How to Dry Cure Meat at Home Guide

I’ve been practicing and teaching meat curing for a few decades, it’s my passion to share the slowest food in the world on this website.

It is more than just following a recipe; that’s why I want to describe it in great detail. It’s part craft and part science.

It wouldn’t be as useful I think, give a short recipe-style introduction to dry-cured meats.

Specifically, I am talking about dry-curing meat known in Italy as Salumi & in modern terms, sometimes referred to as charcuterie (the accurate French term for rillettes, pates, salami, whole, muscle dry-cured meats, and porky bits – many other French smallgoods).

Examples of My Dry Cured Meats:

(Salt) Dry Curing is a method of intensiving flavor, adding complexity with acidity (introduced or natural) and preserving the incredible flavor.

Reduce moisture in the meat to a point where the meat flavor is amplified and preserved since unwanted bacteria that spoil needs the moisture and water movement inside the meat (water activity –a_w) to thrive on.

Dry Curing classics – Parma Prosciutto, Bresaola, or Pancetta.

Overview of the Process

1. Select Your Method: Choose between the saturation method or equilibrium curing, depending on your preference and experience level.
2. Calculate Salt Content: Determine the appropriate amount of salt and curing salt (if desired) based on the weight of the meat. Accurate digital scales are essential for precision.
3. Prepare the Cure: Mix salt, spices, and curing agents thoroughly, ensuring even distribution.
4. Apply the Cure: Coat the meat generously with the curing mixture, ensuring all surfaces are covered.
5. Cure in a Suitable Environment: Place the meat in a cool, well-ventilated area with controlled humidity, such as a refrigerator or DIY curing chamber.
6. Monitor Progress: Regularly check the meat’s weight and appearance to gauge the curing process’s progression.
7. Rinse and Prepare for Hanging: Once fully cured, rinse the meat thoroughly to remove excess salt and spices. Optionally, apply additional spices or aromatics before hanging.
8. Hang and Dry: Hang the meat in a suitable environment, ensuring proper airflow and humidity levels for optimal drying.

Please be aware that dry curing meat is a process. This article is comprehensive and detailed because of this. I’ve also included videos and links to many articles I’ve written that relate to this.

Important Considerations

• Humidity and Temperature: For ideal drying conditions, maintain a slightly humid (65-80%) and cool (50-60°F/10-15°C) environment.
• Equipment and Ingredients: Quality meat, accurate scales, salt and spices are essential for successful curing.
• Storage and Shelf Life: Properly cured and stored meats can last for months or years.

Also, it’s good to note that most meats are around 70% water, 20% protein, and other stuff. The water will reduce my a minimum of 30% during the drying phase.

This guide is focused on dry-cured meat.

Dry curing meat follows one of two methods: saturation/salt box or equilibrium curing.

There is a traditional way (saturation/salt box) that’s about the time the meat is in the salt cured, which can have variations and a precise method (equilibrium curing).

1. Use the salt box method or equilibrium curing method
2. Accurately calculate the required pink-curing salt (optional)
3. Mix salt cure, and apply to meat
4. Cure in a fridge or cool fridge temperature area
5. Once fully cured, remove from fridge & rinse thoroughly
6. Weigh and calculate 65% weight, of the finished weight minimum
   • Optional Casing
7. Hang the meat in a suitable environment

Dry Curing Meat at Home

Drying cured meat (link to charcuterie/dry cured meats category list on this site) can be done in many different areas and scenarios.

You want a slightly humid (65-75%) environment and foolish (50-60°F/10-15°C) – with air exchange or airflow not essential, it does help. (technically one m/s)

So the meat dries out inside, and if the humidity is too high, the outside goes hard.

(case hardening is called often)

For short-term dry curing like regular fridge curing (done in 4 weeks or less), this doesn’t matter as much – article I wrote).

A dry curing chamber is not essential, and I have written about what you need to build your own with an old fridge or wine fridge. If you want to read more about this, you can also get the guide in my charcuterie course.

If you have a protected area that has a temperature of approximately 11-15°C/50-60°F most of the time, this can also be used for some short-term projects. It just depends on the humidity.

Curing Meat At Home

1. Salt Curing Salt Box Method or Equilibrium Curing

If you don’t have the accurate digital scales mentioned above, you’ll want to use the ” Saltbox ” method. You can get away with level teaspoons if you trust their 2.5-gram approximation because it will depend on the salt!

