Bringing Home the Sausage, Part 2
Delicious Maple Smoked Bacon and Pork Loin
Before I get to the “meat” of my post, I want to give a great big THANK YOU to Rachel and the team from ThriftCultureNow.com for featuring me and this blog, as the Thrifty Blogger of the Week . You can follow them on facebook and get their Thrifty Tip of the day, on their facebook page I have to hand it to Rachel for painting me, the blog and our lifestyle in such a wonderful way. So please check out the article, and their website for more great info!
So last week, I shared with you a comprehensive post about breaking down a whole pig into useable parts, the genius of my friend Cole Ward, The Gourmet Butcher (who was also nice enough to give me a shout out on his blog, recently) and the making of fresh sausages.
This week in my Value Added Products class at Sterling College, our instructor, Chef Anne Obelnicki showed us about the art of curing, fermenting and smoking meats. We pretty much used up the rest of the pig yesterday. It was a long day – 10 hours of standing, cutting, simmering, mixing, grinding and stuffing in a hot and humid kitchen. I totally lost count of how many times I washed my hands in the first 5 minutes. When I got home around 7, Roberto had dinner ready. I scarfed it down and went to bed shortly after. Dealing with a whole animal, even when you break it up into two days, is hard work, but it is also FUN. You get such a huge feeling of accomplishment from the whole process! Plus it is really fun working with a few other people feverishly to get it all done!
Yesterday we hot smoked the maple bacon and brined pork loins we started curing last week. We also smoked the hocks and the bones. Nothing on this pig went to waste. We trimmed the jowls to start curing guanciale and used the second shoulder to make fermented sausages – spicy sopressata and hunter’s loop. We also made another brine for the 2 hams – we injected the brine first and then placed the hams in the leftover brine to continue curing. These products will have to ferment and cure for several weeks, so I am not sure I will be able to taste the outcome. But the preparation was an education in and of itself, and has led to a lot more questions for me, mainly about the use of nitrites.
“Pink Salt”, spice blend for spicy sopressata and wood chips soaking
I guess it is a good thing that I don’t want to make sausages for a living, as Roberto and I have been avoiding foods with nitrites for several years now. I did a lot of reading this week about charcuterie, and it seems that if you are going to age anything that will not be cooked at some point, nitrites are used. For example, you don’t need nitrites to cure bacon, since that will be hot smoked once it has cured. But you do use nitrites to make salami, sopressata and various other cured meats that will not be cooked.
Apparently nitrites are naturally occurring and can be found in dirt, rocks, etc as well in an abundance of vegetables, most notably beets and celery, which is what some producers of cured meats use in the place of “pink salt” ( “pink salt” is salt mixed with a smaller amount of powdered nitrites that is dyed pink so that you don’t sprinkle it on your eggs by mistake) when curing. So even “Nitrate Free” foods still contain nitrites, even if it is just in the form of celery juice, because nitrites are naturally occurring.
Nitrites do two things when curing – preserves the food and contributes to aesthetics – namely color and taste. It reacts in the meat to form nitric oxide which retards rancidity and suppresses the growth of harmful bacteria, like the ones that cause botulism. However, nitrites react with amino acids in our digestive tract to create nitrosamines, known DNA-damaging chemicals. Not only that, but you know it is harmful when it is suggested to use gloves when working with “pink salt” and other forms of curing salt. Yes, it is supposed to convert to something less harmful through the aging process, but can something like that ever be truly safe?
According to Harold McGee, the author of famed book : On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, “…yet at present there is no clear evidence that the nitrites in cured meats increase the risk of developing cancer…” yet he also exclaims in the same book when comparing the difference in taste between grass and grain-fed beef that “another important contributor to grass-fed flavor is skatole, which on its own smells like manure!” and also, “the saturated fats typical of meats raise blood cholesterol levels and can contribute to heart disease”. So personally, I think I will take his lax attitude towards nitrites with a grain of sea salt.
This issue of nitrites is something I definitely need to explore more. Like, is there a difference between naturally occurring nitrites, like celery juice and sodium nitrite which is added to many processed foods. Luckily we don’t eat much cured meat or any processed foods. Just bacon once a week…and our favorite prosciutto – Prosciutto di Parma which I also learned in the Harold McGee book, is cured with sea salt not nitrites.
But the fact that an old and revered food art, like charcuterie has a long use of nitrites in its history is a little disheartening and I was pretty bummed to learn about it. I guess you can’t assume just because it is a traditional art, or because it is “natural” it is good for you. I guess in the case of cured meats, it is the lesser of two evils – botulism or nitrites? I am not sure I like the odds.
If you have more information about nitrites, the differences (or NOT) between naturally occurring and things like “pink salt”, I want to hear about it! So please leave a comment.
