Home Food Gourmet

There are a few ground rules that need to be gone over and you must understand, before you begin your curing or smoking project.  Curing and smoking can be deeply rewarding providing great food, family fun and pride in doing it yourself.  As you experiment and learn what you like, you will soon be producing cured and smoked foods that are better than any thing you can buy in a store or meat market.  It is very important that while experimenting with mixes, spices, smoke types and many other things, safety should never be experimented with.  Please make yourself familiar with a few "rules" on this page and come back often to refresh your memory.

Sanitation

Proper Storage

Temperature

Curing Guidelines

Smoking

Trichinella

Fish

Ham Recommendations

Sausage

At Risk Consumers

Sanitation

Regardless of what type of food you are preparing, sanitation is king.  All equipment, work surfaces, and utensils should be cleaned and sanitized before and after use.  A robust cleaning solution that will clean equipment, work surfaces and utensils without leaving a residue is 1 tablespoon of chlorine bleach in a gallon of warm water.  Be sure to pause between batches, raw food and processed food handling to sanitize your work surfaces and equipment.  Cross contamination between raw and/or dirty surfaces with clean or cooked food products is where most make their mistakes.  No one ever got sick from having their equipment and work area too clean.

Proper Storage

Where and how you store your food is very important.  It can be another opportunity besides when you are preparing your food  that contamination or bacteria growth can take place. 

• During storage or refrigeration, raw products must be separated from cooked products. 
• Never store raw products above or in contact with cooked products.  Leakage or accidental spillage of unprocessed food can quickly contaminate processed food.  If necessary, place raw products in pans or containers approximately 1-2” deep to keep meat juices from contacting with other surfaces. 
• Don't overfill your containers and provide a good seal or cover.
• Store Cured/Smoked Poultry up to two weeks in the refrigerator or up to one year in the freezer.
• Store lightly cured fish 10-14 days in the refrigerator or 2-3 months in the freezer.
• Vacuum packaged meats such as smoked fish, must be kept at < 40°F, since the reduced oxygen atmosphere increases the risk of botulism poisoning.
• Modern fish curing/smoking recipes produce a highly perishable product that rarely keeps better than the raw fish.

Temperature

The danger zone for microbial growth is 40-140°F. Therefore, store, age, cure, or otherwise preserve meats in a refrigerator below 40°F.  Cooking meats to an internal temperature of 160°F will destroy bacteria that can cause foodborne illness.  Your selection of good equipment should include a meat thermometer.  Any recipe that minimizes preservation time within the temperature danger zone (40-140°F) followed by cooking to a safe internal temperature will minimize risks of food poisoning.

Curing Guidelines

Meats

The anchor to any successful meat preservation process is to start with fresh meat.  Under no circumstances should curing be used to salvage meat that is exhibiting signs of bacterial growth or spoilage.  When curing meat, especially game meat, it does not need to be aged since curing/smoking will tenderize it. If aging is your preference, ensure all meats are aged below 40°F.

Salt

Using food-grade salt without any additives such as iodine is important for a successful curing project.  Salt that has impurities can produce less than desirable results, especially with fish.

Curing Compounds

When making your cure, you have a couple of choices when deciding how you want to accomplish it.  You can purchase commercially prepared cure mixes which are available at many sportsmen stores.  These mixes have been tested very often and while don't require precise measurements, you should follow the directions carefully.  Using premixed cures is probably a good start for a beginner.  If you are more experienced and choose to mix your own cure, be sure to precisely measure the ingredients on a very accurate scale.  For most home batches of cure, some ingredients required are as small is 1/4 oz. per 100 lbs of meat.

• Nitrate - Use cure mixtures that contain nitrate for dry-cured products that are not to be cooked, smoked, or refrigerated.  Dry cure using 3.5 oz. nitrate per 100 lbs. meat maximum or wet cure at a maximum of 700 ppm nitrates.

• Nitrite - Use cure mixtures that contain nitrite for all meats that require cooking, smoking, or canning.  Dry cure using 1 oz. nitrite per 100 lbs. meat maximum. For sausages use ¼ oz. per 100 lbs.  A 120 ppm concentration is usually sufficient and is the maximum allowed in bacon.

Nitrites are toxic and can be lethal when used in quantities higher than recommended.  It is extremely important to use caution in storing nitrites since it can easily be mistaken for table salt.  About 1 g or less than 1/4 teaspoon of sodium nitrite is a lethal dose to an adult human.  Mistakenly using sodium nitrite instead of pure salt in typical curing recipes can lead to a lethal dose of nitrite in the finished food.  Except for the experienced and organized it is safer to purchase and use curing mixtures rather than pure nitrites (saltpeter).

