How To Cure Meat in the Refrigerator

[Music] all right another food project comin at you we've got the beginner's guide be curing meat in your very own refrigerator definitely something I never thought I'd be doing but I got the interest a few months ago I was definitely scared in the beginning like all of these food projects a little bit of fear in the beginning what's going to happen we're preserving meat seems like a very scary thing that a lot of things can potentially go wrong but I called up my friend Jeremy who's the master in fermentation and curing and he told me there's nothing to worry about he was like you know people's been doing this for thousands of years it's going to be alright and I tried it out and it was incredible first time through it was amazing so I tried it out again for you guys and we're going to get after it spring has sprung it was raining for at least a monstery April was crazy all rain but it may now and the flowers are Alec's glorious day heart slope I'm headed over to Fleischer's which is my favorite butcher in town doing great stuff over there so I'm going to talk to them see what product they have in for curing and when you're carrying your own meat it's a long process it takes a lot of time there's a big pile so try to put in that extra effort to track down and give me something grass bread something local whatever it is put in that little extra effort and you will have a glorious reward on the other side [Music] okay Carl go for it all right so when you're first picking out stuff that you want to cure you want to make sure that you're going to a great butcher shop that has a great reputation or good meat that's more than half the battle is just getting the right kind of meat quality wise again twice your snitch right there that is on defense but then when you get down to it when you're picking out which muscles and which types you want to hear you want to figure out like what your your end goal is going to be a lot of fattier cuts in the fourth region they will cure out very nicely that's where you get your kind of guanciale you're playing in your Coppa when it comes to beginners if you want to first delve into what you're curing the first thing you want to do is look for the cheaper cuts because that's generally what you end up clearing anyway and that's kind of how hearings began is people trying to preserve these kind of let's use the cuts that make them edible so right here this is a Copa roast communal fresh they make great big it's a little bit on the fattier side that is from the pork shoulder so there is that line of fat in between the center they're also cured slices very nicely you can also cook it we also have a fork gel here also on the fattier side please cure up to make guanciale they are great for you can Adam sauces a lot of people you can pop this off him you can also slice it thin and wrap them around other meat i know this fish so that's really like a bacon oh yeah very similar very fatty and that be pork ja g yeah there's the inner cheek and then there's the gel which is kind of the outside of the 6-8 and then we have the i round which is a leaner muscle from the round primal it's a whole muscle that you do the left prayer for Zola which the leaner cut slice it very thin it's usually used for like charcuterie boards and things like that amazing thank you for that yeah I learned a lot of good stuff so I ended up getting four different cuts of meat we've got the top round beef we've got a little piece of pork but I did get the pork jowl so I can make the guanciale and then I wanted to show you one of the simplest cures to start out with which is the duck breast which turns into the duck prosciutto because there's so much fat it's amazing so basically when you're curing meat you are decreasing the amount of water in the cells you're pretty much drying out that meat and you're replacing the water with either salt or sugar one of those two things and what that's doing is decreasing the chance for those bad microorganisms to take over and spoil your meat but remember this is not a fermenting process this is a curing process and although you can ferment meat and see that with a lot of sausages out there today we are strictly curing so the first step to the process is cleaning up your meat if there's any excess fat any excess tissue you can just chop that right off so you've got a nice clean product when it comes to home curing there's two main types that you guys can choose I'm actually going to show you both of them and you can choose what works best for you one needs a vacuum sealer so I figured I would show you the other one because a lot of you do not have a vacuum sealer so we're going to start with the excess salting process which is the one that doesn't need a vacuum sealer they call the excess salting process because it uses ton of salt it does waste a good amount but it works really well and it's very simple it's the old-school method that they used to use but what you're doing is just taking your meat and completely covering it in salt on all sides and then you're just going to let that sit at room temperature for about a day I'm going to use the excess salting process for the duck breast and also the beef cut now one of the tricky parts about this process is controlling the amount of salt a lot of people complain that you know if you don't let it sit long enough it's under salted and sometimes if you let it sit a little too long you get way too much salt in there but I find for a piece of cut just like this something small one day is a good amount it gives you a pretty salty product but I haven't found that it's too overpowering the other technique is called equilibrium curing and it's great because you're actually controlling the amount of salt that is going into the meat so you know exactly how salty the final product is going to be for this process I'm going to use both of the pork cuts the pork jowl and the pork butt and for this you're going to actually have to weigh the meat because you want that exact amount of salt normally use a ratio of around three to four percent of the actual meat so once I get the weight of the meat I'm going to multiply that number by either 0.03 or 0.04 which gives you the exact amount of salt you need then you add that amount to the actual meat in this case I actually added some pepper which is in a necessary step but it's just something I was experimenting with trying to add a little extra spice early on in the process and then you want to make sure you rub the