Salami Season 2017! Home Made Bacon Recipe, Curing Salt Guide, Double Barrel Smoker!

Well, Salami
Season is almost upon us once again, and as always, we have you covered
for all of your smoking and curing needs. In this edition of the
newsletter, we highlight some new products that have arrived just in
time for the start of Salami Season which we’re really excited about.

We also include our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Home Made Bacon’ which is already proving a smash hit and spotlight a couple of Home Made Bacon ‘Kits’ from our online store. View our range of home butcher supplies now!

We’ve also taken the time to put a quick guide to Curing Salts. We
constantly get asked about the difference between the 3 Cures that we sell during this time of year, so hopefully we can answer a few questions you may have been wondering yourselves!

As always, we want to continue to encourage our subscribers to
continue to send us the fruits of their smoking and curing labours!
Please send recipes and pics to recipes@smokedandcured.com.au to share your recipe with our 10,000 readers, and also be entered into the monthly draw to win $50.

And as a final reminder to our customers, we now offer flat rate,
Australia wide shipping (excluding remote locations) for just $9.95 – no
matter how much you order! Perfect for filling a basket with Salami
Season goodies!

Happy Smoking!

Brenton and Ben.

New Product Spotlight!

Professional Quality Semi-Automatic 10 Inch Electric Slicer

Take your Charcuterie hobby to the next level with this professional quality Stainless Steel Electric Slicer.

Features：

● Top Quality Design and Materials
● Built-in sharpener
● Fixed ring guard for safety, and the meat carriage is removable for easy cleanup
● Stainless steel constructed blade
● Compact footprint
● ETL Sanitation and ETL Listed
● Great for slicing vegetables and cured meat, making it a good fit for small delis, restaurants and home enthusiasts
● Full 1 year warranty

$549.00 + only $9.95 postage and handling

Check out full details and specs here.

Misty Gully Double Barrel Cold Smoker
Check out our brand new Misty Gully Double Barrel Cold Smoker.

Use
it in any smoking unit, hooded BBQ or grill and create your own cold
smoking chamber! Professional smoke results in just about anything!

Two stainless steel barrels mean you can mix and match your woods to create your own unique flavours and aromas.

Use one, or both barrels. Provides up to 5 hours of smoke.

Two barrels burning in close proximity creates double the smoke
and slightly faster burn times for added flavour and intensity.

Just add pellets, light at the end, and start seriously smoking! Only $44.95.

Tasmanian Smoked Salt

Amazing New Product!
Hand crafted in Micro Batches, this delicious smoked salt is the best
we have ever tried. From the Tasmanian Wilderness, Australian Sea Salt
is hand smoked 6 times with native hardwoods, to give an incredibly
deep, rich and intense smokey flavour that will blow you away.

The perfect garnish for any meal, and an amazing substitute for normal salt in making charcuterie. Package Size 160g, $19.95.

Check it out here

Misty Gully Bendable Basting Brush

These are super cool. High-Quality design. Bendable, to allow you to re apply baste all over your larger cooks.
Easy wash, easy use. Only $14.95.

Salami Season Curing Salts Guide

Cure #1 6.25% Nitrite – 500g $8.95 – Use
when you are making products that call for a curing period of 2-10
days. Examples include Bacon, Ham and Corned Beef. Follow all recipes
precisely, but as a rough guide, use 1 teaspoon per 2kg of meat.

Cure #1 2% Nitrite – 500g $8.95 Specially
designed for very short cures (under 48 hours). Perfect for making your
own jerky. Follow your independent recipes precisely, but also as a
rough guide, use 2 teaspoons per kg of meat.

Cure #2 6% Nitrite, 4% Nitrate – 500g $8.95 – The
pantry staple for Salami Season… Cure #2 is what you need for all
longer cures – when making salami and all charcuterie with curing
periods longer than 10 days. During the curing process, the nitrate
content will slowly break down and essentially turn into nitrite to
continue the curing process over an extended period. Again, precise
measurements when using cures are a must – follow your independent
recipe precisely. However for a rough guide, use approx 1 teaspoon per
2kg of meat.

Curing salts are also sometimes referred to as Prague Powder, Instacure or Pink Salt (not to be confused with Himalayan Pink Salt). All Curing Salts are dyed pink for safety reasons.

In large doses, nitrites and nitrates are not safe for human
consumption and can be poisonous – so when using curing salts – always
be precise! Keep out of reach of children and pets.

Only a very small amount of curing
salt is required as per your recipe, and this amount will differ
slightly, but please remember for a typical brine or dry cure you will
be adding a lot more salt and sugar compared to curing salt. This is why
the curing salt has been cut with normal salt, as only a very small
amount of sodium nitrite is required – it makes it easier to measure and
it’s safer for the home user as well.

When you need to add additional salt to a cure, it’s always recommended you use Kosher Salt, which we also sell here. Misty Gully Kosher Salt
is an authentic Koshering Salt in that it is manufactured at a larger,
squarer grain size to regular salt, making it ideal for soaking excess
moisture content from meat, easier to handle as a seasoning, fast to
dissolve and also very tasty. And most importantly, Kosher Salt is
extremely pure, so unnatural flavours and other unwanted elements will
not be added to your delicate smoking and curing cooks.

Beginner’s Guide to Home Made Bacon

Making
your own Bacon at home is safe, easy, fun and most importantly,
delicious. Once you try this simple recipe, you’ll never eat
store-bought bacon again!

We have a Beginner’s Kit available here, where all you need to add is meat, an oven, a fridge and a fry-pan! Great value for money.

And if you want to take it to the next level – check out our new Ultimate Bacon Pack – serious discount with over $130 off.

