Smoking Meat...

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bkmad said:
Hay shaunous, I see you're in Grafton. I've recently moved to Grafton. Can you recommend a butcher?
You will have to join Grafton Brewmasters


Give GDSC Butchers or Holiday Coast a go. I get a bit from the butchers in the Grafton Mall. They also have some nice cheese and salami's etc
 
Mardoo said:
Lordy, Lordy. It's just too difficult to find good "streaky bacon" here. It's as if the abomination which is short cut bacon has infected everyone's brains and they think streaky bacon should be as meaty as possible. No less than 50% fat please! My wife just made a very sexual gesture and said, "Yes, yes, yes!"
Always glad to help a brethren score with his best half!!
I agree. That coagulated ham we call bacon is a bit shocking and took a long time to get used to. I'll get my recipe sorted and post it here.
It's PROPER bacon and requires nitrates and/or nitrites for the cure. I'm not comfortable with the salt cures that some use for curing. It's like no one has ever heard of botulism toxins.....
That's a nasty road you don't wanna go down...
 
I've frequented several Asian supermarkets with butchers for meat to smoke. You can pick up Pork and Beef ribs for very good prices. A place gave me Beef ribs for $5 a kilo once because they were a bit fatty that day. Some of the cuts have been average and others have been superb. I helped my mate eat Pork Ribs off his Hark a couple of weeks ago, and when he told me the price from the butcher at the mall, I couldn't breathe properly.
 
Tex N Oz said:
Always glad to help a brethren score with his best half!!
I agree. That coagulated ham we call bacon is a bit shocking and took a long time to get used to. I'll get my recipe sorted and post it here.
It's PROPER bacon and requires nitrates and/or nitrites for the cure. I'm not comfortable with the salt cures that some use for curing. It's like no one has ever heard of botulism toxins.....
That's a nasty road you don't wanna go down...
Hope I don't start a huge debate on the topic but there's very good reasons unitrited bacon won't kill you from botulism - almost as good as those that make no chilled wort a non issue. Besides the fact it's usually cooked hot to eat, it's made from a whole muscle cut.
Mince is far less safe so any sausages*, salamis, etc carry much more risk.

*fresh sausage cooked properly before consumption is fine - sausage in this instance is anything cured and cold smoked.
 
manticle said:
Hope I don't start a huge debate on the topic but there's very good reasons unitrited bacon won't kill you from botulism - almost as good as those that make no chilled wort a non issue. Besides the fact it's usually cooked hot to eat, it's made from a whole muscle cut.
Mince is far less safe so any sausages*, salamis, etc carry much more risk.

*fresh sausage cooked properly before consumption is fine - sausage in this instance is anything cured and cold smoked.
Manticle,
do you find the nitrite free bacon taste different? I understand that Nitrite will affect colour but does it affect taste?
I do not think i have ever tasted nitrite free bacon.

I have no issues with Nitrite being a health issue (the nitrite/nitrate cancer link is bullshit) and do not add it to my bacon for food safety. I do not see how it is different to keeping a piece of meat in the fridge for 5 - 7 days and then smoking it for 3 hours hot. I have marinated roasting meat for that long.

But what about the all important taste?

Beercus
 
manticle said:
Hope I don't start a huge debate on the topic but there's very good reasons unitrited bacon won't kill you from botulism - almost as good as those that make no chilled wort a non issue. Besides the fact it's usually cooked hot to eat, it's made from a whole muscle cut.
Mince is far less safe so any sausages*, salamis, etc carry much more risk.

*fresh sausage cooked properly before consumption is fine - sausage in this instance is anything cured and cold smoked.
Well, that's been a debate since the beginning of time I think. I know of several historical events that resulted in loss of life from improper curing and improper cooking of bacon, but there has never been a case of botox poisoning from a properly cured meat. Even bacon that has spoiled in the fridge wont grow botulinum. There are also many types of botu-bacteria that produce different types of toxins and scientist are finding that some are more resistant to heat than others, leaving the 90°C safety temperature behind and one they suspect can remain active beyond the temperature of boiling water. That's scary shit. A member of my grandfather's tribe died from that stuff, and because of the stories, I have the utmost fear and respect for that little microbe. But with that said, to each their own and I respect that there are many different ways to make good bacon.
My practice is very traditional and was handed down to me (modernised of course with modern chemistry) and mostly remains the same.

I de-rib a whole pork belly (or several of them), trim the rind and outside fat off.
Using a mixture of salt, beet sugar, fresh peach juice, honey and Prague #2 cure (6.25% sodium nitrite and 4% sodium nitrate) I massage VERY well into the pork belly. I put it in the fridge in a sealed bag with no air in it turning daily for 12 days.
I then soak the slabs in luke warm water for 2 hours to leech the cure.
I put them back into the fridge to form a pellicle before cold smoking for 6 hours with very light hickory @ 45°C.
They are then rolled in powdered salt and wrapped tightly in 2 layers of muslin cloth, placed in a tied up hessian in a cool dark room for about 6 weeks.

My other recipe is salt, dextrose, brown sugar, maple syrup, juniper berries, cracked black pepper and cure #2

Now you have bacon made old school.
It never sees a fridge and is hard as a rock, but it melts when you put in a med-hot skillet to cook golden brown or bake in the oven @180 until the same.


beercus said:
Manticle,
do you find the nitrite free bacon taste different? I understand that Nitrite will affect colour but does it affect taste?
I do not think i have ever tasted nitrite free bacon.

I have no issues with Nitrite being a health issue (the nitrite/nitrate cancer link is bullshit) and do not add it to my bacon for food safety. I do not see how it is different to keeping a piece of meat in the fridge for 5 - 7 days and then smoking it for 3 hours hot. I have marinated roasting meat for that long.

