How Does Meat Cure?

The meaning of cured meat seems like a pretty simple question, but I want to discuss it in more detail due to the variations and different types of cured meat.

For instance, some cured meats, like dry-cured meats, are ready-to-eat, like prosciutto or dry-cured picante salami.

Then, on the other hand, you have dry-cured cold smoked bacon, which is one of my cured meats that I make regularly. This is cured meat, but it is cold-smoked and dried. It’s cooked only before it’s eaten.

Let’s talk about all the variations of smoked ham cooked and smoked simultaneously. Yes, we are just scratching the surface. Xmas Ham, Ham Hock, Pressed Ham, Deli Ham, etc.

I’ve taken a lot of pleasure in creating a helpful resource on meat curing. My blog is about the worldwide variations of curing meat. It’s a fascinating area that is often confusing.

Along these lines, I have a good idea of categorizing different approaches. I’ll cover the main ingredients that give you different results you can achieve with meat curing.

First, a simple answer. Then, I will continue with the other information below.

Curing meat means using salt to inhibit or hold moisture on the meat. Curing meat can be done for preservation and flavor or only for flavor and no preservation.

For cured meats like pastrami, the cure is a wet brine of spices, water, and salt with some acidity, like vinegar or other variations! Then, you smoke and cook it to a safe temperature to eat (this is often called hot smoking).

Pastrami is not preserved meat; the wet brine does give it a little bit more time to keep in the fridge, but it is not preserved like other forms of meat curing. For dry-cured, salt is applied first, and then it is carefully dried until bacterial growth is minimized.

Salt also holds moisture by using the process of water binding. This is why a wet brining solution keeps a Christmas turkey moist (it’s cured but for no preservative effect).

It all comes down to the level of salt solution in the brine and how long it’s in the brine. The more modern technique of equilibrium brining means you work out a percentage of salt to the weight plus the amount of water.

To be more precise in brining, check out a meat curing and brining guide on this site.

On the other end of the spectrum of cured meat is dry-cured Prosciutto Parma ham. Since the Roman Times, this type of cured meat has had 2000 years of history (history about cured meats and charcuterie).

The Roman Preparation Of Salt Pork

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella – wrote about ancient Roman empire agriculture around 50 AD

I’ve found that this style of using it for a whole pig leg may have been done in China a long time ago, too – with salt. The Roman empire was before this, so I am unsure about the ‘truth’.

When Marco Polo arrived in China in the 13th century, he was there to pilfer. Impressed with the culture and customs he saw on his travels, he returned to Venice with Chinese porcelain, paper money, spices and silks to introduce to his home country. It was from his time in Jinhua, a city in eastern Zhejiang province, he found ham.

https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2018/11/03/over-1000-years-ham-heres-where-it-all-began

Parma Ham is a strictly protected quality dry cured pork leg from around Parma, Italy. It is rubbed with salt; in other words, it is dry-cured.

Parma Prosciutto Ham goes through controlled environments for 3 months, where humidity and temperature are changed to minimize bacterial growth and maximize the salt penetration into the meat.

This is followed by 9 months of hanging and drying at a reasonably ambient temperature.

I visited one of these Parma Ham factories, which makes 85,000 Parma hams a year – this is considered a medium-sized operator in the region (Slega Parma Ham).

I’ve given you a few examples of cured meat, but of course, this is just the tip of the cured meat iceberg. There are other variations of ingredients and how it’s made. I’ll get into that.

How Does Meat Cure?

Primarily, meat is cured using salt. The salt plays two roles:

• Water Binding
• Diffusion

Water Binding

Water binding means the salt in the water is binding to the meat muscle cells. In other words, it ‘has ‘clinging’ and inhibits the meat.

Unwanted Bacteria do not like salty, acidic, smoky, or cold (link to preserving meat I wrote) environments.

This salt inhibition is used to deter unwanted bacteria or slow growth.