Cure Penetration

Cure mixture will not completely penetrate a cut of meat unless it has been thoroughly thawed.  Before curing, it is important to use the refrigerator to completely thaw meat.  Do not set it on the counter to thaw as it increases the risk of spoilage and microbial growth.  Attempt to make the cuts of meat as similar in size as possible to ensure uniform cure penetration.  Use a tried and true recipe for determining the correct curing mixture to be used for a specified weight of meat or meat mixture.  When dry curing, make sure all surfaces are rubbed well and frequently to ensure cure penetration.  Brine or immersion curing requires you to stir and rotate the meat in the mixture to ensure mixing and even cure penetration.  Curing should be carried out at a temperature between 35°F and 40°F.  The lower temperature helps with cure penetration and the upper temperature limits microbial growth.  Curing solutions must be discarded after use because of the possibility of bacterial growth, cross-contamination and dilution.

Smoking

Make sure that your smoker or smokehouse is in good operating condition where you can control the heat, airflow and moisture inside the unit.  If your smoker does not have a good calibrated thermometer, make the investment in one that will make your project safe and successful.  The purchase of a good meat thermometer is essential to make sure the interior temperature of the meat has reached the proper temperature.  Smoke itself, without proper cooking, is not an effective food preservative. Caution should be used when smoking meats at temperatures in the danger zone of 40-140°F for prolonged periods of time. In these cases, the meat must have been salted or cured first.

Smoke Cooking

When using the smoke cooking method of curing food, it is important that the internal temperature of the meat be in accordance with the table below.

Cooling

Once the smoked cooked meats are done, it is important to cool them down quickly.  They should be cooled rapidly to below 40°F and keep refrigerated.  Smoke cooked fish should generally be cooled from to 70°F or below within 2 hours and to 40°F or below within another 4 hours.  Dry (unfermented) meats/foods may not be hot smoked until the curing and drying procedures are completed.  Semi dry fermented sausage must be heated after fermentation to a time/temperature sufficient to control growth of the organisms of concern.

Trichinella

Pork products not exceeding 6 cubic inches must be treated to destroy Trichinella by

• Heat:
  
  • 130°F(30 min.)
  • 132°F(15 min.)
  • 134°F(6 min.)
  • 136°F(3 min.)

or

• Freezing:
  
  • 5°F(20 days)
  • -10°F(10 days)
  • -20°F(6 days)

Double the freezing times for larger pieces up to 27 inches of thickness

• Combination of curing, drying, and smoking can kill Trichinella, but these are process specific.

Wild game (bear, elk, etc.) must be treated to destroy Trichinella by heating to 170°F, since some strains of Trichinella are freeze resistant.

Fish

• It is very important that intentionally under-processed fish such as green herring or cold smoked fish, should be frozen first to 4°F for 7 days to kill parasites or to -10°F for at least 7 days. 
• Because spores of botulism are known to be present in the viscera of fish, any fish that will be preserved using salt, drying, pickling, or fermentation must be thoroughly cleaned prior to processing to prevent toxin formation. 
• For salted and hot smoked fish, use brine with a minimum salt concentration of 3.5% water phase salt.
• It is not recommended to hot or cold-smoke fish that have not been brined.

Ham Recommendations

• For country ham, dry salt cured ham, country cured shoulder ham, or dry-cured bacon, the internal salt content should be 4% when used with nitrates/nitrites or 10% without the use of nitrates/nitrites. 
• Properly prepared dry cured hams are safe to store at room temperature. 
• Soak country cured hams in water in the refrigerator (40°F) to reduce salt levels prior to eating. 
• High humidity during curing and aging may lead to surface spoilage.  Mold may grow on the surface and can be safely washed off.

Sausage

All recipes should call for final internal temperatures that will destroy trichinae. We do not recommend preparing homemade, non-fermented sausages that are not fully cooked.  If you do prepare them, be sure the meat, especially pork, has been properly frozen to destroy trichinae and other parasites.  Use a meat thermometer to help insure that sausage is properly cooked.  Cool the sausage quickly after cooking and keep in the refrigerator for short term storage or freezer for long term storage.  Semi-dry cured sausages, such as summer sausage, should be heat treated to 145°F for 4 minutes to destroy E. coli that may have survived the curing and fermentation process.

At Risk Consumers

• You can protect your unborn child by not eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish that can contain high levels of mercury.
• "At risk" consumers should avoid eating refrigerated smoked seafood, unless it is in a cooked dish. Refrigerated smoked seafood, such as salmon, trout, whitefish, cod, tuna, or mackerel, is most often in recipes for "Nova style, "lox, kippered, smoked or jerky seafood. These preparations are at risk for Listeria.
• At-risk consumers might want to avoid dry cured sausages because of the risk of E. coli.
• Consumers may want to avoid feeding cured products containing nitrates/nitrites to babies less than three months old because of implications in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) due to nitrate/nitrite poisoning.