My preference is always to use equilibrium curing if I can because its flexible with time and precise, in terms of the amount of saltiness.

Salt Box Method – Curing

So, all you do is have a pan or tray with salt, curing salt (here is an article about which salt for curing meat I wrote), and spices.

Then, you coat the meat and roll it around in the mixture. Then, you place it in a Ziploc bag in a ‘box’ to be cured in the fridge or at a fridge-like temperature.

The salt box method involves covering the whole meat with salt and leaving it for a certain number of days, based on weight.

Sometimes, pressure is applied to help squeeze in the cure (technically, diffusion and water-binding = curing).

Tip -I also apply pressure with regular fridge equilibrium curing to speed up the curing.

Equilibrium Curing Method

The way it works is by adding a percentage of salt to the total weight of the meat.

For example, 20 grams of salt per 1,000 grams of fresh meat – 2%

Depending on salt taste preferences, most recipes tend to be between 2% and 3%.

Based on my preferred saltiness, my preference for whole muscle meat curing is often 2-2.5%.

This percentage of salt includes (pink) curing salt.

2. Accurately Calculate the Required Salt Cure

This is a step because when using sodium nitrates and nitrites, you should be careful with the amounts.

The option is if you want to use this product, it has different names in Europe with different ratios. I’ll cover this in detail below.

For example, the target salt totals 2.5%, so 2.25% is sea salt, and 0.25% is pink curing salt.

Pink Curing Salt or other similar types – Number 1 is for under 30 days of meat curing projects from start to finish.

Pink Curing Salt number 2 is for over 30 days of meat curing projects from start to finish.

For more on pink-curing salt I wrote an article about it here

3. Mix Cure and Apply to Meat

It’s important to ensure all the cure is put onto the meat when it comes to equilibrium curing. I do this in a little mixing bowl or a Ziploc bag.

When using the salt box method, you must ensure the pink curing salt is evenly mixed into the salt box before using it.

Vacuum Packed Bags for Curing

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4. Put in Bag & Cure the Meat

Zip Lock Bags

When you use a Ziploc bag, I find the best technique is to squeeze all the air out and leave one part of the Ziploc open so that pretty much all that air gets squeezed out before zipping shut.

How Long to Cure For?

Saltbox Method – Duration in Cure

It varies depending on the resource. The approximate ratio is 1/2 pd to 1 pd per day. More significant cuts that are 5″ or thicker will be toward the one pd per day.

5. Remove from Bag and Rinse Meat

Once the curing process is complete, whether it’s a saltbox method for equilibrium curing, than you rinse off the cure if you want. For saltbox you’ll have excess salt, it should definitely be done. For equilibrium cure, not so important.

If you want to get a bit fancy, some recipes from Ruhlman’s Salumi suggest rinsing off with wine. I have yet to try this; I prefer my wine to be consumed orally.

Adding Aromatic Spices before Dry Curing

Now would be the time to add another layer of flavor on the outside; you can do this by making a spice blend.

Black pepper crushed at this point can also help the anti-bacterial protection because it has antibacterial properties.

6. Weigh and Calculate 65% Target Weight

Once you get the current weight, multiply it by 0.65 to get the target weight. You won’t want to eat it until this target weight has been hit and it’s dry enough to eat (preserved per se and dried enough for wafer thin-slicing!

So, 65% = 130 grams for a 200-gram piece – once this is reached, it’s ready!

Now, I use a little cut piece of cardboard, but you can use a label printer or anything that you put a hole through. Then, record what it is and the finished weight (the date is optional). If you are wrapping it, tie this over the muslin just for reference.

Optional Casing

I put this in as an optional step because it does depend on the project. Most of the time, I do a regular fridge dry-cure project; I use muslin.

I have found that the pork and beef come out much better if I wrap the meat. It seems to help hold in the moisture and prevent it from drying out as much.

I like to use butcher’s twine to squeeze the cured meat, which can help the drying process a bit more. If you tie it uniformly, it is also quite aesthetically pleasing.

There are also many types of casings and bungs, which are intestines or stomachs of animals that work as well.

7. Hang Meat in a Suitable Environment

It’s a piece of wood measured to fit into the shelf holders and some hooks. I can then hang the meat at the back of the fridge so it doesn’t touch anything.

