Schinkenspeck

(slice thinly and serve on crunchy baguette spread with soft cheese or butter)

Ingredients:

• Pork Ham chunks with no skin

 Cure mix by % – (for 1000 g):

• 87% – (870 g) coarse, no additives salt
• 8% – (80 g) cure#1
• 5% – (50 g) sugar white

Important! – Mix the cure very well to distribute cure#1 and sugar evenly in the salt volume

Meat Preparation:

• Trim meat so it forms rectangular chunk with some layer of fat on the bottom, if possible. Let the meat dry to touch before applying cure.

Curing:

• Rub cure mix onto each side of meat chunks
• Spread some cure on the bottom of your cure container
• Place meat chunks on top of cure, fat side down, leaving some space on each side.
• Spread more cure on top of meat and apply from on each side of the meat.
• Cure the meat in the refrigerator, turning it in the container every second day. If you have layers of meat, make sure that the top one goes down to the bottom and the bottom layer up.
• If your meat consist of big chunks, cure for 10 to 12 days, small ones (4×6 inch or smaller) 6 days.  Make a small cut in the middle of a chunk and visually check the colour to verify curing stage.

Soaking and Drying

After curing, soak the meat in cold water at about 15° C  (60° F) for 1.5  hour for each day of curing (10 days curing = 15 hours in the water).

After soaking, place the meat in covered container, in the the  fridge for 2-3 days. This time is needed to equalize the concentration of salt in meat.

Smoking:

• Cold smoke at 26 °C (79 °F) for 12 hours in low smoke density using 3 loads of your favorite wood chips (cherry recommended).

Store in a refrigerator