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–+ servings
A hand holding a chunk of pink salt crystals, highlighting their texture and color.
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Salt Pork

Salt pork is all about full saturation of salt to preserving aspects through the process of binding and diffusion.

Once cured and dried is can last for many months. It will provide a richness to

Lardo can be used as part of a antipasti or as a base for cooking. You can render the lardo to create a rich base for anything.

Using fatty pork meat from a well-fed, older animal ideally because the fat in the pork has less water so it won't shrink as much when dried out..

Total Weight of the Meat grams

Ingredients

  • 1000 g Quality Pork Back Fat
  • 100 g Salt (10% of meat weight)
  • 2.5 g - optional - see notes - Pink Curing Salt No. 2 (Prague Powder #2, Instacure #2, many other names - To be used for over 30 days meat curing projects (0.25% of meat weight) Optional See Notes

Instructions

Curing Steps

  1. Remove the skin if Pork Belly/Shoulder has skin on.

  2. Weigh the meat, record weight.

  3. Calculate or use the Recipe Above to Auto-calculate the Salt and Spices

  4. Apply the Cure: Coat the meat with the curing mixture, ensuring all surfaces are covered, including crevices in the meat. You can do this inside the bag or container.

  5. Close bag and remove air if measuring out the salt to the weight of the meat. Or, layer salt generously above and below the meat in a container (for this container method, you may wish to tip out the liquid every 5-7 days.

  6. Leave in the salt cure for approximately a week per 500 grams or pound of meat. Leavin in the cure longer rather then short is advisable. If placing in container with liberal amounts of salt, similar time span can be used

  7. Remove from salt cure and hang in a cool approximately 50°F or 10°C, less temperature to fridgeration leve fine.

    An alternative drying is ina regular kithcen fridge on a non-reactive wire rack (cheap chrome coatings on rack can reactive or some form of galvanic reaction).

  8. After 1-2 months the meat should be very firm and hard - it's drying and preserving is complete

Recipe Notes

Please note that the craft of making meat curing is beyond a recipe. This is not a cooked product. It takes a reasonable amount of knowledge to safely. I've tried to be comprehensive. However, you are responsible for yourself, not me.

My advice is that if you have doubts about smell or visual cues, it's not worth eating.