Experimenting with Brining and Curing

It is an exciting day here at Little Sprouts. The time has come to experiment with curing and brining hams and bacon. Our goal is two fold...

1) To explore a way to do smoking and curing locally, giving faster turnaround as well as more control over the process

2) To experiment with recipes to see if we can produce our own "Little Sprouts Flavor" in hams and bacon without using chemical nitrates.

As you may know, there is suspicion that nitrates used to cure processed meats today may cause health problems. In keeping with our mission of providing only the tastiest AND healthiest products, we want to see if we can produce a tasty alternative.

There are 2 approaches being experimented with:

1) Natural nitrate curing using celery juice instead of chemical nitrates

2) No nitrate salt and sugar based curing - technically brining instead of curing

The latter is the more traditional method, but there is a problem. Most recipes take too long to be practical for us today. In the future it would be great to offer dry cured hams and bacon, aged 6 months to a year, but for now we don't have the facilities available to do that. So, wet curing or "brining" is the next best thing. Using this method we can produce hams and bacon in as little as a week.

Meat processed without nitrates will not have the shelf life of nitrate cured meat, but today with refrigeration and freezing in every house, its really not that important to most people. So the main purpose today in curing is really the flavor and color. We will see soon how these match up between brining, celery cure, and nitrate cure.

Celery juice used as a cure is actually nitrates, but it is the natural form of nitrates, accompanied by many other compounds as nature intended. Celery cure is also accompanied by a bacteria culture that helps to cure the meat in a sort of internal fermentation. The flavor and color is supposed to be similar to nitrate cured meat, but with lower health risk.

The final step in curing is smoking. Smoking itself has much the same function as nitrate curing, which is why the smoked portions turn pink or red. Smoking imparts flavor as well as extending shelf life.
I should mention that Little Sprouts will not own the smoker and curing facility. We are not a slaughterhouse nor butcher shop nor smokehouse. Nevertheless, having our own recipe with no-nitrate options and natural nitrate options will be a great asset and a unique offering. The butcher / smokehouse we are working with will process meat raised at Little Sprouts Farm to our specs with our recipes in their facility.

Why go to all this trouble? We want to ensure that our unique pork (Red Wattle) is processed in a way complimentary to the manner in which it is raised. We want to go the extra mile to ensure you the best product available. So STAY TUNED to see the results of our experiment!