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Of course, there are many ways of creating this hanging system

An expandable shower/closest rack is a unique technique I invented also:

Where to Hang Dry Cured Meats at Home

Hanging the cured meat, helps to dry it and avoid contamination from any surface.

Several options can be used, the more conducive the drying environment – the more consistent and successful the outcomes, generally.

Cellar, Shed, Wine Cellar

If you have a cold enough winter and around 11-15°C /50-60°F, then you can use this environment to try dry-curing some meat. I recommend you check out the humidity to know roughly what it does.

Don’t expect every project to go perfectly in an open area or cellar; many more factors can be at play if you hang in an exposed area.

Bought or DIY curing chamber

In this environment, you’ll generally work around 70% humidity and 11°C/50°F. This is usually the accepted whole-muscle Salumi or dry-cured setting temperature, but it can be varied depending on the project.

Here is a full article after I’ve built at least 6 DIY curing chamber conversions.

Key Ingredients

Salt – Size & Type

Salt is the cornerstone of all food curing.

When I learned about Parma Ham, which many consider the ultimate dry-cured meat, I learned that it only uses two ingredients: a specific well-fed breed of quality pork and sea salt.

(other ingredients = time, patience, craftsmanship & a minimum of 12 months of humidity & temperature that has a favorable environment)

They have some special approval based on strict guidelines and do not use any nitrates. Possibly, there are natural nitrates and other minerals already in the sea salt that have been used for hundreds of years, too.

The key to dry-cured meat is to use sea salt-free of additives, anti-caking agents, or iodine.

That means sea salt or kosher salt works well. Trapani salt is very popular as a go-to salt in dry-curing communities.

There are so many different brands and shapes of salt because different salt shapes & brands have different volumes.

A tablespoon of one brand of kosher salt may weigh differently from a tablespoon of another brand of kosher salt.

It can create significant variations when following a recipe.

Using accurate kitchen scales that go to 1 or 2 decimal places to measure exact quantities is essential compared to using measuring spoons or the salt box method, which I shall discuss below.

Accurate scales that can measure (0.X) 1 decimal place (ideally 2 decimal places (0.XX)

Accurate scales are probably the most critical equipment if you use the equilibrium curing method because you will deal with very small amounts of salt, spices, and nitrates.

Nitrate/Nitrites

Source and quality of the meat has a large impact on whether I choose to use nitrates/nitrites, in my opinion it’s optional.

Heating nitrites over 350°F can have undesired outcomes, in the form of carcinogens. This is why I do not use it for salt dry cured bacon.

Many home curing enthusiasts and commercial producers use a product such as pink curing salt. It’s approximately 90% salt and then has sodium nitrite also (The curing salts with No.1 have only nitrite for under 30 day curing recipes). It’s used primarily to protect the meat from botulism and for commercial production, speed up the curing time.

The American version is approximately 90% salt; this needs to be calculated as part of the total salt.

Known as:

• Pink Curing Salt No. 1 and 2
• Instacure No. 1 and 2
• Prague Power No.1 and 2
• Many other names

(Tender quick is different – it has sugar/salt/nitrates/nitrites – from what I heard, not used it)

No. 1 is:

• 93.75% salt
• 6.25% sodium nitrite

Pink Curing Salt No. 2 for long-term cured meats, prosciutto, Lonza, dry-cured salami, etc.

Nitrates slowly break down over time into nitrites, so by the time the transition has occurred (weeks or months), no nitrates are left in the meat.

No.2 is:

• 89.75% table salt
• 6.25% sodium nitrite
• 4% sodium nitrate

In Summary,

over 30 days of drying = Pink Curing Salt No. 2

under 30 days of drying = Pink Curing Salt No. 1

When doing equilibrium curing, pink curing salt is always added at a ratio of 0.25% to the total weight of the meat. Some instructions/directions go down to 0.2%.

For more on pink curing saltes, nitrates and nitrites – I wrote an article here.

I wrote about the main ingredients for meat curing here.

3. Quality Fresh Meat

Fresh, well-looked-after animals lead to superior flavor outcomes, I think. Ideally, the meat you can source or trace back the origin should be used for meat curing. You get a better flavor out of something that’s been looked after with some passion.