Salt is also used to hold in moisture whilst cooking. When meat is cooked and smoked simultaneously, such as smoked ham. The water binding to the salt is beneficial.

Salt is the primary ingredient in cured meat. However, there are other ingredients and processes.

Diffusion

Salt curing relies on a simple but powerful process called diffusion.

When salt is applied to meat—whether dry or a water-based wet brine/cure

There’s a naturally occurring movement of molecules from a region of higher concentration (the salty exterior) to a lower concentration (the meat’s interior).

Because the salt concentration is greater on the outside, salt will continue to move inward until it’s more or less evenly distributed throughout the piece of meat.

This gradual movement is driven by osmotic pressure, the tendency of water to flow toward areas of high solute (salt) concentration to balance concentrations on both sides of a permeable membrane (such as cell membranes in meat).

As salt molecules travel into the meat, they draw out water from the muscle cells, lowering the overall moisture level.

That’s the key to the process.

This reduction in moisture—inhibits the growth of spoilage microorganisms.

With less water available, bacteria have more difficulty surviving or reproducing. Thus, diffusion not only imparts flavor throughout the meat but also acts as a preservation method, making salt curing one of the oldest and most reliable ways to keep meat safe to eat.

Methods of Curing Meat

The main ways to cure meat are:

• Dry Cured or Air Cured Meat (With or Without Cold Smoking)
• Cured With a Wet Brine, then Drying
• Wet Cured Brine and Cooked/Hot Smoked

Examples

Dry Cured	Wet Brined / Cold Smoked	Wet Brine / Hot Smoked
Pancetta	Kippers	Patrami
Prosciutto	Smoked Herrings	Smoked Ham
Braesola	Cold Smoked Salmon	Deli Ham
Dry Cured Salami

Ingredients, Variations & Processes

• Salt
• Spices
• Vinegar
• Mold Culture
• Nitrates/Nitrites (Pink Curing Salt)
• Cold Smoking
• Hot Smoking / Cooking

Salt

This is the main curing ingredient – salt is used in a dry or wet cure, as mentioned.

There are also different ways for dry curing; they are all aimed toward the same outcome:

• Air Curing
• Salt Curing
• Salt Box Curing
• Saturation Curing
• Equilibrium Curing

For using a cure that has salt & water, other names are:

• Wet Brining
• Pickling
• Wet Curing

Spices

I’ve discovered over the years that properties are associated with different spices.

Coarsely ground peppercorns have been used traditionally to cover dry-cured meats for thousands of years.

Pepper has antibacterial and antifungal properties. So, as you can imagine, it somewhat protects the surface and the inside of the meat.

Hard and soft green herbs have different properties.

As well as other traditional herbs like fennel and cumin.

Different studies have concluded that the use of thyme increases stability and reduces lipid oxidation during the shelf-life period of foods (meat, meat products, milk, fish or fish products), which makes thyme a promising source of natural additives

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7464319/#:~:text=Different%20studies%20have%20concluded%20that,promising%20source%20of%20natural%20additives.

 Garlic crushed could reduce the level percentage of beef fat and slowdown the increasing TBA values during storage at refrigerator temperature.

Garlic Antioxidant (Allium Sativum L.) to Prevent Meat Rancidity

Acidity

Vinegar is traditionally used in a South African cured meat called biltong. Vinegar has a similar effect to cooking, which technically is called denaturing. The changes around the protein cells are identical. Sorry, that’s about as technical as I can get.

Salt, vinegar, and crushed coriander are the classic ingredients for making South African biltong – a unique, delicious type of cured meat (jerky but sometimes less drying and sugar added).

I have made biltong many times using traditional and varied recipes. Biltong can loosely be called cured meat.

For ‘ceviche, ‘ the seafood is soaked in lemon or lime juice to denature or “cook” without using heat. It’s similar to biltong, but for immediate consumption!

I have caught fish suitable for ceviche many times. Ceviche is cooked with acidity and not heat!

