How to Dry Cure and Smoke Pork Loin

okay guys today we are going to be dry curing some pork loins so this is going to be a the first step in the process and i just want to show you guys real quick the equipment and things that we've got ready to go here are some of the poor coins we are going to do a total of 10 pork loins i've got my 25 pounds of sea salt we've got a couple containers that the salted loins are going to go into cutting board knife some star sand make sure to sanitize all of your equipment with star sand before you touch your meat with it a little pre-game action you know we gotta we gotta feed the soul here so okay we're gonna go ahead and get started and i'm gonna show you guys the uh the entire process from beginning to end okay i see i trimmed this one up pretty good this is the side that had all the sinew and the fat might trim off a little bit more here but other than that pretty clean couple little spots of sinew that shouldn't be an issue i want to point out you're going to see on every pork loin this darker meat right here um when you're cooking i think this is the sirloin you're starting to catch some sirloin here if i'm not mistaken i might be wrong this might be shoulder but either which way this is the most delicate part of of the loin and in my opinion it's uh it's the best part of the loin especially if you're grilling it but even more so with uh with dry cured pork so this other side you can see here it's in great shape you can see this dark dark meat streak right here um didn't have to do anything here this is uh i'm gonna leave all of this stuff here this is all good and what we're trying to do here is essentially just trim off the fat and the the silver skin more so the silver skin removing the fat is going to allow the salt to penetrate deeper and quicker into the loin for the next part of the dry curing process all right so now we've trimmed all the meat we've got uh the scale on we've got the container on we're going to go ahead and start weighing these are the long loins all right so the container with the lid is 2.4 pounds but we put the tear weight on there so right here we're at 24.7 pounds so we'll need to make a salt addition to this container for 3 of 24.7 and that'll be in pounds so we'll have to convert that to ounces so let's go ahead and do that real quick okay so now we did the math we multiplied the total pounds times 16 to convert it to ounces and then we're now gonna add 11.85 ounces of salt to this perfect close enough okay so that's it that's the amount of salt we're gonna need for those four loins all right guys so now we've got our 11 ounces of salt we're gonna spread it all over the loins we're gonna flip them we're gonna do the other side put it back in the container any salt that's left we're going to wrap it up salt you really want to make sure you're extracting all the water out of these loins to get them to be micro microbially stable you can see i got a little bit of salt left so what we're going to do is try to evenly if you don't add enough salt the meat's going to be somewhat under dried and it's going to spoil on you so just make sure to go a full 3 percent can see this meat's already starting to sweat a little bit and now what we're going to do is put this into the fridge cover it with a lid and tomorrow morning i'm going to pull it out there's going to be water at the bottom of the bin we're gonna dump that water and we're gonna keep dumping the water every day until essentially there is no more water this should take about three days and then from there we're going into the equalization period okay guys so here we are 24 hours later the meat has been sitting in the refrigerator 36 degrees fahrenheit which is a little cold but good enough so now i'm going to pull this out you can see there's a little bit of moisture accumulation down there at this point we're going to go ahead and pull it out and dump all the excess moisture off okay guys so here we are this is the first dumping of the uh the water i'm gonna go ahead and take the lid off take the lid off of this container as well and so again remember these are the top pieces right so we're going to just go ahead and line these up essentially the way they were so this one goes down this one goes down and you can see immediately just pulling these things out they're way way stiffer they smell fantastic they're way stiffer and they're quite a bit thinner now just so you guys can see this is how much water we've uh extracted out of the pork loins and to get your meat microbially a little stable you need to get the water out right so we're trying to lose 35 of the water so i'm going to go ahead and dump this give it a quick rinse bring it back and we're going to rearrange the meat okay so took it into the house washed it off i strongly suggest you guys wear gloves every time you do this if you really want to be cautious wear i'm sorry re-sanitize your containers it does not hurt so now uh we put all the meat the same way it was facing in the container so now we know every one of these pieces that's up has to go down right so i do it this way because it's consistent and i remember how to do it and i don't want to have a senior moment and sometimes it's up and sometimes it's down always put them face up in the other container always put them face down when you put them back in and you'll see the next time we pull this out there's going to be very very little water i'd say we probably took out four ounces of water out of this last batch so here are the tagged pieces so they're going down down down and down and now what's happening inside this meat just so you know that salt was all on the exterior and it's now