The quality and freshness of the meat are very important to start with. Aged beef is not advisable for dry-curing meat since there may already be a level of undesirable bacteria present.

It’s also about an ethical choice, in my perspective.

Tools and Equipment

He is the most relevant gear you should use.

1. Accurate Scales (Equilibrium Curing Technique)
2. Optional Casing & Muslin Cloth
3. Butchers Twine / Jute String
4. Mortar & Pestle or Spice Grinder
5. Thick String, Butcher Twine or Jute

1. Accurate Digital Scales (Equilibrium Curing)

As mentioned, accurate scales are essential to get the correct amount of curing salt.

If you are using the equilibrium method (link to my article on this), it can work out the salt content to cure effectively and get the right match of saltiness to your taste buds. But the saltbox method is also fine.

2. Mortar & Pestle / Spice Grinder

I use a simple spice grinder (similar to a small coffee grinder) to get a proper, even coating and make the curing process as easy as possible.

The salt and spices become a powder that works well with equilibrium curing.

Or, if you want to use some arm work, a mortar, and a pestle, you have to grind it up.

For a few grinding tools, I wrote a page (near the bottom) about the ones I like here.

3. Thick String, Butcher Twine or Jute

You are mainly hanging dry-cured meat so that they don’t get in contact with anything. This minimizes bad bacteria contact with the meat.

You always want to avoid air pockets inside the meat, but when starting off with dry-cured meat, you stick with whole pieces of muscle, which means you don’t have these challenges.

4. Optional – Casings & Muslin Cloth

I’ve often not used any casings, it’s advisable when starting also, since you’ll be able to see what’s happening on the surface of the meat during the drying stage.

What can be used as a ‘barrier’, to prevent/regulate the drying of cured meat:

• skin from the animal (like prosciutto)
• collagen sheets
• muslin cloth
• salt Preserved animal bungs (intestines)

Muslin helps when you wrap it around the meat to hold some of the moisture and stop the outside from going hard. The term used is case hardening, and when this starts to happen, you may have meat that is dried on the outside but still moist on the inside.

Many dry-curing enthusiasts have this ‘case hardening’ issue. The easiest way to fix it is to vacuum pack the meat after it has hit the target weight. The moisture in the meat will equalize inside the vacuum-packed environment; just put it in the fridge for 1-2 months.

Meat Curing Recipe Ideas

Duck / Pork / Beef Simple Dry Cure

Duck is probably the easiest type of dry-cured product you can do, sometimes called duck prosciutto (doesn’t make sense since your not using the duck leg! Breast often) .

I have used different types of wild duck, which haven’t been as successful as farmed varieties, but it depends on your tastes. Wild venison has worked great.

The weight of the duck prosciutto or small pieces of pork belly suits a regular fridge-curing process. However, I’ve also used beef steak or under 200 g pork loins. All of these came out amazing and have become regulars in my repertoire.

Salt and Spices Equillibrium Method

• 2-2.5% sea salt for equilibrium curing
• 0.25% pink curing salt No. 1 (optional)

• Optional Spices for Duck- 1 clove, 1/3 cinnamon stick, orange zest, 0.5% pepper
• Option Spices for Beef 1% garlic, 1% sweet bay leaf, 0.5% juniper berry
• Optional Spices for Pork 0.5% pepper, 0.5% juniper, 0.5% nutmeg

My Variation – Pork Pancetta

With whole spices, it can be helpful to make the spices fine; that’s where a spice grinder can be useful.

Salt and Spices Equilibrium Method

• 2.5% sea salt
• 2% black pepper
• 1 medium-sized garlic clove per 500 grams
• 0.2% nutmeg
• 0.2% dry thyme
• 0.5% juniper berries

Beef or Game Meat Bresaola

The classic bresaola has many spices; the main flavor is cinnamon and nutmeg. I use this spice mix with great success using my harvested wild game or any other type of red meat.

Here’s a breakdown of the percentage of spices that I use for this bresaola-style dry-cured meat. Don’t get too hung up on the spices; if you are missing a few, it will still taste fantastic!

Salt and Spices Equilibrium Method

• 2.5% sea salt
• 0.2% juniper
• 0.4% pepper
• 0.2% dry thyme
• 2 dry bay leaf leaves
• 0.1% clove
• 0.1% cinnamon

Feel free to leave any comments or questions, I’m always replying.