[Sca-cooks] Sausages - cured and dried

[Kathleen Madsen]

They do have nitrates and nitrites which is where that
type of migraine usually come from.  There are some
cured foods that are nitrate/nitrite free but they
don't tend to be the dry cured products, it's
typically just cured hams and bacons.

The curing salts are formulated to include these
nitrates/nitrites so that the finished product has
that lovely pink color, and to kill off botulin.  It's
the role that saltpeter used to play in preservation
of foods during period.

You should be able to cure your own meats without the
use of nitrates/nitrites (nitrates are used in all
cures, nitrites are used in addition to nitrates when
you are curing *and* drying) but you might want to
keep the food product out of that "danger zone" of
temperatures while curing and storing.  Like you would
a cured ham.  Your dried and cured product will be
saltier so you'll probably want to give it a soak with
a few changes of water before using it.

Pity I can't play with this kind of thing so much
anymore, with a very weak immune system I have to be
extra careful.  Guess I just have to do some things
the modern way.  :(

Eibhlin

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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:53:22 -0700
From: "Sue Clemenger" <mooncat at in-tch.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sausages - cured and dried
To: "Cooks within the SCA"
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <002a01c75699$95b99120$29bfa6d8 at pavilion>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

How are cured/dried sausages, in terms of
preservatives? I tend to stay 
away
from the commercial ones, because the preservatives
can trigger awful
migraines...
--Maire