Important Tips on How to Make and Use Curing Salt for Your BBQ

Curing salt is a useful preservative of meat that you want to season and keep for future use at home. Prior to drying, processing and smoking your meat, curing does not only increase shelf life but also enhances flavor. With creativity, everything becomes enjoyable. This is why, by opting how to make curing salt rather than buying from store, you’re adding charm to your kitchen life.

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How to Make Curing Salt

Furthermore, learning how to make curing salt allows you to add your own herbs and you’re your own rub. In so doing, you now can enhance the flavor, taste and smell of your meat even further. Before starting the process you have to clear about what types of meat are the best meat for the barbecue. The steps involved are simple. Read on to discover what they are.

What you need:

1 oz Sodium Nitrate (6.25%)
0.64 oz Sodium Nitrate (4%)
4 lbs table or sea salt

11/2 lbs sugar
31/2 saltpeter
Bowl

Step 1:

Mix 1 oz of sodium nitrite with 1 lb of table salt or sea salt in a bowl. This results in a perfect curing salt for your meat if you have to smoke at low temperatures for long. You can as well use it to cure fresh sausages.

Step 2:

Mix 1 oz of sodium nitrite, 0.64 oz of sodium nitrate and 1 lb of table or sea salt in one bowl. This curing salt effectively preserves meats that will neither require cooking nor refrigeration. For instance, it is good for pepperoni, salami, and other dry sausages.

Step 3:

Mix 4 lbs salt, 3 oz saltpeter and 1 1/2 lbs sugar in a bowl. This recipe makes a sugar cure mixture that adds a little bit of sweetness flavor to your meat. Usually, this cure works well with different types of pork meat such as bacon and ham.

Step 4:

Add any seasoning you prefer to any of the resulting curing salt in the above steps. Further, you can add any herbs, spices, seasonings or even sugar to curing salt you’ve prepared. This results in different but generally pleasant flavors to your cured meat.

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How to Use Curing Salt

Using curing salt will basically depend on your own personal preferences. However, some tricks are still vital for the purposes of achieving the ultimate BBQ goal of perfectionism. Let’s navigate these tricks and watch out to see what you were previously missing out.

We have sectioned this guide into three vital areas: general usage of curing salt, use of curing salt for dry curing, and use of curing salt for brining.

Use of curing salt for general purposes:

Precisely label all the types of meat in the process of curing. Notably, be sure to note any special instructions plus the dates they require attention. In so doing, it is important to take care of aspects such as brine refreshment or dry rubbing, turning, smoking and so forth. For the purposes of accuracy, you’d better transcribe these important dates to your calendar.

Apart from air-drying, all other processes require that you hold your meat at a temperature range of 36 to 40 degrees F.
Soak you cured meat in cold water followed by drying prior to smoking. In effect, this reduces excessive saltiness.
Adhere to the recommended quantities of curing salt and sedulously avoid excess at all costs. Store them in their original containers and try as much as possible to follow the packaged directions. It must be remembered that nitrites and nitrates can become toxic if not used properly.

Use of curing salt for dry-curing:

Particularly for the purposes of dry-curing, thorough mixing of your salt with other dry ingredients is core. After mixing, simply apply to your fish or meat.
Routinely apply the curing salt on the meat to draw moisture out of it. Liquids are the habitats of bacteria in the stored meat.
In your refrigerator, be sure to turn the preserved food at least once every day.

Significantly, divide dry rubs into batches then after every three days, reapply the rub, a process referred to as overhauling.

Use of curing salt for brining:

Brining requires complete submersion of your meat into the brining solution. There are different ways of doing this. For instance, weighting it with a tightly sealed bag of ice or dinner plate.
In another version, curing beef brisket, pork bellies or jerky requires the use of sturdy resealable plastic bags. Similarly, you can use non reactive containers.

Then again, if brining for longer than a week, replace the brine with a fresh mixture. This is an important step in avoiding spoilage.

Conclusion:

In summary, making and using curing salt is apparently a skill worth learning in as far as kitchen tasks are concerned. Important to mention, the curing salt you make will significantly depend on what you intend to use it for. The trick to successful curing is to carefully regard every statement in this article.

As a new BBQ lover you should know which grilling and smoking mistakes can break your heart.

With a little bit of creativity, you can dry-cure, brine and indeed, do almost everything with your home-made curing salt. Important to realize, this is cheaper compared to buying already made curing salt from the store. Best of all, you can determine the rightful proportions of curing salt and its intensity by yourself. That is, if it is home-made rather than bought.

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Theresa Lori

Hi, I'm Theresa. My passion for grilling delicacy gradually built during the time I was living with my parents. My family members especially my mother was a great fan of grilled dishes to and from the love of food. I started preparing smoked food with my mom. This bonding helped me to know more and more about to smoke, grill what always I share on SmokeGears.com. So, in two words you can call me a BBQ lover.

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