Vincenzo - June 10, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Hi there, I feel compelled to comment on Nitrates. My point of view is that you are worrying too much 🙂
I don’t like nitrates either if the only purpose with which they are used is to increase shelf life of industrialised products. The fact is that making cured sausages and salami (anything grounded really) would be pretty impossible without them. Rancid fats and botulism are far worse than a tiny amount of nitrates. As you say they do occur naturally in other foods and are natural preservatives. That doesn’t mean we can eat a ton of them. Salt is natural too but any doctor can tell you of side effects of too much salt in your diet. So, my point of view is that it would be a problem only if your diet would be based solely on sausages but I hope you eat other stuff too 🙂
I’m more concerned about salt actually
vanillasugarblog - June 10, 2011 at 2:59 pm
see now this part i could do! LOL I mean who wouldn’t.
i wish i had more to say on nitrates. i don’t, but i’m certain that the nitrates used in industrial farming are far different than the ones you have used. i highly doubt they would use pink salt.; its not cheap.
Rosa - June 10, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Oh, lovely! Homemade smoked meat. Heaven!
An interesting course.
Cheers,
Rosa
Peter - June 10, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Did you know Iberico ham can/does use nitrates? Anyway, that smoker full of pork looks tremendous and I just might have to get my own smoker!
Bob - June 10, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Ok, that’s just awesome. I want to go break down and smoke a pig!
Miz Helen - June 11, 2011 at 9:28 am
I am enjoying your series on Sausage. We smoke some of our pork and I really enjoyed your post today. My grandfather smoked all his meat and that has just been passed down to us. Thank you for sharing and have a wonderful week end!
Miz Helen
Angela@spinachtiger - June 11, 2011 at 9:55 am
Jen, I’m thinking you need to keep good diary of this, lots of pics and write a book about your experiences. You are truly unique (to me anyway), city girl living in boring suburbs. xoxo
bellini - June 11, 2011 at 9:58 am
This was a very informative post Jenn and made me think twice about cured meats and nitrites.
ValleyWriter - June 11, 2011 at 11:46 am
I don’t know if there’s a difference between natural and added nitrates, but I did want to add that I heard about a recent study that showed one of the biggest links between processed meats and heart disease was not so much the saturated fat, but the nitrates. Just another reason to limit them, IMO!
Linda Forish - June 11, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Hi Jen, Glad you’re really enjoying your course. It’s funny, today I just found a local farm where the beef is pastured raised and he was explaining the nitrate versus non-nitrate hot dogs they make. He said they use salt (wish I asked him what kind now) to replace the nitrate. You could really tell the difference in the hot dogs .. the nitrate ones were pink and the salted ones were brown.
So which is the worse of the two ??? Salt or nitrates???
I’ve been avoiding hot dogs because of the uncertainty of what’s in them, but really miss them in the summertime. I thought the ones from this farm might work. Now I’m not so sure. What do you think?
Peter G @ Souvlaki For The Soul - June 12, 2011 at 2:33 am
I’m not really a nitrite expert but I know that the path you are on is right. What you are doing is unique…and I’m sure the outcome will be tasty. I can’t wait to see that guanciale!
Arlene - June 12, 2011 at 8:58 am
This has been such an informative review. I have to agree about the nitrates. With so many cancer causing agents bombarding us why purposely add another one. That is a bummer though as cured pork products are among my favorites. So I will need to watch better.
Hey, I like the idea of you writing a book. Maybe a whole series of them from your farm experiences with plants and animals.
John Patterson - June 13, 2011 at 7:53 pm
Much of what people read about Nitrites is overblown hyperbole. I recommend you check out the Facebook group “The Salt Cured Pig” – they will have a website soon, but till now they have a great collection of curemasters, chefs, instructors from CIA and other leading cooking schools, butchers and processors. You have to ask to join as they try to keep the riff raff out but no one has ever been turned away. Ask all you want about Charcuterie and someone will ALWAYS have a answer and most likely you will get it from some serious experts.
Nuria - June 14, 2011 at 4:45 am
Wow Jenn, what a hard and meticulous job! Thanks for the info on nitrites. This is so useful! Harold McGee’s book is my kitchen bible too!
Love your funny faces ;D
John Patterson - June 15, 2011 at 7:41 am
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ0974.html
It has been estimated that 10 percent of the human exposure to nitrite in the digestive tract comes from cured meats and 90 percent comes from vegetables and other sources.
To obtain 22 milligrams of sodium nitrite per kilogram of body weight (a lethal dose), a 154-pound adult would have to consume, at once, 18.57 pounds of cured meat product containing 200 ppm sodium nitrite (because nitrite is rapidly converted to nitric oxide during the curing process, the 18.57 pound figure should be tripled at least). Even if a person could eat that amount of cured meat, salt, not nitrite, probably would be the toxic factor.
kat - June 15, 2011 at 6:21 pm
This whole series is just amazing!
Bren - June 19, 2011 at 4:02 pm
i i love the pink salt in this and your ambition in smoking your own pig. very impressive… there’s so much to it! looks like you all have it down!
The Leftover Queen - June 28, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Thanks guys for all your comments, much appreciated! I am still on the fence about all of this. But at least it got me thinking differently.