penetrating down into the center of these pore coins and you can see this thing has flattened out quite a bit i mean it it's probably at this point you know two inches um thick and by the time it's all said and done this thing's going to be like an inch and a half thick so just know what's happening is that salt is penetrating into the center and that's called that's the beginning of what we call the equalization period right so when that's that salt is really heavily concentrated right now on the outside when it basically equalizes all the way into the center of the meat your meat is cured and you could start smoking it before the equalization period but you really want to keep turning it and making sure that any water that's coming off of it you're tossing out otherwise if you let it sit for a day two days three days that water is going to start to stink up and you could potentially lose your batch due to a bacterial infection so we're gonna put the lid back on back on this one all right all right guys not too shabby so i covered them with a little bit of pepper and a little bit of cayenne just to spice it up a pinch uh it's been a week so we salted these last saturday night sunday morning i'm going to go ahead and string them up they've gone through the salting period and equalization so at this point these are a little thicker they could probably stand another couple days but at this point these are ready for smoking so i'm gonna let them hang out here for a little bit i'm just gonna string them up today and probably throw them in the smoker later tonight when it gets a little cooler okay so we get a piece of string and more is always better i'm gonna cut this at about uh we'll call it 14 inches give or take i'm going to tie a little knot in the end of it and with that knot i'm going to use a shish kebab skewer go ahead and kind of bed the tip into the uh into the skewer and this you could do with a wooden bamboo skewer as well it's actually easier let's try this again i got a bamboo skewer i tied my knot in the end of the string just going to put it on the tip see how much easier that is because it's a sharp point i'm going to go about two inches down force it through pull back the skewer and then just take this kind of even them up and then just tie a little quick knot in here and i want to give myself enough enough gap to where i can put it on a stick and that's it that is ready for the smoker okay guys so we've strung up all the meat and i'm now just uh letting it air dry a little bit pulled it out of the plastic container you can see we've got a few of those up there with the tags on them that are pre-weighed those are going to be our test pieces so we know approximately how much weight we've lost to get to 35 percent uh some have been spiced with a little bit of um cayenne and some black pepper others have not so now what i'm going to do is let these dry for anywhere between 12 12 and 24 hours but i'm i'm going to get them into the smoker as soon as possible here so you could see we got a few more hanging over here some of the longer ones versus the ones that we've cut in half uh right now the outside temperature is uh just about 45 degrees let's call it uh seven maybe eight degrees celsius and that's gonna be uh about as warm as you wanna get it while you're hanging this meat and smoking it so if it gets up to 50 that's kind of the borderline depending on where you are in the drying process so once this meat's been smoked for about 24 hours total so you could do three shifts of eight hours or you could just go 24 hours straight i suggest three shifts of eight hours i think it's just a better result then you could bring this meat up to temp to let's say 50 55 degrees absolutely maximum so as soon as i'm done smoking it this is all going to go down into my basement and into my cure room and you want it to be about 75 to 85 percent humidity down there so i'm gonna go set my humidifier right now and get it ready because what i'm going to do as soon as it's done smoking it's going to go into the cure room and i'm going to try to keep that humidity around 75 80 percent until i lose all the weight that i need to lose uh to get down to 35 pounds i'm sorry 35 percent weight loss here in the garage ideally we'd like to keep it right around 80 percent humidity if possible uh but that is really really impractical because i've got a a relatively large garage and uh the temperature outside is 40 45 degrees during the daytime 35 at night for me to maintain humidity in that that size of a space it would be it would have to be warmer number one and number two would have to be a pretty gigantic humidifying machine and that's just not practical so what i'm gonna do is just let the meat rest out here until it goes into the smoker tonight i'm gonna smoke it out two three days in a row and then it's gonna go into my cure room which at that point i can i can maintain temperature and humidity where i want it which would be between 45 and 55 degrees 75 to 80 humidity until we get to the correct weight so next step is tonight i'm gonna go ahead and uh light the fire and i'll show you guys how i get the fire started and how we smoke the uh the meat okay guys so here we are i got the smoker up and running about 15 minutes just a little smoky joe i'm gonna show you this i'm gonna try not to burn myself here it's uh just a little smoky joe and i made a pretty good little ash bed i threw a couple logs in there this should give me about two three hours of smoke time just go ahead and put the lid on aluminum duct only aluminum duct do not use regular galvanized duct uh when galvanized duct gets hot it puts out a chemical that is toxic and so here you can