Mold Cultures

It is common practice to use a mold starter culture to inoculate the meat for traditional salami and the home charcuterie maker. This method is also used commercially in Western cultures.

Meat curers made traditional salami hundreds of years ago using natural bio flora around the area.

Nowadays, we use a laboratory-grown mold culture, which I keep in the freezer. When I need it, I inoculate, spray, or submerge the cured meat or dry cured salami, ready to be hung in my DIY fridge.

As you have stuffed this meat mixture into salami casing, you have to increase the temperature and humidity depending on the recipe so the start of culture can flourish inside the meat.

The first starter culture (like Mold 600) is often used for create surface beneficial cultures, see that powdery white stuff on salami.

(This is the one that can sometimes bloom naturally…)

This is one of the many variations for creating an acidic environment inside the meat to protect it from bacteria, often a slight tangy flavor can come from this.

The main reason why this is done for curing salami meat is to change the pH level and make the environment more acidic.

The unwanted bacteria that spoil meat do not like an acidic environment, so starter cultures give you this protection (if done right, dry-cured salami falls into advanced meat curing).

I have not tested this, but red wine may also have an impact, and I could not find any evidence. I need to invest in the expensive pH meter!

Nitrates/Nitrites (Pink Curing Salt)

There is an ongoing debate about whether the pink curing salt is actually the curing part of it. It makes sense, I suppose when you read it in the curing descriptions. Pink-curing salt has many other names. It is generally 90% or more salt.

But you should always use a minimal amount (0.25% of the TOTAL meat weight)

It is used to make sure there is no chance of botulism.

I have studied botulism cases, and the actual number of cases is often more related to the traditional Indigenous gathering of food like seal meat. Canning seems to produce a handful of cases, but often, there may be less than a few dozen cases per year in the United States.

Pink curing salt gives your deli ham that wonderful glow of pink and also gives your bacon that pinkness. Quite often, if you’re using sea salt, the color would be more greyish.

It’s a lot harder for a corporation to market grey food. What’s your favorite grey food?

Think about it – a well-done steak has a grey look to it. That is precisely what deli ham and bacon could, should, or would look like without the nitrites.

There are natural forms of nitrates and nitrites in the salt used for prosciutto; you can see them because of the color after drying (usually 12 months or more).

Parma Prosciutto Ham has only two ingredients under the PGI and DOP regulations (European Food Protection Laws). These are strictly protected products; they are pork and salt.

Cold Smoking / Drying

Many people think that cured meats are always smoked (here is an article on whether smoke can cure I wrote). Yes, some are, but often, they are not.

Dry-cured cold smoked bacon, for instance, the cold smoke has antibacterial and antifungal properties.

My research into cured and smoked meats shows that they were used thousands of years ago, initially for survival and sustenance motives.

In some European regions, cold smoking was heavily applied to preserve food and keep bugs away. Cold smoking leaves a certain amount of smoke around the meat after it has been adequately cured, drying it out simultaneously. Less moisture means fewer unwanted bacteria that could spoil the meat.

For longer-term cold smoking, high humidity is needed so the meat doesn’t dry out as much.

I’ve done 40 hours of cold-smoking venison, and, at a certain point, it could not take on any more smoke flavor. Cold smoking can also be applied to vegetables, spices, salt, eggs, cheese, and anything you want to try.

Hot Smoking / Cooking

Curing and hot smoking I often do with fish and wild turkey, for instance.

Instead of using the total amount of salt, I use about half for my meat curing, mainly to hold the moisture inside the meat when I move on to hot smoking /cooking it.

This is a form of cured meat (here are some common curing mistakes) but is not preserved, it’s mainly for seasoning and making that finished outcome more enjoyable.

Here are the different ways we can use for cured meat and some examples of types of cured meat.

Pastrami is wet-brined and hot-smoked too.

Feel free to leave a comment and join the conversation.