But what about the all important taste?

Beercus
Nitra(i)tes are most of the taste you get from cured meat. To me, uncured bacon tastes like a salted, fatty pork chop, but it's all a matter of taste and some people prefer it.

They claim that nitrate salts can be bad for you if you over-cook bacon to black. If I recall it's about 200°C that nitrosamines start to form, but you can't get away from them all together as they are in almost all BBQ meats, smoked meats, beer (especially dark beer) and many other products that we consume daily. They even claim they are made in your stomach from eating nitrate rich foods.... better stay away from celery and spinach!!

So is it bad for you? I dunno.. don't care.
I'll eat my bacon, drink my beer and might even surprise my liver with a glass of tap water once in a while.

The day I die will be the end of a life I wasn't afraid to live. :icon_cheers:
 
beercus said:
Manticle,
do you find the nitrite free bacon taste different? I understand that Nitrite will affect colour but does it affect taste?
I do not think i have ever tasted nitrite free bacon.

I have no issues with Nitrite being a health issue (the nitrite/nitrate cancer link is bullshit) and do not add it to my bacon for food safety. I do not see how it is different to keeping a piece of meat in the fridge for 5 - 7 days and then smoking it for 3 hours hot. I have marinated roasting meat for that long.

But what about the all important taste?

Beercus
It's definitely different. Matter of preference.

Once upon a time I had concerns about adding nitrate/nitrite but that's long gone (eaten enough commercial stuff to make concerns pointless anyway).

Tex - my understanding is that while spores can withstand heat, the toxins they produce can't. They are also unable to reproduce on the surface but are not present inside the whole cut.
If they were, I'd presume eating all meat was suss.
 
manticle said:
Tex - my understanding is that while spores can withstand heat, the toxins they produce can't. They are also unable to reproduce on the surface but are not present inside the whole cut.
If they were, I'd presume eating all meat was suss.
That correct that the spores can withstand up to 121° before they are instantly neutralised, much slower at lower temperatures down to 100°C. The toxin is, in most cases deactivates at 90°C but there are some concerns that some strains can produce a protein cluster that provides temperature protection from even 100°C. One of my more successful hobbies is cooking and preserving food. I've done huge research in this so I don't kill anyone. haha
With domesticated pork, you're most likely safe. I wouldn't bet on it with wild game though. I shot a boar once, immediate field dressed it and within a 30 minute walk it was starting to stink so bad I had to ditch the carcass. I asked a wildlife vet why this happened and he said that wild pigs are saturated with so many bacteria from the carrion that they eat that the second their immune system shuts down, they quickly rot. Meat and all. Because porcine are mostly immune to botulinum toxin they likely consume it daily, while most other carnivores are adverse to it. While I have no scientific reference other than that, I believe it's possible to have infected meat as even fresh pork in the fridge doesn't keep long before it starts to turn from other bacteria so why not botulinum too?
For me at least, I err on the side of safety when it's something I feed to other people. Even then I've had a lot of people say "Home cured meat??? No thanks.." and I'm kind of the same way.
 
Ducatiboy stu said:
You will have to join Grafton Brewmasters


Give GDSC Butchers or Holiday Coast a go. I get a bit from the butchers in the Grafton Mall. They also have some nice cheese and salami's etc
Thanks, I haven't tried Holiday Coast yet. Had good luck at Grafton Mall, but the one time I went to GDSC was not long before closing time on a saturday so stock was too low to see what they have.

What is this Grafton Brewmasters of which you speak?
 
bkmad said:
Hay shaunous, I see you're in Grafton. I've recently moved to Grafton. Can you recommend a butcher?

PM'd.

And Welcome to our little country shit fight :lol:
 
Suck it up boys. One big Fatty in the smoker right now ;)

ImageUploadedByAussie Home Brewer1441966127.361682.jpg
 
Ahhh FFS

I am preparing to make a better brew rig, and I have discovered smokers.

A mate brought some smoked products to a bbq recently, and from that I realized that the Aldi smokers were on sale a week later.

Went to check them out on the Monday morning, thinking its all ok, i'll just have a little look.

There were three left.

That afternoon, I was committed.

4pm, all sold out. Calls to the national center revealed no chance.

Subsequent researching reveals potential pid controlled gas smokers etc.

Mmmm, complicated, potentially dangerous, and definitely delicious (assuming it doesn't blow up).

I'm in.

The 3v rig and pid controller will win, but now I have another pending 'hobby' (the lovely wife asked if it was a new obsession, and I couldn't in all good faith disagree, despite not having smoked anything before (......)
 
Brew Forky said:
I've frequented several Asian supermarkets with butchers for meat to smoke. You can pick up Pork and Beef ribs for very good prices. A place gave me Beef ribs for $5 a kilo once because they were a bit fatty that day. Some of the cuts have been average and others have been superb. I helped my mate eat Pork Ribs off his Hark a couple of weeks ago, and when he told me the price from the butcher at the mall, I couldn't breathe properly.
Just check the pork is from a sow. Some cheap pork can be from a male (look up boar taint).
 
manticle said:
Just check the pork is from a sow. Some cheap pork can be from a male (look up boar taint).
Cook an old boar in a cast iron frying pan and you'll have to throw the pan away. Never get rid of the taste.
 
manticle said:
Just check the pork is from a sow. Some cheap pork can be from a male (look up boar taint).
Checked out boar taint and it sounds like I would know about it if cooking a susceptible animal. In my research I learned much about castration techniques of the males of the species. :blink: Poor little Rib providers....
 
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