[Sca-cooks] Smoking

[Bill Fisher]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 06:27:36 -0500, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:
> So, that said, I've never cured, smoked and dried a food for long
> preservation without expecting to use refrigeration, but the
> technology is, and has been for centuries, out there. The process for
> making, say, Smithfield Ham, which is salted, treated with pepper
> (I'm pretty sure), and cold-smoked/dried until it has lost at least
> 30% of its weight in water mass, is pretty much designed to keep a
> meat product free of bacteria, molds, and maggots, and the process
> pretty clearly works. On the other hand, I don't think even that

One of the benefits of my farm area background. I used to get loaned
out to the guy my Dad got his hams from on occasion when he needed
help.  Free ham is free ham when the budget is tight.

Usually ham is brined to make sure the salt and sugar penetrate
the meat.  It is soaked in a water with salt, sugar, pepper and other
spices known to kill and preserve for a few days .  He also then rubbed
the outside with salt as well.

Then they hang it to smoke and dry it to 2/3 of the pre-brining weight.  
This is if I remember right.

They use indirect "heat" and smoke to do the drying.  "Heat" being
that they keep it at a regulated temp.  The regulated temp is to 
facilitate the drying of the meat. (no idea what the temp is, sorry,
bit I know it isn't a cooking heat, something makes me say120F)
This is for a "hard" cured ham.

A soft cured ham, is just brined for a few hours, and then smoked 
for flavor.  Hard cured ham shouldn't need refrigeration, soft cured
ham does.

If someone did a hard cured meat, test your results on yourself
please....not the poor souls at an event.  Once you get it right,
submit it for others to eat.  The guy I helped was in his 70's I think
and had been curing them all his life.  Do not take any of what I 
put above as the whole story, please.  Research it and then don't
blame me if you get sick.

> process was tailor-made for working in the kind of temperatures
> commonly found at Pennsic. I think rancidity of fats might become an
> issue, but probably some of the really skinny dried sausages, such as
> Polska kabanosy (a specific kielbasa variant which is thin and
> generally eaten fairly dry, and looking a little like a Slim Jim, and
> a.k.a. a TV Kielabasa), or some of the North African merguez
> variants, which are both lean and well-dried in finished form, might
> work well. Maybe some kind of bastourma (a cured beef product which
> appears to be the Tuirkish ancestor of pastrami) would work for
> Pennsic conditions.  I know I've brought kabanosy to events like the
> Southern Region War Camp in Eisental -- not quite as warm as Pennsic,
> nor as high up, but not that far from it -- and kept them for up to
> 48 hours without refrigeration and no ill effects after eating them.
> I'm sure they would keep for longer, but for how much longer, I don't
> know.

Uhm, not much, I woudn't have eaten it past 24 hours.  I have seen
what can happen to cured meats at war first hand.  If you are going to
being those to war and expect them
to survive and you to survive as well, invest in a vacuum packer.

Usually the fats melt out and go rancid, then the bacteria work at the holes the
melted fat left behind.....yuk....then you eat it and.....and.....ew....


Cadoc

-- 

"The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it" -
                                    - William Gibson