Curing pig meat

What are some techniques on curing the pig meat befor soaking it in your sauce?

Brine it for two days in the fridge. Cut into smaller pieces so the brine soaks in evenly. If you're curing a big piece you got to use a syringe to get the brine deep in there. There are mixtures you can buy, like Tender Quick that have nitrates and other preservants in them. Or you can do it old fashion and just use salt. A simple brine is 1 cup of salt to 1 gallon of water. Change the brine when it gets all bloody. The salt will suck out the blood and replace it with salt.

You can do a dry cure too if you have enough fridge space. Just coat the pork with salt and whatever other dry ingredients you want. Rub it on the pork and put it in the fridge where the liquid can drain out of the meat. Cure it for a few days and then marinate it in whatever sauce you want.

A friend of mine got me on to rubbing table salt on the outside fo the meat, placing towels under it and place in the fridge. Replace towels when needed as they soak up any fluids. The outside of the meat turns to nice colors almost instantly.

I recently started doing this: Got too much negative responces fromt he room mates about meat in the fridge in plastic bags. So I bought a nice size tupperware and bought some sort of kitchen organizing wire-rack from k-mart which fit perfectly inside and suspended the meat up a couple inches. lightly salt the outside of the pieces and set in fridge to drain. A rag underneath can catch fluids but is optional. The goat I caught since seems to last a lot longer, but I oversalted it pretty badly so maybe that's why.

Growing up, I didn't cure meat in any way except sometimes adding some rock salt. Didn't think it was much of an issue until I had a few bag meat spoil within one week of placing in the fridge. Then I looked for a better way.

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I soak my pork in buckets of water for about 30 mins. immediately after deboning. I change the water and repeat the process until the water is as clear as practible. Then I bag it and freeze it all the same day. Seems to work pretty good to me, but I have never tried any of the methods with salt. Maybe next one I will try one of the other ways.

For me it depends on what im gonna make , If i make a dish right after deboneing it then it clean it up in regular water till the water comes clear then b4 i make the dish i boil the meat and throw away the first water then rinse the meat and boil it again and then at that time i make my dishes ( pok quesantes, adobo, shoyu pork, pork and olives w/jalapenos ( my fav) and pork and water crest)


If i smoke then I just freeze the meat right after deboning it.....without rinsing it ....and i let it sit in the freezer for about 1 month then i thaw it out and cut it up and rinse till the meat comes as white as the fat thats on it .the reason i do this is because if i wanted wild meat that didnt taste like wild then i would of just bought the pig!!! lol once again TASTE NOT SMELL ,, the sauce i use you cant smell the wild when cooking the meat and the smoke meat taste better when the wild taste is mixed with the sauce..........it may be hard to understand but its something i learned from the big island cowboys....trick is to make sure the meat is as white as the fat on the meat . And try to smoke your meat with fattyiest part on top of the strip so to let the oil to run over the meat when smoking. Y ou should not smell that wild boar smell when smoking meat guys, this means that you didnt rinse the meat well or you are smoking an old ass boar were then you should of made sausage and mived domestic fat with the meat.


But thats how the hypa family cuts and prepares their wild meat ......Maybe we can set up a smoke out were all the hunters can meet up and try out each others dishes/smoke meat and so on ,,,,,,,,what do you all think?

I think that is a great idea. If you want to do this, let me know and we can get together and start planning.

For the old rank pigs try soaking in a mixture of 1 gal water:1/2 cup salt:1/2 cup baking soda. I done this with 2 sheep and a 200+ boar and they all turned out tender and no gamey taste at all. Like hiraoka said, they key is getting the blood out of the meat. Salt replace the blood in the meat. This is cut from wikipedia "Salt inhibits the growth of microorganisms by drawing fluids out of microbial cells through osmosis"