← Meat H41-04 · Module 4 of 7 · Pages: 20 · Worksheets: 5

Pršut, cured loin and bacon

Dry salting, pressing, cold smoking and maturing of air-dried ham, cured loin, coppa, bacon and dried beef, with salt amounts, temperatures and weighing until it's done

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Whole series: Meat, €39

Pršut, cured loin and bacon

In short

  • Pork only with a negative Trichinella result. Smoke, salt and drying don't kill Trichinella.
  • The leg is salted at 2–5 °C (36–41 °F) and stays below 5 °C until the salt has reached the bone: roughly 6–8 weeks from salting.
  • Pršut matures 12–18 months and loses 35–40 % of its weight; cured loin 4–8 weeks and 30–35 %.
  • Cured loin and bacon: 13 g of nitrite curing salt (0.6 %, roughly 80 mg/kg) and 15–17 g of plain salt per 1 kg of meat, weighed; or 1.3 g of Cure #1 and the full salt as plain salt. Check the rules and the packet.
  • Smoke with cold smoke, up to 20–22 °C (68–72 °F), using hardwood, with breaks.
  • Pršut is checked with a probe along the bone: a sour or putrid smell means spoilage.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. What's what
  2. Safety of cured meats
  3. Rooms for salting, smoking and drying
  4. Pršut: choosing and preparing the leg
  5. Pršut: salting and pressing
  6. Pršut: smoke, drying and maturing
  7. Dry-cured loin and coppa
  8. Bacon
  9. Dried beef and kastradina
  10. Spoilage and pests
  11. Most common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Calendar for ham and cured meats
  • Salt and spice calculator
  • Date calculator
  • Weighing and room log
  • Labels for cured meats

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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