see we're generating nice uh decent amount of smoke it's clean smoke at this point the uh the fire is going and here we've got the loins loaded all of them longer ones are in the back and we're gonna go ahead and smoke this now for 24 hours in total meaning three eight hour shifts or [Music] 124 shift if you can do that but you want to get about i call it 24 hours of smoke on them so i'm going to go ahead and close this up and we're going to let it go and i'll pull them out at some point here and show you guys what they look like okay guys so here we go three days later i just wanted to show you guys where we're at we finished smoking the pork loins three nights in a row about eight hours a day total and you could see all the condensation that this is a brand new little weber and all that condensation because this is an aluminum duct it cooled and it dripped out and you could see we got a little bit of condensation this is the problem with having a wooden smokehouse there's no insulation and we got a little bit of condensation drip from the top there not the end of the world to tell you the truth it's it's really not that big of a deal you can see there's a couple little drips there and one there but in general that's fine so the temperatures were high 30s low 30s pretty much all week and today it dropped to the low 20s so i'm getting these out of here you can see they got a little bit of a golden brown color to them i'm getting these out of here tonight because they're going to freeze if i leave them out here and they're going to now go into the basically where i store them and dry them until the end of the process guys so we are back in the drying chamber and i just wanted to show you this um the drying chamber is pretty big and i've got a lot of room here for a lot of meat uh we're gonna break up the batches this year into smaller batches so i want to break up the drying chamber into smaller areas as well so got the humidifier going it's on full blast it's been running for a couple hours i've shrunk down the drying chamber as you can see with just a little bit of plastic doesn't have to be air tight i installed a fan up against the window just so we can get that temperature down about 50 degrees that's kind of the goal and the humidity should be around 75 80 percent for the first couple weeks here and then 70 75 after that so um as these dry i'll show you guys a progress report but these just went in uh they smell fantastic like uh smoke okay guys so we have finished drying the pork loins and you can see here the color on them is mahogany uh dark beautiful they are very firm to the touch almost over dried i'm not going to weigh them only because i could tell that the weight is is correct may even be a little drier than than they should be but these have definitely lost probably 40 percent of their weight and that's exactly what you want i do want to point out you could see on a couple of these here there's little bitty spots like right there see a little bit of mold growth that is no big deal just take a a a rag or a paper towel that's not mold take a rag or a paper towel here we go see that not a big deal at all take a little bit of vinegar and wipe it off and it will be perfect so i'm going to go upstairs and cut a few of these and start vacuum packing them in just a few minutes okay guys so this is it these are smoked cured dried pork loins and you could see this was done 100 natural there are no nitrates there are no nitrites it's only 100 sea salt apple wood smoke and a little bit of thyme and you could see i'm i'm i started cutting it i'm not gonna lie it's delicious um it's not too salty at three percent it's perfect not too salty got a little bit of pepper a little bit of smoke that's it you can see here these are the whole loins that we did they're a little rounder in shape a little bit thinner but the firmness this is really really firm to the touch now one thing i am going to say is do not be too concerned if you could see this feels a little rough to the touch when you put these into the vacuum packer this center here is still nice and soft some of that moisture is going to wick to this to the exterior here and it'll soften it up and it'll be perfect i promise you put it in the vacuum packer seal it up for two weeks put a piece or two in the fridge put the rest of it in your freezer for long-term storage this in vacuum packed sitting on your shelf can probably last a couple weeks not that the meat would go bad but once you vacuum pack it it's going to cause a little bit of mold growth if it sits at room temperature if it sits in the fridge and it's properly vacuum packed easily three four months no problem if you vacuum pack it and freeze it i'd say two to three years ah maybe not that much that might be an exaggeration one to two years no problem if it's frozen and vacuum sealed if you're leaving it out just like this it's going to continue to dry and it's going to get really hard and you're not going to be able to eat it the one nice thing about this because it is 100 natural with only sea salt you could cut this up make a little pasta sauce with some cream and some peas throw a little bit of this in there you could do anything you want with it you could cook with it without fear of getting sick so eat it like this i'm telling you this nice glass of wine some some fresh cheese a little bit of bread you're good to go you don't need anything else so can't get enough all right guys thumbs up

Channel: Velebit Mountain Man

Views: 34,257

Keywords: suho meso, dry cured meat, smoked meat, dried pork loin, smoked pork loin, cured meat, charcuterie

Id: OoJnEzFzE5Q

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021