubbed board on top and a big stone on top of that to weight the meat down - DON'T use an iron weight- and leave in the brine for 4 days per pound of each big joint. Thus each joint should be weighed before being put in, and each removed at its appointed date. Bacon and small joints 2 Bacon is best eaten within a few months. Cured hams and shoulders should be carefully wrapped in greaseproof paper and then sewn up in muslin bags and hung in a fairly cool dry place, preferably at a constant temperature. If you paint the outside of the muslin bag with a thick paste of lime and water, so much the better. 3 Like this they will keep for a year or two and improve all the time in flavour until they are delectable. Light turns bacon rancid, so keep it in the dark. Keep flies off all cured meat.