Step One: Choose your cut

You
can use pretty much any pork cut to make Bacon. For a traditional
English/Australian style bacon, you’ll need a cut of loin and belly. For
Canadian bacon, loin. And for American style streaky bacon, pork belly
is ideal. (In the example below, we use pork belly)

Step Two: Prepare your cut

Trim
away excess fat and try to square up your cut. Choose to keep or remove
the skin (rind). The rind will shrink considerably during the curing
process, but by removing it – you will allow for the cure to do it’s
work more easily.

Step Three: Measure your cure

For beginners, we recommend Misty Gully’s Maple Bacon Cure.
Not only is it delicious, but it takes the worry about measuring
nitrite to salt levels away, and means you’ll achieve a lovely maple
flavour every time. Use 40g per kg of meat. If you do not have a smoker
and would like to add a traditional smokey flavour profile, add 1
teaspoon of Misty Gully Hickory Smoke Powder per kg of meat to the mix. Add 1/3 teaspoon of ground black pepper per kg of meat.

Optional
extras: if you want to spice things up even more, add any one or more
of the following- ground coffee, honey, maple syrup, thyme, coriander
seeds, mustard seeds, paprika, bourbon…

If using your own cure: you will need Cure #1 (6.25% Nitrite). You will need ½ teaspoon per kg of meat, mixed with ¼ cup Kosher Salt, and ¼ cup of Sugar or Maple Crystals. If you do use your own cure, make sure you are precise with measurements.

Step Four: Apply your dry cure mix

Thoroughly rub the dry cure mix into your pork. Be sure to get right into all folds and crevices.

Step Five: Seal and Refrigerate

Put your pork into your zip-lock bag
or air-tight plastic container, expel the air, and seal then put into
the fridge. As for how long to cure your bacon in the fridge for, it
will depend on the size of your meat. We suggest a day per 500g of meat.
Curing your bacon for longer than the recommended time will result in a
saltier end product.

Step Six: Turn it over

Every 24 hours, turn your pork over. You will notice liquid will be building in the zip-lock bag. This is a good thing, don’t drain.

Step Seven: Soak your meat

Remove
your bacon-to-be from the zip-lock bag, rinse under the tap, then soak
for 60 minutes in room temperature water. This should remove excess
cure.

Step Eight: the Pellicle

Remove
from the water and pat dry with paper towel. Place on a plate and
refrigerate uncovered for 6-24 hours. During this time, the meat will
develop a shiny skin, known as a pellicle. When smoking, the pellicle is
important as this is what absorbs much of the smoke flavour you trying
to imbue.

Step Nine: Bring your Bacon up to temperature

Your pork is now cured and is ready to be pre-cooked. This is the final step in turning pork into bacon.

For best results, use a smoker. This will give you a true smokey bacon taste. Pre-heat oven to 110 degrees Celsius. Add your wood chips. We recommend Apple, Maple, Cherry or Hickory.

If using an oven, pre-heat to 110 degrees. Spray your bacon with Misty Gully Liquid Smoke.

Place bacon on your bacon hanger and hang from the top rack of your smoker or oven.

Check the internal temperature regularly and cook until it reaches 68 degrees Celsius – this will take approximately 75-90 minutes.

Step Ten: Cool your bacon

Remove from the bacon hanger and place bacon in the fridge to cool for 60 mins.

Step Eleven: Slice your bacon

You’re now ready to cut and cook! Slice to your desired level of thickness. We recommend rough cut, thick rustic slices.

Step Twelve: Cook your bacon

Cook as desired. Your bacon will last for up to 3 weeks in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer!

PRODUCT REVIEWS

Every newsletter we write, we
really enjoy going through our product reviews to pick our 3 winners of
the $20 store credit. Thank you for taking the time to review our
products and for giving us the feedback, they really help.

Congratulations to Mark Halse, Anthony Zann and Luke Kirby!

Please remember to submit your name in full for any reviews as it helps us identify you as the winner.

Alaskan Salmon Brine Mix
I didnt know it would be so easy

Posted by Luke Kirkby on 8th May 2017

I began making smoked salmon and trout
using this brine having never used a brine before. I couldn’t believe
how much this product enhanced the flavour. The first piece i tried
straight out of the smoker was that good i didn’t even ask my wife to
try 🙂

Misty Gully Liquid Smoke (210ml)
The Life of Brine

Posted by Evans on 12th May 2017

Added 1 teaspoon of Outback Campfire
Liquid Smoke to my normal fish brine of 3T brown sugar, 2T salt and 2
cups water and seasonings. Steeped 4kg of Spanish mackerel chunks in
this for 5 hours, then air-dried on smoker racks. Great pellicle, great
colour and appealing aroma.
50 minutes @ 110° with a long smoke of banksia cone chips and
melaleuca pellets for juicy, flaky fish full of smoky goodness. Anybody
who tasted wanted more.
I’ve been smoking fish for 25 years and I think I’ve found the missing link for a perfect brine.

Maple Bacon Cure – Dry Cure (1kg)
Excellent Bacon Cure

Posted by Mark on 27th Apr 2017

Have used this a number of times, very tasty and easy. Would recommend it for anyone interested in curing their own bacon

Thanks
for reading our latest newsletter and good luck with the smoking,
sausage and salami making or any other smoking and curing in the next
few months! Please feel free to upload/post pictures of your smoked and
cured products to our Facebook page for other like-minded people to
check out. If you haven’t joined our page already please double click on
the picture below.If you have any product suggestions or requests, please drop us an email at: info@smokedandcured.com.au and we’ll try our best to stock it.Happy Smoking!Ben, Brenton and the Smoked and Cured Team!