seasoning in really well make sure you don't leave any salt grains behind because you weight out exactly how much salt you need so make sure it all makes it into the bag which is the next step bag it up and then you're going to vacuum seal it so it really has a good chance to absorb all of that salt now we got to let those sit in the fridge until all that salt is absorbed and since these pieces are on the small side I would say give them about four to five days if you're going with something bigger than this you're going to want to let it go at least a week two weeks even three weeks for like a really big chunk of meat now comes the fun part of curing once you're done with those initial steps you get to spice it up with whatever you want I'm going to show you two different types of spice rubs that I'm going to use for each technique for the beef and the duck that use the excess salting technique I'm going to use a mixture of green peppercorns and black peppercorns to give it that nice spiciness and then I'm going to grate in some orange zest which I'm trying for the first time but I thought that would be a nice little touch once you mix all those together just give them a nice smear onto your meat make sure it's nicely coated and then for the pork cuts I'm going to use some dry herbs I've got time I've got a little bit of regon oh and then I'm also going to add a few chilies and some cardamom seeds first I ground up those chilies and cardamon and then I added in my herbage and just sprinkle that all over the meat until it was nicely coated [Music] and now we are ready to wrap these things up and dry out so I'm also going to give you two different techniques when it comes to this step one of my favorite options is taking a cheesecloth unwrapping that and then you wrap up your meat in that which really holds in all of that spice and then once that's wrapped up there nicely you can take your kitchen string and just tie it up the other option is just to completely skip the cheesecloth and just wrap it up with the string and that's what I'm going to use for the guanciale and the pork butt alright the next step is crucial and what you have to do is get that initial weight of the meat because it's not going to be done until it loses about 35% of its mass so you could eyeball that and that will be alright but it is nice to know exactly when 35% is gone that is the perfect cure right there the easiest way to do that is just throw it on a scale get that initial weight and multiply it by 0.65 now that calculation is going to be your final weight that you want to hit for the perfect cure make sure you write that number down somewhere on a phone on your computer on a notepad but what I like to do is take a label maker and I'll write down what the meat is what the cure is I have on there and that final weight so I know and I take it out it's right there once I hit that weight I'm good to go now of course cured meats was not traditionally happening in a refrigerator if you go over to Italy they're hanging prosciutto and cellars and basements places where it's nice and cool but also the humidity is somewhere between 60 and 85 percent but it turns out the refrigerator actually the decent environment for cured meats not perfect but it will work so what I figured out would work in my fridge was hanging a string on the back to convert it a little bit so I can hang those pieces of meat in the back but you guys figure out what the best way to do it is for you I attached a little hook to each string and then I just pop them on one by one make sure they're not touching each other so they don't contaminate and also you want a good amount of airflow between all of them you once those are in you can pile back in your fridge ingredients and then it's a waiting game it's nice to start out with smaller pieces of meat like the duck because it's not going to take months to cure your meat a traditional like big prosciutto could take a year to cure but a little duck breast might just take three weeks so every now and then just take your meat out of the fridge give it away and once it hits that number when it's lost 35% of its weight that should be the perfect cure telling you guys it is well worth the wait in about three weeks all of mine were done and now I have beautiful cured meat to sample to use in a ton of different ways I like frying it up I like just eating it clean bringing it to picnic do whatever you want with your cured meat so I'm going to take you through a little taste test of all of these babies and see what we got [Music] all right let's start out with the duck breast and I highly suggest starting off with this one this is the first one I did and it turned out great Wow the only thing I wish I had it was an actual meat slicer a deli slicer I try to get it thin as thin as possible which you need that deli slicer to get those nice thin cuts moving on to the beef look at that stuff right there the beef had the orange as well I like that beef and peppercorn it works so well love it so the guanciale was actually the only one that didn't reach its final curing point because it was a bit thicker but I got lazy I didn't want to wait to make the video so I pulled it it still worked out great because I'm normally just going to fry that stuff up it's not the best to actually just eat because it's so much fat but what you have here is the best bacon ever oh my god Wow no joke that's bacon ever last one we've got the pork right here that's the pork butt mmm that one's nice whoa Wow mmm the spice is nice in there it's pretty subtle this one is very tender I like that with the cured me there's so much fat on the pork that it pretty much just melts in your mouth that is that is tasty like that that's it guys that is the complete guide to curing meat I hope you give it a shot at home remember don't be scared you can do it it's a simple process and the reward is great I know it takes a long time but it makes it even better you're weighing them all the time you're so excited to have your own cured meat

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 1,038,162

Keywords: capicola, cured duck, easy curing, how to cure meats, curing at home, preserving meats, curing meats, brothers green eats, brothers green, what to cure, refrigerator curing, mike greenfield, fleishers meat, duck proscuitto, enzyme tire spunk, food projects, simple cured meat, beginners guide, how to cure meats in the fridge, curing meat, cureing meat

Id: cEkdCgAMgpw

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2017