BRADLEY SMOKER | "Taste the Great Outdoors"

Smoking Techniques => Curing => Topic started by: drano on October 07, 2015, 06:36:07 PM

Title: Canadian Bacon again
Post by: drano on October 07, 2015, 06:36:07 PM
Ran out of CB a while back.
A few weeks a go, the grocery store had pork loins for $1.69/lb--who can say no to that?
Hab's recipe except I reduce garlic powder to .75 tsp per lb, and cured each piece in its own bag for 9 days.

Don't know why, but one piece turned brown on the end.  Did I accidentally not get cure rubbed onto that area?
Its the right piece in the photo. 
(http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww217/drano38/2015-10-03_09-13-25_326_zpsjimqyscs.jpg) (http://s721.photobucket.com/user/drano38/media/2015-10-03_09-13-25_326_zpsjimqyscs.jpg.html)

And here's the result.
It got done quicker than I thought, so 2 pieces hit 150-155, which dried them out some.  But still great flavor. 
(http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww217/drano38/2015-10-03_15-26-43_665_zpsnuf2rmhs.jpg) (http://s721.photobucket.com/user/drano38/media/2015-10-03_15-26-43_665_zpsnuf2rmhs.jpg.html)
Title: Re: Canadian Bacon again
Post by: Habanero Smoker on October 08, 2015, 02:18:16 AM
It looks alright. A whole loin has a couple of muscles in it. In the first picture, that brown area, looks like the shoulder end of the loin; the part that attaches to the butt, and it is the part I like to make my Canadian Bacon out of. That muscle gets more exercise, and has more myoglobin in it, which makes it darker than the rest of the loin. When cured, the more myoglobin the darker the red color will be, but you will notice this until the bacon is cooked and sliced open.

On the surface the color is more influence by what is in, or not in the cure. Since that muscle was darker than the rest of the loin prior to curing, the color of it will be different once the meat is removed from the cure.